UKAD streamlines policy management with Xoralia
- Dan Hawtrey
UKAD is a government arms-length body (ALB) tasked with protecting and educating around clean sport in the UK.
UKAD’s 80 employees, and an additional field workforce of 300 Doping Control Officers (DCOs), make a critical contribution to both elite and grass-roots sport in the UK.
UKAD takes a three-pronged approach to protecting clean sport. We carry out education at the grassroots level about the risk of drugs use and its negative effects to drive prevention. Our operational side involves drug testing while our legal side is the final stage of catching drugs cheats.”
A critical reliance on policies and procedures
UKAD’s success relies on watertight policies and procedures.
There is so much policy and procedure to follow. Everything has to be done precisely and strictly because sometimes it ends in a legal case. If procedures aren’t followed, we have a problem."
UKAD is also an ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certified organisation so policies and procedures must be up to date and easily accessible. Procedures that impact information security must also be followed.
Our line of work is very sensitive and involves a lot of personal details and information. Information security is one of our top priorities when we're looking at quality assurance.”
Challenge: Policy reviews delays and bottlenecks
As the business owner of UKAD’s quality system, one of Sam Khogali’s main headaches has been getting policies quickly reviewed by UKAD’s directors, an essential step in the policy management process.
UKAD’s directors are always very busy and even attempts to get policies reviewed in a weekly director’s team meeting have proved difficult. This has meant that important policies have frequently been delayed by review bottlenecks and endless email chains.
We wanted a way to streamline the policy review process and avoid all that emailing backwards and forwards. We wanted to get to a point where myself as administrator knows exactly at which stage of the lifecycle each policy is at.”
Wasting valuable time
Khogali was also looking to find a policy management solution where automation could reduce time wasted on manual administration.
We wanted to automate reminders. I kept having to reach out to people to tell them that they need to review, update or send out things. I wasn’t able to focus on continual improvement with so much time taken up with reminders and nudges.”
Seamless integration with Microsoft 365 and SharePoint
The team decided to act. Having rejected the idea of building their own solution in-house, the team established a business case for acquiring a product that would transform the policy review process and free up time through automation. Any solution also needed to be easy to use and competitively priced.
One of the reasons Xoralia stood out was that it not only met UKAD’s functional requirements but also integrated effortlessly with SharePoint and UKAD’s Microsoft 365-powered digital workplace.
This not only meant users had seamless access to Xoralia, but it also reduced risk around the implementation.
Having Xoralia linked with SharePoint was one of the biggest things for us. In terms of migrating files there was no data risk in having to bring everything from one place across to another. Any existing documents could stay in their SharePoint library.”
Transforming policy reviews workflows
Perhaps the most impactful feature of Xoralia is the ability to set up review and approval workflows for new and existing policies.
Stakeholders in the process now get automated reminders and personalised views of what they need to do and when, while Khogali as administrator can instantly check on the status. No more policy reviews getting stuck in endless email threads.
Here, the flexibility of Xoralia and integration with Microsoft 365 have been key.
It was so useful that we were able to build custom workflows using Power Automate for different types of policies and for different teams. Everything was sent to the right people.”
The custom workflows have been particularly welcome for policy reviewers who only have to use the system very infrequently.
It's very easy for people to forget the process who then end up reaching out to me. With these custom workflows, we were able to say to people to just follow the process within Xoralia, it'll take you to the stages you need to for specific documents. That was really useful for us.”
Moving the needle on adoption and engagement
An immediate outcome from Xoralia has been better engagement and increased adoption from policy approvers and reviewers, simply through introducing automation and establishing transparency.
More policies are getting reviewed in the first instance just through the reminders. We've seen a massive uptick in people engaging with their policy reviews and the overall process.”
Changing perceptions of policy management for the better
One surprising outcome from using Xoralia has even been a shift in how staff perceive policy management, an activity many regarded as painful and potentially time-consuming.
Policy management had become this invisible task that people worried about and didn't know how much time and effort they had to put in. Now the visibility and transparency that Xoralia provides has reduced a lot of anxiety on our staff. Everybody can see exactly what they need to do and when around policy reviews and approvals.”
