Data Driven Issue 01
“THIS HAS REALLY BOOSTED PRODUCTIVITY AND EFFICIENCY, REDUCING DEVELOPMENT LEAD-TIMES. IT’S A MASSIVELY INFLUENTIAL STEP FORWARD.”
DIRK DE BEER, HEAD OF AERODYNAMICS, LOTUS F1 TEAM
FOCUS IN: SHAREPOINT
One of the major advantages that Avanade has brought to Lotus F1 Team this season is Insight, the team’s SharePoint intranet portal that schedules events, allows documents to be shared, and keeps everyone in the loop.
BUSINESS PROBLEM
In the past, the team’s planning documents could only be opened by one person at a time. “It was very frustrating,” comments Head of Aerodynamics Dirk de Beer. “It was a simple Excel document. Ideally we needed multiple people accessing it whenever they needed to. And sometimes you couldn’t log-out properly and we would get locked out. “We wanted to progress, we wanted a SharePoint environment. We had previously had both internal and external software developers try to tackle the problem, and every time it resulted in disappointment and wasted man-hours.”
AVANADE SOLUTION
Utilizing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and developing some new applications specifically for Lotus F1 Team, Avanade came in and created a system that allowed an unlimited number of users to access critical information. Part of the challenge was time. Avanade’s arrival coincided with the design and manufacturing department’s busiest time at the start of the year. For example, on the logistics side, Avanade has developed report interfaces for the team’s transport manager, enabling him to oversee all the team’s transport requests 24/7. In aerodynamics, Avanade has developed a new application that plans the wind tunnel program, doing away with the Macro-overrun old Excel program, which was prone to manual error. Now the aerodynamicists can organize their planning with minimal effort.
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