The intranet Habanero designed for Canadian law firm Bennett Jones has won Platinum in the prestigious 2010 Intranet Innovation Awards. Bennett Jones is the first law firm to win the award.
BenNet was created to provide a task-oriented, user-friendly platform that simplifies the process by which lawyers and employees alike can efficiently contribute to, share and reuse information within the firm. It uses a classification methodology similar to that used in online shopping to allow lawyers, on a self-serve basis, to quickly find precedents—templates, models, or previous examples of legal documents. BenNet also enables the quick assembly of these materials into helpful online guides.
Comment and notification features in BenNet allow users to share their comments on legal resources ensuring the quality of relevance of the documents. Other social intranet features have helped create a sense of community among Bennett Jones' geographically dispersed employees.
BenNet was a collaborative effort in which Habanero developed BenNet's user experience design. Ben Skelton, user experience lead on the project, attributes the project's success to the time commitment Bennett Jones was willing to make and the access they were willing to give to do usability research with their team. "The research was incredibly important as it allowed us to grasp the cultural differences between the different offices and determine how the intranet could make the lives of people at Bennett Jones easier. I also really enjoyed our four hour review sessions, we don't often have the opportunity to collaborate with a client so closely on the design, which was a really intense, yet satisfying experience."
Habanero was responsible for the user experience and design of BenNet working closely with V51 Consulting for solution architecture and SharePoint Development, and RBRO Solutions Inc. for document management system integration.
About the Intranet Innovation Awards
Awarded by Step Two Designs (www.steptwo.com.au) a recognized thought-leader in intranet strategy and design, the Intranet Innovation Awards, now in their fourth year, are global awards celebrating new ideas and innovative approaches to the enhancement and delivery of intranets. This year 55 companies spanning various industries from around the world entered the competition, judged by an international panel of intranet experts. Countries represented by 2010 winners include Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand and the Netherlands. More information about the 2010 Intranet Innovation Awards, and a detailed report, are available at www.steptwo.com.au/products/iia2010.
