ConocoPhillips New Intranet Receives Nielsen Norman Award for Best Intranet Design

HOUSTON, January 8, 2015 /PRNewswire/ --

The user-experience research firm Nielsen Norman Group has just announced the winners of their Best Intranet Design Annual Award for 2015. This prestigious award distinguishes the most innovative Intranet designs that deliver greater business productivity. Among this year's winners is ConocoPhillips for their new SharePoint 2013 Intranet 'The Mark', designed and built by BrightStarr.

ConocoPhillips is the world's largest independent exploration and production company. It explores for, develops, and produces crude oil and natural gas globally with a commitment to safety, operating excellence, and environmental stewardship. With over 18,400 employees operating across 27 countries, effective collaboration and ready access to information is essential to business success. With this in mind, ConocoPhillips decided to invest in their Intranet to better support their disparate staff and further unify their business. Their new Intranet was selected as a Nielsen Norman award-winning design from among the hundreds of entries from across the globe, highlighting the innovative nature of their solution.

ConocoPhillips new Intranet project was initiated following a growing awareness that their previous solution was no longer fit for purpose. Their Intranet had become fragmented silos of information within an outdated navigational structure, making it difficult for employees to find what they needed quickly. With this impacting the bottom line for ConocoPhillips they recognized a perfect opportunity to reinvigorate this essential digital tool. Jennifer Hohman, Director IT ConocoPhillips stated "We operate in a highly competitive industry, therefore empowering our staff with the very best tools for collaboration and innovation is essential to staying ahead of the competition. We want our internal tools to be a reflection of the quality of our brand in the wider market."

The new Intranet design focused on improving navigation, increasing the findability of information, and enhancing user experience in the Intranet. One innovative feature, which supported these goals, was the highly effective Mega Menu, which featured three simple yet intuitive items; Our Company, My Work & Collaboration, My Life & Career. Everything users need can be found within one of these three core menu options, which allows the Intranet homepage to remain clean, bringing essential corporate information to the forefront. The easily navigable menu, in addition to powerful search tools, serve to keep employees connected to everything they need to get the job done and collaborate effectively. By incorporating responsive design, the Intranet can now be accessed from any device, providing staff with anytime, anywhere access to essential resources.

Throughout the development of the solution, BrightStarr's tried and tested Kinetica methodology helped to ensure that the user was placed at the center of the design. Through surveys, interviews and workshops, user requirements were gathered leading to the development of more personal Intranet experiences, while maintaining a strong connection to the wider business. Glen Chambers, SVP Operations for BrightStarr explained "We understand that with any exceptional solution you must deliver the perfect balance of form and factor. ConocoPhillips worked with BrightStarr to deliver experiences that engaged their staff to promote high user adoption, and this has allowed them to get the most out of their new solution."

BrightStarr is committed to delivering truly world-class digital solutions that increase employee productivity, elevate brands and create multi-channel revenue opportunities. Jon Parker, CEO BrightStarr commented "It is a real honor to have won another Nielsen Norman Award for Best Intranet Design. This is our third win in four years, following our win in 2012 for Everything Everywhere and 2014 for Abt Associates, and I think our commitment to excellence really shows in all of our customer engagements and solutions.  In addition since completing this engagement we have proceeded to pool our collective learnings from this and other Enterprise SharePoint projects to create a world-class turnkey Intranet as a Service offering called  Unily, enabling every company to have an award-winning Intranet experience."

The full Nielsen Norman Group Best Intranet Design Award report, detailing all the winning Intranets, can be obtained through their website.

About NN/g

Since 1998 Nielsen Norman Group has been a leading voice in the user experience field: conducting ground-breaking research, evaluating interfaces of all shapes and sizes, and guiding critical design decisions to improve the bottom line.

About BrightStarr

BrightStarr are an award-winning Microsoft Gold partner focused on SharePoint, Office 365, Yammer and Azure, and are regularly singled out for incorporating cutting-edge design and technical excellence into all of our customer engagements. BrightStarr operates in the following regions: United Kingdom, New York, Boston, Seattle, Houston, Atlanta, New Jersey, Dubai, Argentina and Australia. For more information, please visit http://www.brightstarr.com.

Contact: Matthew Boyd, +1-888-777-6850, matthew.boyd@brightstarr.com