A new platform to connect 5 divisions
Informa is an international business intelligence, publishing and events company, and a constituent of the FTSE 100. With 7,500 colleagues working in one of five business divisions - Academic Publishing, Business Intelligence, Global Exhibitions, Knowledge & Networking and Global Support – in locations from Sydney to São Paulo, the goal was to create a new digital workspace that would increase collaboration and the use of technology, improve the two- way-flow of communication and bring people together.
"Colleagues told us they wanted more opportunities to participate in the life of the company and engage with each other, as well as tools that would help their everyday work."
A platform to kick-start Office 365 adoption
With the company pursuing a long-term international growth strategy, the new platform had to be scalable and adaptable to business change and expansion.
Office 365 had already been implemented to provide centrally managed cloud-based technology throughout the business, but awareness was low and adoption of some of the tools adhoc. A Unily intranet was chosen to leverage this investment in the Office 365 technology stack and as an opportunity to re-introduce these tools at the same time as delivering an improved single intranet platform that could serve the entire group.
By combining Unily’s standard functionality with intelligent customizations and integrations, Informa has created an intranet that is driving the Group towards greater Office 365 adoption, fostering new communities and transforming how knowledge flows through the organization.
The new solution would deliver:
- Intelligent Information Architecture to organize a multitude of information
- Unique sites to make tools and tasks easier to complete Integration with vacancy tools to bring the digital workplace together
- Social and interactive capabilities to drive engagement
- Highly personalized and targeted communications to ensure relevancy
Intelligent IA to organize a multitude of information
With five international divisions coming onto a single platform for the first time, an intelligent information architecture was crucial for ensuring Informa’s colleagues could still find the information they needed in this new world, without information overload. Informa took Unily’s standard navigation and adapted it to bring information to the forefront of the intranet while minimizing page layers. The main navigation is split into 5 core sections, with Communities, Essentials and My Informa expanding to reveal several organized Workspaces that link to both interactive and information- only pages that are relevant to the user. For example, any user can quickly and easily navigate to the global Human Resources page underneath Essentials, which then provides links to documents, tools and contacts split by region.
Social and interactive capabilities to drive engagement
One of the drivers behind Informa’s choice of intranet platform was the opportunity to provide colleagues with better social and interactive tools and encourage their use, as a way of enhancing participation in the life of the company and supporting a culture of collaboration.
Yammer is integrated across Informa’s intranet. Various types of content are used to engage colleagues, including video, images and short form posts, and colleagues are also encouraged to create and share their own views and content.
Portal was used extensively to amplify the Group’s annual internal Awards ceremony. A live stream from the event featured on the homepage, with supporting news articles front and center. A dedicated Community and Yammer Group was created so everyone, in any location, could participate and engage by watching, responding to wins, joining conversations, asking questions and connecting with each other in real-time as the event took place.
Integration with vacancy tools to bring the digital workplace together
Before the new intranet, Informa managed internal vacancies on 5 separate tools for each division, making it hard for colleagues to get a single view of the internal careers opportunities open to them. To make this task simpler and support talent retention, all 5 vacancy feeds were combined on Portal on a single interface that matches the look and feel of the rest of the intranet. Users can visit this page to view every role across the organization, with the ability to search by division, sectors and closing date. This is one of the most popular pages on the new intranet and following feedback from colleagues, a view of the latest vacancies was also elevated to the global homepage.
Unique Sites to make tools and tasks easier to complete
To encourage better collaboration and improve the flow of knowledge across divisions, Informa created a wealth of rich, mobile-friendly sites to share latest information and encourage task completion and engagement. Using a combination of Unily Sites and Unily Tribes, Informa has been able to create flexible pages which combine content, images, document rollups, social feeds, links to tools and more, to suit the particular need of each area. Each of these pages can be controlled from within the Content Management System, enabling local team members from each division to manage every-day edits and updates.
Highly personalized and targeted communications to ensure relevancy
With over 7,500 colleagues from 5 different divisions, content had to be accurately personalized and targeted to ensure content management was as simple as possible for editors, and as relevant as possible for individual readers. Corporate and Divisional news content is intelligently organized on the homepage to feature a range of content from across the organization. The Smart Feed on the homepage was planned in detail to balance the real estate for news. One area is for corporate and featured news, another section is for personalized news based on Topics the user is interested in, and a final section is for news relevant to the user’s division.
This means users always see what they need to see, but can also personalize the homepage so it’s what they want to see. Communications stakeholders from across Informa were heavily involved in the planning and decision making process, resulting in a solution that truly breaks down barriers between the divisions and satisfies everyone’s needs.
Overcoming intranet challenges
With over 15 people on the core intranet project team representing 5 divisions, every key internal function and over 200 colleagues involved in the requirements gathering phase, the intranet project had to satisfy diverse needs. Some of the main hurdles Informa had to overcome included:
- Choosing a platform that met the needs of colleagues as well as aligning with the company’s technology and communications strategies
- Defining the requirements of the workspace, taking on-board the needs of 7,500 individuals working in a range of roles from different geographies
- Defining the Information Architecture of the intranet, moving to 1 global workspace from the separate intranets previously run on a divisional and sometimes office basis
- Defining the most appropriate content strategy – choosing what content to migrate and how to structure the information in the new workspace
- Gaining timely feedback from senior leaders and stakeholders
Time, effort and commitment from the entire intranet steering committee was essential to overcoming these hurdles. By working in agile sprints and bringing in multiple representatives from across the business in the process, Informa ensured the final result matches the organization’s expectations and supports all business areas effectively. Adopting an intranet product rather than developing a solution from scratch also supported this agile process.
To maintain adoption and meet the evolving expectations of colleagues, the intranet continues to move forward with new ideas and features. A steering group has been put together to review progress, gathering insights on what could be improved from both a strategic and functional point of view.
The results
The launch of the new intranet has positively impacted the organization in many ways.
- Colleagues now have one central location to access all communications, resources, information and tools that support the work they do, which has helped to improve organizational efficiency.
- Every user has a personalized experience of the intranet with relevant internal communication and personalized apps and tools making information easier to find despite varying roles.
- There has been a big influx in conversations on Yammer with the tool now more accessible within the intranet.
- Company messaging and information is much more accessible with a newly organized information architecture, breaking down information into Communities, Essentials and My Informa.
- Colleagues have a new central platform to share, discuss and innovate, helping to improve transparency and build a shared pool of knowledge that previously sat in silos.
- The 5 divisions have been brought much closer together, breaking down walls and enabling Informa to communicate and work as a united team, creating new projects, products and services to support customers.