Case | Falu municipality
Falu municipality combines Sitevision and Office 365
With their new intranet, Falu Municipality wanted to create a relevant starting point that empowers their employees. The combination of Sitevision and Office 365 now forms the hub of their digital workplace.
Background and challenge
The previous intranet was old and difficult to use. Users found it difficult to determine whether the information was up-to-date, and you had to email a colleague to ask.
– The intranet was also not responsive or had a good search, and it did not help to make us efficient," says Niclas Söderberg, communications officer at Falu Municipality, who has been involved in the intranet project since the start.
Solution
Relevant intranet based on users' needs
Falu Municipality set up a project group with the aim of creating an intranet that was easy to use, easily displayed what you were looking for, and was a culture carrier that promoted togetherness within the municipality. From the impact assessment, it also became clear that the intranet should be a relevant starting point for the working day: a place that empowered employees with reliable information and efficient services.
They wanted to take advantage of the opportunities for personalisation, and much of the flow on the home page is tailored to the individual user and their work group, role and interests. This makes the organisation's communication more efficient, and it becomes easier for both the person providing the information and the person accessing it. Nowadays, users can also interact with colleagues in other administrations in different interest groups, making it easier for employees to continue to develop and to create a sense of 'we' in the organisation.
– Reliable information and efficient ways of finding what is important will save us a lot of time. In addition, this enables new ways of working in the form of strengthening cooperation between people or between departments," says Nina Eriksson, also a communicator at Falu Municipality and the driving force behind the intranet project.
Digital workplace with powerful solutions
The intranet platform chosen was a combination of Sitevision and Office 365. From a purely aesthetic point of view, this is a relatively big change for users, but on the other hand, the tool brings together all the programs and systems that users need to access in a simple way.
When you work in a municipality, you need to check your email every working day or have someone else do it. If you have received an email, you can now see it directly in the intranet, as well as various calendar events.
– What is so amazing to see is how easy it has been to integrate Sitevision with Office 365 and other systems. It is lightning fast from the time the email arrives in the Outlook inbox until Sitevision shows it in the intranet! For those who receive very few emails, it can be a good reason to go into the intranet every day and see if there are new emails, says Niclas Söderberg.
At the end of the year, the reference group was shown a demo of the intranet, and after the New Year they held the first training session for their editors.
The result
Integrating the intranet into daily work
The new intranet is both a new platform and a change in working practices. It is a journey of change that the whole organisation needs to be involved in, which is why workshops were held to define what a digital workplace is and what role the intranet should play. In the final phase of the project, a guide was distributed on the internal communication tools and changes in working practices needed to achieve a truly digital workplace.
Throughout the project, there was support from senior management, and at the end of the project, Niclas and Nina were able to present the new intranet to the municipal director's management team. Now everyone is expected to use the new tool.
– We believe that an important part is to get the management and all managers on board. Without that support, no one else will access the intranet or the digital workplace either, says Nina Eriksson.