5 min
6 things Nordic Consulting learned from modernizing its intranet
There’s never a perfect time to begin implementing any big changes to your organization. But with employees relying so heavily on their intranet, keeping your investment up to date is key.
Picking the right moment is crucial and the questions don’t end there. How will the old intranet be maintained during the switch? And how will that switch be communicated to staff?
Just ask Dawn Hancock, Nordic Consulting's Senior Director of Knowledge Management & Internal Communications, who recently won DWG's Digital Workplace Leader Award. Dawn recently grappled with these decisions, as she prepared to revamp the intranet and knowledge-sharing platforms that keep the healthcare consultancy's global team of 1,600+ connected.
Dawn joined Beezy to discuss the process of building NordicHQ and share her insights on ensuring a successful switch. You can watch the webinar in full here, or read the key takeaways below:
1. Face up to your existing intranet's weaknesses
This is the hard part. But it’s essential that you understand the gaps that need filling before you start looking at new digital workplace solutions.
Nordic’s mission is to empower healthcare systems to leverage digital transformation in order to achieve better outcomes. The way they see it, healthier systems equal healthier businesses and people. With 500+ clients dotted around the globe and offices in the US, Canada and across Europe, Nordic’s people-first approach has earned them an impressive reputation – but their own tech had room to grow.
Nordic's existing intranet was outdated, with limited opportunities for knowledge sharing and a lack of global connectivity. Without a centralized platform for all things Nordic, employees were wasting valuable time looking for the information they needed to do their jobs.
2. Make a clear business case for the upgrade
Dawn knew she would need to make a compelling argument for updating Nordic’s intranet. So she crunched the numbers and figured out how much those lost hours spent tracking down important information were actually costing the organization.
Dawn also knew that to fix one issue, Nordic would need to fix all of them. Her experiences over the last decade had taught her that treating intranet and knowledge management platforms as two separate systems actually tended to make both platforms less effective. With this in mind, Dawn built out the business case for a single solution that would improve collaboration, internal communications, and knowledge management.
3. Decide how you'll measure your success
Beginning with such concrete aims allowed Dawn to define clear KPIs by which Nordic could measure the success of their new investment. These will be vastly different for every organization – but it’s always a good idea to consult key stakeholders at this point. Not only will they be able to offer invaluable insights into how employees at all levels are actually using their intranet, but the sooner you bring them in, the more likely they are to become champions for the new platform.
4. Choose the content you want to go live with...
No matter how great your shiny new intranet looks, or how many exciting new features you pack it with, if it doesn’t house enough quality content, your people won’t be visiting again in a hurry. Talk to stakeholders around your organization about what they’d like to see on the new intranet – and be prepared for the answer to essentially be ‘loads!’ Dawn says Nordic “did a ton of work but also had a ton of fun” in the lead-up to their launch.
In the end, they went live with 150+ pages of content, 28 mini-sites, 60+ Stories and 20+ Communities. Rather than simply announcing the new intranet over an easy-to-miss email, they ran a live event for the whole company.
5. ...and then update it often
Of course, all that content is a great start, but to ensure the long-term success of your intranet and keep people engaged, it needs to be updated often. Nordic added a further 19 new pages, 3 new mini-sites and 7 new Communities in the first month. They also ran 4 live training sessions to ensure people were able to confidently enjoy all aspects of the new platform.
6. Find the right partner
Before choosing Beezy to build Nordic’s new intranet, Dawn spent months meeting with over 30 intranet vendors. It was Beezy’s ability to offer one, central solution and our shared passion for using technology to improve real-life outcomes that convinced her that we were the right partner for this project.
Today, Dawn says she couldn’t imagine building NordicHQ on any other platform: “Beezy really made this happen in a gorgeous, well-organized and user-friendly way. It’s been a blast, honestly.”
Learn more about why now's the time to modernize your company intranet.
