InterContinental Hotels Group launches EMEA Intranet

• Monday, 10 October 2005

10th October 2005, Newbury, UK: Mediasurface today announced that it has enabled the Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG) to launch the first phase of its new global intranet.

Completed within just three months, phase one of the intranet will be used by IHG employees spread across six corporate offices and 614 hotels within the European, Middle Eastern and African (EMEA) regions. This global project is the first of its kind for IHG, and will create a dynamic, personalised site with lots of built in functionality to share knowledge and best practice between its different regions, brands and hotels.

The new site allows a personalised view for each employee, with the home page opening as their individual hotel or corporate department and in-built access controls delivering all the information and business applications needed for their role.

The content management system has allowed seamless integration with all business applications. Services such as hotel reporting, IHG email, quality audit and guest satisfaction applications, promotions, risk management, guest satisfaction and tracking, events calendars and even Christmas card ordering for each hotel, can be accessed through the system. For example, all employees will have access to ‘myHR’ an area where they can look at their training and development needs, competency and self development, book themselves on to training courses, and access and file holiday forms and expenses.

The new intranet was built using the Mediasurface content management system and the innovative content authoring tool, Morello. There are currently around 80 content authors, a number expected to rise significantly with the amount of content being added to the site.

David House, Senior Vice President within Global HR at IHG said: “The most important element in making this project a success was the ease of use of the system we chose, this was in order to gain rapid acceptance across a diverse user base. Morello is unique in that regard, no other product we looked at came anywhere close to it.”

With seven individual hotel brands including Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza, IHG operates under a de-centralised business model across nearly 100 countries. House continued “The new system will facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing across all departments, brands and regions. The EMEA intranet is the first step toward a much needed worldwide portal environment for the entire company.”



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About InterContinental Hotels Group

InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (IHG) is the world’s most global hotel company and the largest by number of rooms. The Group has more than 3,500 owned, leased, managed and franchised hotels and approximately 536,000 guest rooms across nearly 100 countries and territories.

IHG owns a portfolio of well-recognised and respected brands which include the Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, InterContinental Hotels and Resorts, Holiday Inn Express, Hotel Indigo, and the Staybridge and Candlewood Suites

www.ichotelsgroup.com

About Mediasurface
Mediasurface provide pioneering software that empowers the business user to build and manage sophisticated content driven websites.

Mediasurface software combines an interactive, graphical look and feel with industrial strength technology. Easy to use, business professionals can manage sites seamlessly, enabling authorised personnel to effortlessly update the content they ‘own’ without needing technically skilled web authors to craft HTML pages by hand.

Mediasurface helps organisations reduce the risks and costs involved in building and running websites and other digital channels. It increases their ability to keep pace with change and assures the quality of the content published – ultimately increasing the usefulness of these online resources.

An AIM listed company headquartered in Newbury, UK, Mediasurface products and services have been implemented to drive hundreds of web applications solutions for customers across Europe and the United States.

www.mediasurface.com

Press contact:
Kate Mackinder / Sean Fleming
Clarity Public Relations
Tel: 0870 950 9670
Email: press@claritypr.co.uk

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