Essar employees go creative, social, and productive with MyEssar

Essar is a multinational corporation with annual revenues of US $35 billion and investments in Steel, Energy, Infrastructure and Services. With operations in more than 29 countries, it employs over 60,000 people.

Started as  a construction Company in 1969, Essar has diversified into manufacturing, services and retail over the years since then. Over the last decade, it has grown through strategic global acquisitions and partnerships, or through greenfield and brownfield development projects, capturing new markets and discovering new raw material sources.  Essar has been investing significantly in the latest technology to drive forward and backward integration in its businesses, and on leveraging synergies between these businesses. It also focuses on in-house research and innovation to be a low-cost manufacturer with high-quality products and innovative customer offerings.

Challenges Faced

The company’s existing platform was built on old Microsoft technologies, which were fast becoming obsolete and out of support. Moreover, finding skilled manpower to manage the old platform was also becoming a challenge. The existing platform was also not able to support the new requirements that were coming from the business with regards to features and functionalities.

Essar has been growing larger with time but due to lack of an interactive platform, the unique user count and revisits were dropping significantly. The old platform provided only one-way-communication with no means of having a collaborative and interactive approach to interactions.  For sustenance of the existing platform and to broadcast information across Essar locations, major replication was needed, which led to people dependencies and duplication of effort.

The Implementation

The company built an intranet portal ‘MyEssar’ using Microsoft’s SharePoint Portal 2013. The project was started with an intention to create a digital platform that was more user friendly and allowed young Essarites to consume information and interact with other counterparts and business with ease.

Project Head, Jayantha Prabhu CTO, Essar Group

The Result

The impact of the project has been significant in several ways, like in Business HR, where some crucial decisions have been made because of the new platform. For instance, a 5-day work week was announced for a few locations basis the results of the survey conducted on My Essar portal. Also, the BU SPOCs are seeing the way end users are engaging via this platform and how it provides a solution for internal job postings, employee surveys, quick polls, announcements, live streaming of videos, sharing of pictures from office events and much more. And that has led to a new way of thinking. They are now coming up with engaging and more creative ways of communicating with the end users. Earlier it was only through traditional methods (posters and mailers) but now the approach is ‘My Essar’. The company has also made an impact on end users. Many of the features of ‘My Essar portal’ are being used as outlets for creative expression, personal connection, and convenience.