How to Launch an Intranet Quickly

Launch the intranet of your dreams, fast

5 simple steps to getting your intranet running within a week

Preparation checklist: Key decision to make before launching

Case Study: The Wates Group

Your next step: Valo for Teams

Contents3

5

6

8

10

11

13

14

15

18

Step 1: Decide on governance & include people responsible for the intranet

Step 2: Plan which features & information architecture you’ll need

Step 3: Migrate the needed content & tailor it to look like you

Step 4: Make sure User Adoption & Digital Adoption are up to speed

Step 5: Rapidly deploy & roll out your intranet

Launch the intranet of your dreams, fast

Launching an intranet, or upgrading your old company intranet, can feel overwhelming - and that’s without the added complication of having to implement one quickly. The rapid change on having employees work remotely and internal communication needing to be up to date fast has made us create this handy guide to help you!

We know that digital leaders, who have a good intranet platform in place, have had success in maintaining business continuity even in crisis situations. Yet to some it hasn’t been so easy. Many are still using traditional trickle-down communications methods, like email and, in some consumer-facing companies, noticeboards to communicate with their colleagues.

3

An intranet is a front door to your digital

workplace. It has evolved from a simple

document management platform to a

solution that can improve communication

and collaboration between colleagues. And

having all of this in the comfort of your

communication tool of the day, Microsoft

Teams.

So, getting the basics right at the start

will be the difference between success and

failure of launching a successful intranet.

Clearly as working remotely is becoming the new normal and in most places already is, companies need to improve their internal communications. For some this will be about making better use of their existing intranets’ collaboration and ideation tools.

However, for many, it will be about starting and accelerating their digital transformation program, and as a first step - installing an intelligent and modern intranet to aid communication amongst their newly distributed workforce.

4

A perfect intranet doesn’t only empower your workforce, it will encourage collaboration and improve employee engagement, which is essential for maintaining healthy distributed teams.

Intranets are constantly evolving and the principles for a fast launch are the same as those followed for longer projects, just condensed! The good news is there’s never been a better time to launch an intranet fit for the future than now!

The main thing is to launch the basic intranet product with the functional-ities your organization requires and if needed, adapt it later on. We’ll help you with everything from getting stakeholder buy-in, to who to invite on the steering group, right through to getting your users excited about onboarding and adoption.

5 simple steps to getting your intranet running within a week

5

5 simple steps to getting your intranet running within a week

Who’s going to own the intranet in your company? Deciding who owns the intranet platform is your number one priority and all foundation for successful governance.

Gather together the heads of departments and get senior managements’ buy-in as a new intranet will mean undergoing some change management or an adjustment in the workplace culture, so for example budget can’t be undermined. Then, set up a steering group, that primarily includes IT, internal comms, and an employee engagement rep.

Once you get the green light, then look at your end users’ needs and if needed, consult a representative from each area of workforce to find out what issues they need to address.

Adoption and user engagement are the key measures in how successful your intranet will be, so don’t overlook them!

Read an interview of Meghan Strant, a Change Management Specialist about the “why’s & how’s”: Change Management in Microsoft 365 is all about the people, not the tech.

Decide on governance & include people responsible for the intranet

Step 1

6

5 simple steps to getting your intranet running within a week

Valo Intranet’s multilingual feature auto-translates your original publication to spread the news in 20+ different languages.

The next step is to nominate content editors. Smaller companies with less than 2,000 users should look at content editors from Marcomms and IT departments. Larger organizations will need more content editors to keep information up to date with one or two overall editors.

If your workforce is spread out globally then look at separate hubs for each sub-company or side branch especially if there are language differences within the company. This way the content will resemble and be relevant to the users who will read it and what’s best.

7

5 simple steps to getting your intranet running within a week

As you are doing all this at a faster pace than usual, it’s important to separate essential features and add-ons from non-essential ones.

Think about whether you need a mobile app, social features, news carousel, ideation tools for sharing ideas, people finder directory, multilingual or event hub for webinars?

Plan which features & information architecture you’ll need

With Valo, more features and add-ons can always be added down the line and you’re not stuck with the ones you choose initially!

Our Valo Partners can advise you which features you’ll need straight away, and which you can add on at a later date.

Step 2

8

5 simple steps to getting your intranet running within a week

Valo Intranet is a ready to go solution built on top of SharePoint and Office 365 that integrates seamlessly to Microsoft Teams. As an in-a-box solution, it has a ready-made information architecture structure that you can use straight away.

When it comes to the perfect information architecture, also known as “where should all the information go?” we’ve done the thinking for you.

Intranet information architecture is described to be the content structure and framework of an intranet, meaning the relationship between catego-rized and labeled content in relation to other content.

On top of the normal page templates Valo Intranet offers, there are simple, easy to use additional templates that’s particularly useful when time is of the essence, such as the Crisis Management template.

