Intranet implementation with conceptual guidance and targeted enablement

From Bulletin Board to Digital Home

As part of a collaborative project, we supported our client in the initial rollout of a modern intranet based on the Just Social platform—from strategic planning through to a successful go-live. Our focus was on providing conceptual guidance and empowering the internal project team: In joint workshops, we identified the appropriate use case for each intranet feature and ensured that the new platform offers real, tangible added value for all stakeholders.

CHALLENGE

Until now, the client had no centralized digital communication platform. Important information was shared via email, bulletin board postings, printed materials, or verbally: a decentralized approach that was difficult to track and reliant on individuals to act as information intermediaries. By deciding to implement a modern intranet, the company was thus facing not only a technical transformation but also a fundamental shift in communication.

The central challenge was to design this transformation in a way that would work for everyone involved: The internal project team had to be able to confidently manage the rollout. Employees, accustomed to mostly analog channels of communication, had to be actively engaged—in their own language and through formats that fit their daily lives. And for every single feature of the platform, a clear connection had to be established to the company’s day-to-day reality.

SOLUTION

From the very beginning, we involved the project team in the implementation as an active partner—not as an external service provider delivering solutions, but as a collaborator working alongside the team to develop the right answers. At the heart of our collaboration were structured workshops in which we systematically identified the specific challenges for each feature and translated them into tailored concepts:

·       Feature-specific needs analysis in workshops: For each intranet feature—from news channels to relevant wiki articles and manuals to document sections—we jointly analyzed which existing communication channels should be replaced or supplemented, which target groups were affected, and how to ensure a successful transition. This resulted in a concrete, use-case-specific solution for each feature.

·       Conceptual support during implementation: We were actively involved in the implementation and ensured that technical configuration decisions—channels and content, user information, roles, and permissions—were not made in the abstract, but were always aligned with the client’s real-world usage scenarios.

·       Empowering the project team: Through targeted knowledge and skills transfer, we empowered the team to independently manage, maintain, and further develop the platform.

  Target-Audience-Specific Change Communication: The communication measures throughout all project phases were based on proven best practices, which we consistently adapted to the language, media habits, and information needs of the respective target audiences—from awareness-raising communication prior to go-live to actively encouraging usage afterward.

BENEFITS

What used to have to be done via email, bulletin boards, and verbal announcements now has a digital home. The client now has a central platform that structures communication, knowledge, and collaboration and makes them accessible in the long term. The internal project team has not only implemented a platform but has also built the expertise to further develop it independently. Thanks to workshop-based feature development, the platform is not a generic tool but a solution tailored to the company’s specific needs.

ABOUT THE PROJECT

The project involved the initial implementation of the Just Social intranet platform at a medium-sized client that previously had no digital internal communication platform. Our contribution involved helping to design the implementation strategy and empowering the project team—through joint workshops, ongoing consulting throughout each phase, and tailoring all change initiatives to the specific target audience. The result is an intranet that was not only technically implemented but has also been actively used from the very beginning.