Confluence

Case Study Telenor

Telenor
Headquarters
Fornebu, Norway
Industry
Telecommunications
# of employees
20,190
# of Confluence spaces
12
# of Confluence pages
1,044

Telenor is the largest telecommunication services provider in Norway with more than 20,000 employees. Burgeoning mobile operations have positioned Telenor as an international player in the industry.

The software development team headed up by Paul Rene Jørgensen manages up to 10–15 development projects at any one time. Timely communication and knowledge sharing across projects is vital.

The company had been using a proprietary portal but required a relatively high level of technical expertise to use the system; it remained under-utilised by staff. Furthermore, the organisation's document management system was a counter productive tool, where adding a simple Microsoft Word® document required lengthy keyword registration for important terms and categories, stifling adoption and usage.

Why Confluence?

  • Confluence was quickly grasped by all staff members in the team.
  • Confluence's capability as an information sharing tool meant that the team could immediately replace their department's existing portal.
  • Confluence was web-based and could be used with any browser.
  • Telenor examined many products but decisive factors for choosing Confluence lay in the professional support from Atlassian, the rapid implementation of new features and the highly practical ease-of-use, setting it apart from its competitors.

"Confluence immediately lowered the entry level of technical expertise — allowing more people to use a knowledge management system. Any new tool requires some degree of training and guidance before staff catch on, but Confluence was so easy and intuitive that it took off in no time", explains Paul Rene Jørgensen, Software Development Manager at Telenor.

"We've been able to customise Confluence to meet our specific needs for knowledge sharing across departments. We now have better collaboration across all projects and the business is significantly more efficient." Paul Rene Jørgensen, Software Development Manager
 

The Solution: Confluence Enterprise

The flexibility of Confluence has to be seen to be believed, as Jørgenson notes, "when we tested the trial version of Confluence, we could see there were endless possibilities for customisation." When you consider that Confluence allows you to easily manage multiple wikis (or spaces as they are referred to within Confluence), add a blog in seconds and customise anything from space security to look and feel, you can begin to understand what Jørgenson is referring to.

Confluence's 'watch' feature, which alerts subscribers via email of any changes or additions that have been made to a page or discussion space, was particularly popular. As email is such a familiar format for most people, it also provides an accelerated migration path for new Confluence users. Jørgensen adds, "We have started using Confluence as a news service. Any items relating to our work goes into an RSS feed, where we broadcast the latest details about new code and other production features of the day or week."

Each Confluence commercial license includes access to the product's source code (under a developer license). This is another reason why Jørgensen has "been able to customise the product in ways to suit Telenor."

The Results

Jørgensen cites improved communication across the board as the major achievement Confluence has brought to Telenor's software development teams. The entire team quickly embraced Confluence and their positive experience led to Confluence being adopted by related business groups throughout Telenor.

Jørgensen has also been able to leverage Confluence's open architecture to take advantage of Telenor's investments in their existing document management system.

"It has been a great relief using Confluence; to get information in and out of our company system so quickly," Jørgensen concluded.

Telenor now consistently use Confluence for sharing information, documenting tasks, minutes from meetings and following up on projects in progress. Jørgensen believes he has become at least 30 per cent more time effective in his role at Telenor, due to improving the way he works and collaborates across his team and with other departments. Why can't Confluence do the same for you and your team?

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