London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham

With a population of 176,800, it is the 85th largest council out of a total of 354 in the UK.

The Challenge

The council’s IT department faced two challenges: setting up an Intranet as well as an updated version of the council’s Web site (http://www.lbhf.gov.uk/), in line with the government’s plans to improve the delivery of public services online in the UK. The council’s Web sites have a broad audience to communicate with and a large amount of information to get across so it was vital that they were easy to navigate and had a consistent look and feel in terms of color and branding. 

The Intranet went live in February 2005, the external Web site in October 2005. 

“It was harder to get the sign off for the external Web site”, explains Angela Jariwala, Hammersmith and Fulham’s Online Communication Manager. “The design had to be agreed by the right people internally which is why we encountered a slight delay.” 

“Before launching the Web sites, we discussed how we could relieve the responsibility of updating the sites on the communications department and allow the service areas to own their Web content,” explains Angela.   “Because of the absence of web standards, not only did we have problems in achieving a consistent look and feel to the Web site as each page had to be created in isolation, but often bottlenecks would ensue as the entire updating process was managed and implemented by the communications department. Often they even had to rewrite entire documents which put a lot of strain on the whole department in terms of time.”

The Solution

The council chose SDL Tridion as its Web Content Management provider. “We conducted a rigorous search and SDL Tridion clearly knew what they were talking about. We were looking for a cost-effective, user-friendly Web Content Management solution which would enable each department to take control of its own content for the Web sites, thus freeing up the communication department to focus on their core business.” 

SDL Tridion’s Content Management solution enables non-technical staff in each department to update and publish their content in keeping with the council’s agreed branding and design, ensuring a consistent look and feel to the sites. The solution currently has 300 users within the council, of which 30 are concurrent.

“Everybody within the service areas of the council is still really excited about the SDL Tridion solution – it gives control over content to the departments and ensures that it goes live quickly without the need to lose sleep over brand consistency.”

The council increasingly delivers services online and is soon launching a Drug and Alcohol Awareness Information site. “The way it works now is brilliant – we develop the Web site in terms of design and branding and then simply hand over to the content managers within departments so they can add the information they want. It means we can concentrate on our core business whilst still retaining control in terms of branding.”