After a recent separation from its parent company, Staples Solutions needed a new, multilingual intranet to support its multi-national staff, and to facilitate collaboration between colleagues across the regions.
- Industry: Consumer Goods
- Country: Netherlands
- Company Size: 1001 – 5 000 users
Starting point:
Staples Solutions had recently separated from its parent company, after a company-wide restructure, and was looking for a new intranet solution to serve its international, multi-lingual workforce, 60% of which communicate in their native language.
They also wanted to introduce a new intranet that reflected the modern way people communicate, so user experience was a top priority for them.
Solution:
Valo’s Premium Partner Portiva recommended Valo Intranet, built on Office 365, because of its “easy to use, intuitive design”, which encourages collaborative working.
Benefits:
- Valo Intranet naturally integrates with Microsoft Office 365
- A complete solution, offering a modern user experience
- A one-stop-shop for all company information
- Multilingual intranet platform, serving employees in 14 countries in their native language
- Mobile and desktop friendly
New intranet for newly independent company
Staples Solutions had a choice: duplicate the largely out-date intranet its former parent company was using, or find a new, modern solution, which offered fantastic user experience for its staff.
It opted for the latter.
Messalina Tiro, head of internal communications, said the former intranet was only being used by the head office, mainly “to store files, but not to share news”.
Another reason the old intranet had not been widely used, was because it wasn’t multilingual, she added.
Intuitive user experience
Staples knew that they wanted their new intranet platform to be intuitive to use, akin to the digital platforms colleagues are used to using outside of work.
Messalina suggests this is because people nowadays are “very spoiled” when it comes to their online user experience, especially in a B2C setting. Therefore they wanted to provide their teams with an intranet that was more sophisticated than traditional platforms.
On recommendation from Portiva, they chose Valo Intranet, based on Office 365, because it looks “beautiful, is intuitive and it’s easy to use”.
A central resource
Staples wanted to use the new intranet to bring all its people, spread across 15 European locations, together and to keep everyone aligned.
And Messalina had a clear mission.
I wanted everyone to have the information they needed to help our customers, so that we can sell and grow. It was important that the new intranet could act like a resource tool, to keep relevant information centrally.
Since introducing Valo Intranet, colleagues have reported that they’re now able to find the information they need quickly from one place. Valo Intranet has made it easier for the staff to work collaboratively together.
Local news in native language
The newly independent international company, of which 60% of its employees communicate in their native language, needed a new multi-lingual platform that all its staff could use it.
Since Valo Intranet launched, each country now carries content in their native language. When head office publishes a news item, local administrators translate it and publish it on their local site easily, thanks to the multilingual feature.
They can now also set up their own messages, so that all sites show a mix of company-wide and local news.
Bringing the champions together
Organizing the adoption of, and training on, a new intranet in an international, multilingual company can be quite a challenge.
But, in collaboration with Portiva, Staples overcame this by setting up ‘superusers’ in each country, who were given training and information over three days, so that they could spread their knowledge locally.
They paid special attention to training staff in how to use the new intranet, to ensure that people were not overwhelmed by the changes being made.
They created posters, and collaborated with other departments to get as much attention and support as possible.
We are pleased with how quickly our sales team have adopted the new intranet, and are now using it as a one-stop-shop for all the information they need in the sales process.
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Are you looking for an easy-to-use intranet solution for your multilingual organization? Valo Intranet supports over 20 languages and with our multilingual feature, news can be quickly translated to local languages. Book a demo with us and we will show you how it works!
