Project Background: Deutsche Bank Berkshire Mortgage (DBBM) is a unit of Deutsche Bank's Global Real Estate Debt Markets Group that specializes in financing for multi-family housing. DBBM also provides a range of services including Fannie Mae DUS, Freddie Mac Program Plus, and FHA MAP Mortgage Insurance.

DBBM TODAY is the intranet site used to perform daily operational tasks, distributed communications, updates and collaboration. Deutsche Bank's acquisition of Berkshire Mortgage, revealed that disparate and competing offices scattered throughout North America could be prone to dissolving operationally and culturally. Consequently, DBBM's need for a better intranet became clear.

This solution needed to be easy to update, intuitive and aesthetically pleasing. DBBM's long term goals for the intranet include utilizing it as a key shared asset for all North American Real Estate.

The Solution

idfive successfully delivered an intranet solution that:

• Met corporate brand guidelines
• Surfaced DBBM's specific aesthetic objectives
• Organized information in a user-centric manner for optimal user friendliness;
• Allowed architecture to accept substantial additions
• Separated content, design and structure into modular components for easier future integration with a content management system
• Leveraged modular strategy to develop an intermediary distributed content management workflow useful for updates

The DBBM intranet is being used daily and has been praised for its cleanliness, expandability, and maintainability.

The Challenges

idfive encountered three main challenges with this project:

1. Brand compliance vs division identity: Where DB brand requirements differ with division branding goals, craft was necessary to reconcile brand adherence and divisional strategy. Since idfive is intimately familiar with the DB brand standards, we were able to listen to and design for DBBM's specific needs without risking brand violations.
2. Technical Architecture Governance by Corporate: DB Corporate allows divisions to use just about any tool that operates on a narrow technological band. idfive successfully navigated the corporate system to collect the technical requirements. In the end, the off-the-shelf tools available to perform distributed content management that met the corporate technical architecture and security requirements were cost prohibited. Despite these limitations, idfive addressed the immediate need while being mindful of DBBM's future intranet strategy.
3. Designing & Building for the Future, but Using it Today: The technical and financial constraints did not prevent idfive from recommending and implementing an information and structural architecture that seamlessly dovetails into a content management system. Meanwhile, idfive provided a palpable distributed content management workflow meeting the immediate DBBM need and implementing a design that will make the end result easier to achieve.