How Burns & McDonnell Uses Analytics to Shape Employee Experience
Success Highlights
Unified analytics across Microsoft 365 to guide intranet and community decisions
Long-term visibility that helps teams turn trends and comparisons into everyday decisions
Evidence-based improvements on user experience and content design
Search insights that validate employee intent and strengthen governance conversations
Location Kansas City, Missouri
Industry Engineering
Platform Microsoft 365
Critical Needs
- A holistic, organization-wide view of engagement across SharePoint and Viva Engage
- Historical context and flexible time-range comparisons to understand what is working and why
- Page- and journey-level signals to inform design, navigation, and content priorities
- Actionable search intelligence to surface employee needs and resolve issues quickly
The Challenge
As Burns & McDonnell’s digital workplace expanded, the communications team needed more than high-level metrics to manage an enterprise intranet and thriving employee communities. They were using out-of-the-box analytics that offered snapshots rather than the full story, with limited historical windows and community-by-community views, and few ways to translate activity into action.
As Marjie Goodman, associate communications strategist at Burns & McDonnell, explains: “I need to see holistically how our company is using our digital platforms but also get granular when supporting our content creators.”
Without that unified view, decisions about homepage elements, navigation, and content placement often came down to opinion. The team also lacked the search intelligence needed to confirm employee intent or identify issues before they escalated.
After nearly 20 years in this space, I never thought I’d have access to analytics like this. It goes beyond what I even thought I could get."
Burns & McDonnell
The AvePoint Solution
Burns & McDonnell implemented AvePoint tyGraph to centralize analytics across SharePoint and Viva Engage while retaining historical data for meaningful comparisons. With AvePoint, the team can establish clear baselines, compare any time ranges, and drill into the dimensions that matter most — by audience, community, or location.
The team also embraced evidence-based design. Page- and link-level signals made it easier to retire underperforming elements and elevate what helps employees most.
“The data gives us the confidence to remove what isn’t working, and the clarity to explain why,” Marjie explains.
With nearly 100,000 searches each month, tyGraph’s search insights became a shared foundation for conversations with governance and content owners — providing clear proof of employee demand that shapes priorities across the organization.
Outcomes
With AvePoint, Burns & McDonnell gains a clear view of what’s happening across its digital workplace, without assembling fragmented engagement reports. A single analytics foundation brings together pages, search, navigation, and clicks, replacing guesswork with facts.
The result is a crisper intranet experience, quicker resolutions, and decisions rooted in how employees actually work.
“After nearly 20 years in this space, I never thought I’d have access to analytics like this,” Marjie says. “It goes beyond what I even thought I could get."
The Road Ahead
Burns & McDonnell is building on this foundation by broadening visibility, elevating the employee experience, and accelerating evidence-based decision-making. The team is focused on scaling insights to more stakeholders, strengthening alignment across communications and governance, and continuing to evolve its digital workplace with data at the core.
With a shared source of truth, the organization anticipates fewer debates, faster alignment, and a better employee experience.
"Improvement starts with a baseline,” Marjie says. “Without data, you can’t know what’s working — or what isn’t. That’s where AvePoint brings the clarity we need.”