A system that is so easy to use
Some of this shift in views can also be attributed to Xoralia’s ease of use.
The general feedback has been people really enjoy using Xoralia. It's a lot easier and smoother and makes sense compared to the old process. One director even said she really enjoys the dopamine hit she gets when she's ticking off those notifications!”
Saving time to refocus on more strategic work
With Xoralia’s automated notifications and reporting now doing the heavy lifting around policy management administration, Khogali has been able gain hours and hours of time back.
Xoralia has massively reduced the hours spent having to reach out to people, chasing up on policies and checking where people are in the review cycle. It’s freed up a lot of time of my role to focus on more strategic and valuable matters.”
Looking to the future
Currently the team are considering extending the use some of other features of Xoralia, including the employee attestation feature. Currently UKAD staff acknowledge they have read and understood policies using another system.
Adding employee attestation into Xoralia will help support new employee onboarding and also ensure staff are aware of new policies or where there have been critical changes.
Positive benefits for the long-term
Reflecting on his experience so far, Sam Khogali is very pleased with Xoralia’s initial impact.
We're really happy with Xoralia. From what we've seen so far, it's going to have a real positive benefit for the organisation.”
The story behind Xoralia
Xoralia was built by the team at Content Formula, an intranet and digital workplace consultancy that has built SharePoint intranets for some of the world’s most famous companies. Now, most companies want their policies and procedures on the intranet but they don’t just want to store them there, they also want tools to help better manage them. Over the years we came across just about every single requirement for a policy management system. As this article above explains, there are gaps in SharePoint and so we never built what in our mind was the perfect policy management system.
However, one of our clients challenged us to build something for them that filled all the gaps but still used SharePoint at the back end. We had a great relationship with them and agreed to share the budget to do this, provided we could then market the solution to others. That was in 2019. We’re now on version 3 of Xoralia and the product has grown and evolved a lot.
3 benefits you can expect from Xoralia
Make it easy to find policies
Centralised policy library with powerful search and filtering
Reduce administrative burden
Automations and notifications so that all policy tasks are carried out on time
Demonstrate compliance and best practice
Sophisticated tracking and dashboards to drive and measure compliance.
And lots more!
What our clients say
AppSource review
A great time saver and tool for document management
We have found Xoralia to be very beneficial to us as it has allowed us to focus on other area’s as Xoralia will take care of who has read the documents and notify them if they have not. A great time saver and tool for document management all together.
Tim Galer
IT Coordinator
Hughes
Ideal partner for our regulated environment
LifeArc operates in a strictly regulated sector where compliance and information security are critical. It is essential that LifeArc’s workforce have easy and effortless access to the latest up-to-date policies and procedures, which is the structure Xoralia gave us.
Adam Lythgoe
IT Manager
LifeArc
How to get started with Xoralia
Step 1: request a demo
Fill out our form and we will be in touch to arrange a time. You can even book a time yourself.
Step 2: get a price proposal
If you think Xoralia is for you ask us for a quote. This will set out any options you may have.
Step 3: install and launch
We’ll install Xoralia in your environment (or you can do it yourself). We’ll provide training and support to get you up and running quickly
Here's what you'll get
-
Central policy library
-
Search and filter tools
-
Mandatory read policies with attestations
-
Quizzes
-
Notifications and alerts
-
Employee dashboard
-
Line manager dashboard
-
Works on mobile, in Teams and SharePoint
-
New policy creation workflows
-
Policy update workflows
-
Review and approval gates
-
Policy version history
-
Compliance dashboard
-
Audit trail
-
Full reporting
And last but not least:
-
Professional implementation service and support
-
Evergreen software – frequent updates and improvements
-
Comes with our "it just works" support warranty – we’ll fix any bugs, often before you even notice
Ready to get started?
Connect with us to streamline your policy management and ensure effortless compliance.
AppSource review
Uniting excellence in integration and features for seamless policy management
As the newly appointed IT Manager at our company, I was tasked with implementing the Xoralia policy management tool, and the experience has been nothing short of impressive.
Rian Stuart
IT Manager
TwinStream
