Keyera builds a ‘pipeline’ for sharing information and expertise

Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Keyera is one of the largest independent midstream gas companies in Canada. It offers natural gas gathering and processing, as well as fractionation, storage and transportation of natural gas liquids through 16 plants and more than 3,400 km of pipeline. In addition, the company markets and sells liquids, including propane, butane and condensate, to customers throughout Canada and the United States. With approximately 750 employees, Keyera is a key link between North American upstream and downstream oil and gas companies. Net earnings in 2011 were CAD135.2 million.

Challenge
Keyera employees are widely separated by geography. Roughly one – fifth of them work at headquarters. The rest are dispersed among 16 gas plants. Each location has its own priorities, issues and means of communicating with other parts of the organization. The main tools were IBM® Lotus Notes software for email and a company intranet for sharing human resources and other administrative information. “Our intranet site was really more like a shared folder where we could hunt for PDF documents. There was no interactive content,” says Sarah Wilson, communications manager at Keyera.

Keyera executives wanted to create better alignment between headquarters and the field, and among field offices and business units, by making it easier for employees to engage as part of the larger Keyera community. The goal was to provide ready access to current information about what was happing across the company and help employees share knowledge and interact with peers in other operational areas.

Solution
Working with IBM and IBM Business Partner Allegro Associates, Keyera deployed IBM Connections software. First, the project team moved the corporate directory and relevant information from the existing intranet to the Connections platform. Then it created an online community for each facility and corporate department. In addition, the team set up communities around more than 40 of the company’s largest customers to enable information exchange about key accounts or projects. The objectives of this seeding effort were to facilitate training, provide a place to start and help generate ideas for contributing content. People didn’t have to work from a blank slate.

Keyera established minimal guidelines for use and engaged Allegro Associates to provide training and support to staff on the three security models within Connections software for customizing access to communities, wikis, activities and blogs. “We wanted Connections to be not only a place for corporate information but also a place for the ‘water cooler’ chat people like and that is the essence of a corporate culture," says Wilson.

Within six months of deployment, Keyera employees were putting Connections software to work. For example, the IT business analyst group created an OnBase community where they post training manuals. If there are changes, the manual owner can go in and make edits so the most updated content is available immediately. In addition, the company used Connections software to project manage the opening of a new field office.

Benefits
· Improves access to information and expertise with around 15 percent of workers adding content and more than 50 percent accessing content regularly
· Helps ensure timely dissemination of critical safety policies and checks
· Streamlines IT project management and training material updates

For more information
To learn more about IBM Connections software for social collaboration, please contact your IBM marketing representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit the following website: ibm.com/software/products/us/en/scol