Situation

Microsoft’s SharePoint Social Computing group came to HL2 with a challenge: the business world was unaware of SharePoint’s potential as a leading platform for enterprise social computing. Our assignment: a website. But not just any website. One we would build from scratch—on the SharePoint platform—that would demonstrate Microsoft’s thought leadership in enterprise social computing (ESP), position SharePoint as the best platform for ESP, provide demos and information on SharePoint’s unique features and highlight the solution provider partners and independent software vendors. We also recommended video case studies of customer success scenarios. The ultimate goal was to foster a community for anyone interested in social computing and SharePoint to share knowledge and discuss issues of interest to them. The success metric was clear: move SharePoint to the top of Forrester’s magical quadrant in enterprise social computing.

Approach

We created a clean, comprehensive and compelling experience for users seeking information about SharePoint social computing while highlighting SharePoint’s features and capabilities—the site was actually built on the SharePoint development platform and leveraged Silverlight-based animation. What’s more, the new SharePoint site reflects a personality and sensibility that, while it adheres to Microsoft brand standards, is more in step with world-class enterprise social media websites.

Outcome

The site received numerous accolades and compliments from high-level Microsoft employees, solution provider partners, and targeted users. In addition, the overall design is considered one of the more unique SharePoint platform websites. And within nine months of launch, Forrester recognized SharePoint as a top performer in its quadrant rating system.