Boeing and Ford pick Plumtree intranet portals for world-wide employee coverage

While Boeing rolls out its corporate intranet portal for 200,000 employees based on web platform developer Plumtree Software’s and Microsoft systems, Ford has announced successful completion of its similar my.ford.com, also for 200,000 employees world-wide and also on Plumtree. Boeing’s implementation is for the Boeing Employee Portal: its enterprise-wide system aimed at providing staff world-wide with a secure, single point of entry for e-mail, company news, content and web applications, technical references and also timekeeping. The firm says it’s a low cost way of streamlining internal communications, and increasing employee effectiveness and ultimately customer service. “We are providing a way to boost employee productivity by providing easier, more personalised access to information, applications and other corporate resources,” said Letha Joye Jepson, Employee Portal IT director at Boeing. “The Plumtree corporate portal enables us to accomplish these objectives by giving us an architecture that allows us to continually add new services and content.” Plumtree and Microsoft Consulting Services are currently working with Boeing deploying the system, which will span all Boeing business units. Meanwhile, Ford has completed its my.ford.com system, also for 200,000 employees, in this case located at almost 1,000 offices and manufacturing sites around the world. It’s the next generation of the firm’s earlier intranet. Martin Davis, portal program manager at Ford, says: “Our new portal is extending [the existing] value by integrating e-business services and indexing and categorising a large amount of corporate content.” The boast here is that from the office to the assembly line, Ford employees will all share a single desktop for content and services from the 1,500 sites that comprise the world’s largest commercial intranet – covering HR, collaboration and learning services. Says Davis: “This will enable employees to build their own working environment on the web.” Ford says quantified benefits so far include less employee time spent searching for information – and with an astonishing estimate of just four minutes saved per week per employee saving Ford $7 million per annum, this could be substantial! Other savings will come from automating corporate processes, such as travel bookings, expenses and the like.