Liverpool City Council in Sydney, Australia needed better internal communications to reach their 17 council sites and all their offsite/ remote council workers: Valo Intranet answered their specific requirements and provided them with a flexible solution they enjoy using!
- Industry: Government
- Country: Australia
- Company Size: >1,000
Starting Point:
Daniel Lavorato, Digital Services and Design Coordinator, joined Liverpool City Council in 2018 and was almost immediately put to the task of pivoting their internal communications and upgrading their intranet. He points out that previously, the council was extremely siloed and their previous intranet “for the longest time wasn’t really being used across council” despite general agreement that internal communications was very important.
Solution:
The council put their intranet needs to tender and Valo’s partner at Nexon Asia Pacific, answered the call. Nexon’s Business Development Director, Ben Granger-Holcombe, proposed that Valo’s cloud-based Modern Intranet could answer the Council’s needs: make it easy to search and find internal Council documents, limit internal emails blocking inboxes, create centralised comms and improve remote employee outreach, gather and disseminate departmental news without technical knowledge, and above all, provide a high level of intranet security and governance.
Benefits:
- Council specific branding options
- Ease of content creation
- No SharePoint technical skills required
- Visually appealing for widespread uptake across Council
- Advanced and extendable search capabilities
- Centralised announcements almost eliminating internal emails
Valo’s Powerful Search Capabilities For Council
Prior to the Liverpool City Council’s intranet upgrade, one of the biggest disruptors across the organisation was the search for the right documents, when and where they were needed. As is common to all government and council institutions, Liverpool City Council has an extensive library of policies, forms, standards and procedures. So it was important to the IT team that not only would their new intranet have advanced search capabilities, but that people in the organisation could search for what they needed in multiple ways.
That’s why one of the most successful aspects of their new Intranet, according to Lavorato, is the powerful search capabilities. Valo Intranet’s powerful search and web part modules enable free search, or highly refined click search capabilities.
…people think about how to access forms and different documents differently… so we got a lot of use out of the Valo tags, a lot of the refiners… so there’s multiple ways to access the same information.
Valo Cloud Intranet Security and Governance
The Liverpool City Council needed their new intranet to be accessible from the 17 office sites across the Council area, but also accessible remotely, offsite through employee mobile devices. They needed a central location where they could disseminate communications and updates quickly across the entire council network. The obvious solution was to adopt a mobile friendly, cloud-based intranet, but the problem remained that, being a government organisation, security was of utmost importance.
In this case, the high cloud security was another main reason Valo Intranet was chosen. As Ben Granger-Holcombe points out:
Having all of your information there in the cloud, it’s pretty obvious to say, but that whole security governance and compliance piece is key. And that’s something that a modern intranet really needs to deliver as much as the pretty, easy access piece…
Valo Enabling Decentralised Content Production
Another big advantage was how easy it is to create and upload professional-looking, company branded content. Valo’s intranet freed the IT department from one of their most odious and time-consuming tasks: curating and uploading content for the entire organisation to the internal intranet.
In fact, the new intranet also freed up the Council’s communications team as well:
Prior to this, news distribution was a big challenge. The communications team would have to seek out that news and then would take the news, which would come from the communications team. This way, the news comes directly from the source. Which is a really big benefit for the organisation. So that’s a really big change that’s happened through this technology…
Easy Jump From Microsoft Tools
But how did the adoption process pan out? Daniel Lavorato elaborates that it wasn’t a difficult process because the council workers were already using and familiar with other Microsoft based tools, such as Yammer. He elaborated that the widespread adoption across the council’s extended workforce was made easier because of Valo’s user-friendly interface, powerful search capabilities and visual appeal.
And the results? The staff at Liverpool City Council love their new intranet! It’s handy, helpful and gives them the freedom to work more efficiently from anywhere – even from home:
The new intranet is easy to navigate and a valuable resource. I have found it so handy and a great way to stay connected and informed especially when working from home.
And …
Easy and intuitive .. Unlike so many others I’ve had to use, Valo Intranet helps me find what I’m looking for without raising my blood pressure.
And even…
It can be quite handy to look up people if you need something in particular that aren’t sure who to go to or other bits and pieces such as projects or org charts.
It’s improved a lot I think this new upgraded one…easier to find things.
Although the intranet only deployed in February 2020 this year, in just a few short months it has already proven itself invaluable in disseminating the Council’s Covid-19 Responses, Work-from-Home tools and crisis communications. In fact, the adoption has been so successful across the organisation, there are already plans to add on even more capabilities and workplace integrations!
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