With a lack of intranet, leading to an over-reliance on email and a document management system that wasn’t fit for purpose, Masterton District Council needed to advance their digital transformation by modernizing their communication and governance tools.
- Industry: Local government
- Country: New Zealand
- Company size: <250
Starting Point:
Masterton District Council had two key challenges with their IT solutions. Firstly, with no intranet, they had no “single source of truth” for distributing information to employees.
An over-reliance on email meant that important communications were being missed by some staff, making it hard to implement new ways of working, limiting the culture influence senior management could have over the organization.
Secondly, although the organization had recently adopted Microsoft 365 and planned to use SharePoint and Teams to replace their outdated document management system, they were still lacking effective governance, risking the inevitable sprawl of teams and sites.
Solution:
After joining the organization, Information Management Specialist Lindsay Wright set about advancing the organization’s digital transformation by carrying out a full information assessment of the council’s requirements. This kick-started a change management process which led him to Wellington-based Valo Partners Tranquil IT.
After seeing a demo of Valo Intranet and Valo Teamwork, Lindsay knew it was the right solution for them. Valo Intranet offered the easy-to-use, templated intranet the organization was looking for and in addition, Valo Teamwork offered the centralized governance required to manage Masterton DC’s workspaces.
Valo’s solutions also proved to be more cost-effective for the local government organization, which was operating on a tight budget with limited resources.
Benefits:
- Central communications hub provides consistency of information for all staff
- Easy-to-use templates take pressure off IT staff
- Simple, centralized control over workspaces
- Handy features including Quick Links for easy navigation
- Multilingual add-on feature automates translation into Māori language
Staff intranet provides centralized communication and information hub
As intranet newcomers, Masterton DC staff have benefitted hugely from the implementation of Valo. They now have an easy-to-use intranet, which acts as their default homepage, where they can keep up with all the latest news and information.
The Quick Links feature has proved to be one of the most popular features of the new intranet, allowing employees to quickly and easily access key documents.
People absolutely love Valo Intranet’s Quick Links. They’re quick launch pads to areas they use regularly, including all our policies, health & safety and IT requests. Having all that so easily accessible is really great.
Multilingual add-on feature promotes inclusivity
Valo’s multilingual add-on is another feature that Masterton DC has benefitted from, allowing the intranet to be automatically translated into Māori language te reo, promoting diversity and inclusivity within the organization.
During the development process, collaborative brainstorm sessions were held with staff to assist with naming the intranet. These were then shared with the Kaitakawaenga (mediator or arbitrator), and Policy Manager who offered their knowledge and assisted with translating to te reo.
Once that was completed, the council’s Kaumātua (a respected elder in the community) was consulted. The intranet was named TOHU, meaning “gathering and storing of information”.
Easy-to-use, templatized intranet takes pressure off IT resource
Working as a “team of one”, one of Lindsay’s priorities when adopting Valo was the ability to decentralize some of the workload. He was able hand over the publishing of content to the communications team thanks to Valo’s easy-to-use, templatized intranet.
Masterton DC’s employees were taught how to create a news page using Valo’s tool box, then a sign-off process was put in place for the comms team to review, edit, add images, then publish the content.
With Valo being a low code/no code product I’ve been able to decentralize parts of it, like the intranet, meaning that I have more time to concentrate on other things.
Flexible, iterative and quick to deploy, Valo Teamwork allows for continues improvement
Although Masterton DC is only at the beginning of its Valo digital transformation journey, the organization is already seeing improvements in governance thanks to Valo Teamwork.
As an experienced Microsoft365 professional, Lindsay is only too aware of how teams, sites and groups can get out of hand without appropriate controls. But with Valo Teamwork, he can now manage new workspaces centrally via the Teamwork dashboard. He also plans to use the platform for lifecycle management.
Taking only 12 weeks to deploy, Valo’s out-of-the-box, customizable solution is extensible, allowing for continuous development and improvement, one the reasons Lindsay chose the platform.
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Does your organization need to advance its digital transformation by modernizing its governance and communication tools? Then Valo’s flexible, customizable, out-of-the-box solutions could be for you.
Why not get in touch with our team and book a demo to see what Valo can do for your organization.
