Milestone Equipment Holdings, LLC (milecorp.com) is one of the largest and fastest growing transportation lessors in the United States, operating a fleet of over 84,000 pieces of equipment across 75 commercial locations.
After a re-organization of the company in 2017, new leadership decided to implement an initiative called “One Milestone”, with the goal of fostering a cohesive and collaborative work environment nationwide. Given Milestone’s issue with document sharing among their wide-spread offices, implementing a unified corporate intranet became the key of the One Milestone initiative. Covenant Technology Partners was challenged by the new CIO, Jeff Schmidt, to build Milestone’s first Intranet with SharePoint Online, leveraging Covenant’s proprietary Intranet Kit solution. A task which Jennifer Schaefer, Executive Administrative Assistant and the primary administer of Milestone’s Intranet, says “they did very well”.
Race Against the Clock
In two weeks, Covenant Technology Partners was able to implement Intranet Kit 2.0 with SharePoint Online to debut at Milestone’s national meeting at the headquarters in St. Charles, MO. The Milestone Intranet was released to all employees and 75 locations simultaneously. Implementation caused no issues and went over seamlessly, receiving positive feedback across the organizations. “Covenant has been excellent at being there to provide the support that we need. They’re always available when we need them,” says Shaefer, who spent 6 months prior to the implementation pulling together necessary documentation and organizing assets in one location.
Even for somebody without an IT background, it’s incredibly easy.
Shaefer had prior experience working with SharePoint from a previous position. She maintains the Intranet Kit for the entire company, which sits on top of Milestone’s SharePoint environment. Using the Intranet Kit was just a matter of getting into the platform and learning it on her own. Covenant was there to assist with training for SharePoint Online as necessary.
Implementation of the Intranet Kit was Phase 1 of the project. For Phase 2, Covenant Technology Partners is consulting on a more in-depth approach to migrating all shared files currently on servers to SharePoint, storing them in the cloud and allowing for secure remote access without logging into a VPN network. Finally, because of a successful integration of the Intranet Kit, Covenant will now be assisting in updating Milestone’s Active Directory and linking it for automation with ADP.
Moving Forward
We have received an incredible amount of positive feedback from our associates across the organization about the ease of accessing important information, receiving internal communications and accessing internal and external resources provided on the new Intranet site.
Schaefer especially finds the Mega Menu useful as a direct link for important information and equipment look-ups. The News Carousel provides a space to feature news articles and substantial information to highlight, with the ability to guide users to internal or external pages. The content editor boxes are utilized to create access points for important information employees need to reach with the click of a button. The employee directory, which is in further development and automation with an existing system, is currently being used for discovering anyone within the organization and contacting them as needed.
The Intranet is managed by the branch managers for each location and is now a part of the onboarding process for new employees, defaulting as the browser homepage. Additionally, on their first day, new hires receive an email where the first line directs them to the Intranet. Employees are directed to the Intranet to access documents and information and Milestone is moving away from emailing them directly.
Future goals of the Intranet Kit for Milestone include restructuring their corporate newsletter and using the Mega Menu and Carousel to communicate with the organization. These include: CEO announcements, recognition awards, technology news, and any communications coming from the IT department.