Rehmann, a professional advisory services firm, transformed their employee directory from outdated SharePoint searches to a seamless people search, achieving 54% growth in weekly active users in just 6 months. Their mission is to bring energy, focus, and integrity to every interaction — relentlessly pursuing expertise to accelerate their clients’ and associates’ goals. Discover how they unified siloed HR systems to help their CEO connect with teams.
Before Sift
Rehmann began 85 years ago as an accounting firm and has since transformed into a professional advisory firm that provides accounting and assurance, business solutions and outsourcing, specialized consulting, and wealth management services.
Based in Michigan and with an increasing number of offices in Ohio and Florida, they have recently taken advantage of hybrid work as well. As a result, it has become more difficult to put names to faces which is something the CEO is passionate about.
Rehmann was reliant on SharePoint’s search functionality to find colleagues. The search function in SharePoint often displayed outdated information due to a delayed and inconsistent updating schedule.
The CEO wanted to "put names to faces" and foster personal connections during her visits to different offices, but SharePoint frequently failed to display associate pictures, hindering this goal.
SharePoint's search was not granular enough, making it difficult to find people by specific departments (e.g., Human Resources, Finance, Marketing, which were often generically labeled as "administrative") or office locations without pulling up irrelevant data.
“I can pull that data in, combine them, and for the first time ever, be able to search, who is in the Human Resources department that I can reach out to.”
Rehmann looked at other vendors like OneDirectory, but ultimately chose Sift as we stood out amongst the crowd for providing:
- External Data Source Integrations: Sift's ability to pull and combine data from multiple sources (like Active Directory, Microsoft 365, and UKG) was a "huge" advantage. Austin Greca, Rehmann's Manager of Data Automation and Intelligence stated, “I can pull that data in, combine them, and for the first time in I think ever, be able to search, who is in the Human Resources department that I can reach out to.” This was critical for Rehmann to get accurate department and other team member information from siloed systems.
- Tighter Security: Sift offers SOC II Type 2 compliance, which is something OneDirectoy doesn’t offer. This amongst other security measures put Sift ahead of OneDirectory when it came to meeting Rehmann's security risk review.
- Geographical Location and Support: Sift is based in Michigan, which provided local support and aligned with Rehmann's preference to keep their data and vendors within the US.
Integrating Sift
"Setting up Sift’s external data sync was a breeze."
The implementation of Sift at Rehmann was very simple, smooth, and without any significant hiccups. Austin jokingly mentioned that he intentionally tries to "break things on purpose" with new vendors but found few ways to do so with Sift.
Key aspects of the implementation included:
- Responsiveness of Support: Sift's team was "super responsive" and able to quickly fix any minor issues that arose, such as clearing things out when new fields were added and data refreshed.
- Ease of Setup: “Setting up Sift’s external data sync was a breeze." Sift allows data from several different sources like Azure AD, Microsoft 365, and UKG to easily populate people’s profiles.
- Automated User Creation: Rehmann opted to auto-create user profiles through Active Directory sync rather than inviting people individually or having them fill in profiles manually.
- Post-Launch Activities: After launching, Rehmann engaged in efforts to increase adoption, including:
- Lunch and Learns: Austin conducted lunch and learn sessions with various teams, particularly those in "enterprise service" or "Rehmann corporate services," who frequently collaborate cross-functionally and benefit from understanding the organizational structure.
- Firm-wide News Webinars: Sift was promoted in a monthly internal news webinar, which included a quick demo. This led to a "big spike" in usage right after, with people checking their data and filling in profiles.
- SharePoint Entry Points: They added Sift's search button to their main intranet homepage in SharePoint to make it easily accessible.
- Internal Rebranding for user stickiness: Sift was internally rebranded as "RPeople" (Rehmann People; sounds like "our people"), which Austin Greca hears being used all over the place, indicating successful adoption of the new name and increased engagement.
- Integration with New Hire Training (Planned): A significant future plan is to incorporate Sift into new hire training, providing new associates with a valuable resource to find people within the firm from the outset.
- Redirecting Old SharePoint Tools (Planned): Rehmann aims to redirect users from their old SharePoint directory tools directly to Sift, making Sift the natural place to go for people's information.
Overall, the implementation was a positive experience, with Austin stating, "I don't have a negative thing to say at all about the experience we had. It was great." Rehmann was set for a relatively quick launch to start off 2025 on the right foot.
Using Sift
Since its launch in January 2025, Sift has been appreciated by users for its intuitive navigation and powerful search features. Since they launched in January 2025, their monthly active users (MAU) have grown by 45%, with an average of 408 users utilizing the platform. The implementation of Sift yielded several benefits:
By providing a platform for informal interactions and shared interests, Sift helped Rehmann maintain and strengthen its unique company culture, even with a distributed workforce. Featuring
new hires, birthdays, and anniversaries on the homepage fosters connections and highlights employees for recognition. Additionally, name pronunciations help prevent the awkwardness of mispronouncing someone's name.
Employees are now empowered to find colleagues faster and advance their tasks, thanks to an improved search function. This intuitive tool allows them to easily understand who to reach out to, and what someone does at the organization.
Austin finds the administrative features, such as turning on and off homepage widgets, to be very quick and flexible. “It’s very easy for me to turn on homepage widgets, and if you don’t want to display it, you can turn it off…it’s got a lot of flexibility.”
Austin enjoys the analytics, particularly the "slicing and dicing" capabilities, to observe growth and changes within the company. The org chart has also been great to get a high level view of who reports to who while being easily navigable.
Rehmann aims to further enhance cross-functional team identification, specifically by leveraging features like "What I do here" and "
Reach out to me for" on the Profile to increase the discoverability of groups and individuals. Austin points out that they have a new advisory council team, and while they're not officially tied to a specific department in any system, they're really keen on getting the word out about what they offer and resources they can provide the company. Features like this will be a great boon for increasing informal team awareness at Rehmann.
Rehmann's successful Sift integration demonstrates how prioritizing connectivity, information access, and collaboration can help hybrid workforces overcome challenges and achieve new levels of engagement.
Overall, Sift is viewed as a significant improvement over their previous solution, effectively addressing the need for accurate, easily searchable, and visually engaging employee information, fostering better connections within the organization.
