Customer Success Story: Accounting

Migrating A Global Public Accounting and Consulting Company to an Enhanced Employee Center Experience

The client faced several challenges with its existing legacy Service Portal:

Limited Usability: Employees struggled to navigate the portal, search for information, and make service requests effectively.
Low User Satisfaction: The outdated interface and unintuitive design led to frustration and low adoption rates among employees.
Content Discoverability: Requests and knowledge articles were not well-categorized, making it difficult for employees to find relevant resources quickly.

The Challenge

The client faced several challenges with its existing legacy Service Portal:

Limited Usability: Employees struggled to navigate the portal, search for information, and make service requests effectively.
Low User Satisfaction: The outdated interface and unintuitive design led to frustration and low adoption rates among employees.
Content Discoverability: Requests and knowledge articles were not well-categorized, making it difficult for employees to find relevant resources quickly.

The Solutions

Pathways worked closely with their team to implement the following solutions:

Migration to Employee Center: The transition from the legacy Service Portal to the more advanced Employee Center framework focused on enhancing usability and search capabilities. The implementation included:
- Developing a logical taxonomy and menu structure to organize content by business pillars.
- Categorizing and tagging requests with relevant metadata for improved discoverability.
- Customizing features like “Recommended for You” and “Popular Topics” for a personalized user experience.
Collaborative Enablement: We co-developed the solution with their team, empowering them to maintain and expand the system independently. While Pathways handled the complex technical configurations, their team focused on lighter tasks, fostering long-term self-sufficiency.
Aesthetic Enhancements: We worked with their marketing team to standardize the portal’s look and feel, incorporating branding elements such as colors, photography, and illustrations. The final product offered a polished, user-friendly interface.
Additional Features: Key functionalities were added, including a Microsoft Teams integration for the virtual agent and outage communication tools to improve service availability notifications.

Results & Impact

The migration to Employee Center delivered significant benefits to the company:

Improved User Satisfaction: Enhanced navigation and search functionality led to higher adoption rates and positive feedback from employees.
Increased Efficiency: Better categorization and metadata reduced call volumes to the service desk, saving time for both employees and support staff.
Self-Sufficiency: Their team gained the skills to manage and expand the portal independently, ensuring sustainable operations.
Streamlined Communication: Integration with Microsoft Teams and the introduction of outage notification tools improved organizational communication.

Takeaway & Future Planning

Our approach to co-development and enablement ensured a smooth migration while empowering the client to maintain and evolve the system. Although there are no immediate plans for additional phases, we have laid the groundwork for future enhancements should they choose to expand functionality or upgrade licenses. By keeping the implementation largely out-of-the-box, we also ensured that they avoided unnecessary customization, simplifying future upgrades.

Conclusion

We successfully guided this company through a challenging migration, transforming its Employee Center into a modern, user-friendly platform. The collaboration resulted in tangible improvements in usability, satisfaction, and efficiency, demonstrating the value of a strategic partnership focused on long-term success.