Read 10 more best practices for planning your intranet information architec-ture from this blog post!

9

5 simple steps to getting your intranet running within a week

Your users will instantly need to feel at home within your portal. An intranet is a journey, not a destination.

If you have content to migrate, don’t move it all at once, as this will slow your deployment down. Just pick out what it important now - essential company information, policies, human resources documents. You can revisit what content to migrate at a later date. In fact, this might even be an opportunity to start from scratch with fresh content!

Having populated your intranet with your content and branded your intranet to match the company brand, you may want to give it a name. This helps give it a more personal feel for users and adds personality and purpose to your intranet platform.

It creates a sense of ownership so rather than telling people to “check on the intranet”, it’s far more appealing to be told, “look on Edi”, for example.

Migrate the needed content & tailor it to look like you

Step 3

10

5 simple steps to getting your intranet running within a week

Your new intranet will be the “central office” so staff needs to start using it asap. If your employees are working from home, the chances are they’ll be missing the daily coffee machine chats.

So why not use your intranet to bring a bit of lightheartedness back into their lives? You could run competitions to keep staff engaged. Regarding your new intranet’s functionality, there will inevitably be things you can improve. Poll your colleagues for feedback, and if it’s relevant, act upon it when things settle down.

For more help on improving user adoption watch one of our webinars on How to boost intranet adoption for your end users.

Make sure User Adoption & Digital Adoption are up to speed

Step 4

While having the Valo Intranet in your use, there’s an Admin Toolpack that will focus on user adoption, content, and analytics around them to improve your communications.

11

5 simple steps to getting your intranet running within a week

Building an ambassador network is a great bottom-up strategy. This helps the organization to figure out what works, what doesn’t and how to move forward. These ambassadors can also hold “Ask Me Anything” -sessions and such, which are a cost-effective way to improve user adoption.

The 20/80 rule applies here as well. 20 percent of the success of the project is about technique, 80 percent of the success of this project is about adoption.

Maarten Eekels, Chief Digital Officer and Managing Partner at Portiva, Microsoft Regional Director and MVP

Digital Adoption

The other side of User Adoption is Digital Adoption, meaning training your staff and implementing the workflows behind the tools and apps in your digital workplace.

It’s important to get the users to implement the tools into their daily rituals from the start and keep the processes in line and up to date in a digital workplace.

Read what else Maarten has to say about adoption: What is digital adoption & How to do it.

12

5 simple steps to getting your intranet running within a week

Launch your site! It’s okay not to have everything perfect right from the start. Remember, an intranet is a living organism. It will evolve and will be constantly iterated along the way.

It’s best to start small and get some features and structures in place right away, which you can and should always expand on later. This is the best way to get instant results!

Once the intranet is launched, encourage your colleagues to download the mobile app. Their mobiles are always on their reach so it’s the perfect way you can send important messages or up to date news directly to the app, which are pretty hard to miss!

Rapidly deploy & roll out your intranet

Valo Intranet is fast to deploy - and cost-effective. Whereas previously, it could take an IT and communications team between six and 12 months to launch an intranet, with Valo, customers can have their new intranet up and running in just one week and inside Microsoft Teams!

Step 5

13

5 simple steps to getting your intranet running within a week

Preparation checklist: Key decision to make before launching

Take a look before starting your intranet planning and launch process! This is where you start the whole intranet deployment process to ensure its success.

Governance

Information architecture & Features

Content migration & Branding

User Adoption & Digital Adoption

Launch & use the mobile app

Who’s going to own the intranet in your company?

Where’s all the information going go? What features are needed now and in the future?

What to content should you migrate, and when, if any? Does this visual look of the intranet represent our brand?

Do you and your users know which tools to use for what type of comms? Have the users been trained properly?

It’s launch day! Have you asked your team to download the mobile app so they can get news and documents on the go?

14

5 simple steps to getting your intranet running within a week

+ Industry: Construction, Development and Property Services

+ Country: UK

+ Company Size: 1,001 – 5,000 users

Case Study: The Wates Group

A current Valo customer The Wates Group needed a new intranet platform to help its staff collaborate more effectively. Because their former intranet was outdated, staff were using unmanaged social apps as a way to collab-orate and communicate. In addition, their reliance on email as a communi-cation tool resulted in excess email traffic and was proving to be an ineffective way to connect.

15

Wates wanted their new intranet to leverage their investment in Office 365 and SharePoint and to keep up to date in a changing Microsoft landscape to deliver new innovative functionality.

They wanted an easy to configure product without the need for an extensive project. As a large percentage of Wates’ staff work in a distributed way, it was vital they still felt part of the group. Therefore, they wanted a mobile app to allow users to check on the latest news and access documents on the go.

The Wates Group worked with an UK Valo Premium Partner company Pythag-oras, who suggested that Valo Intranet was the best choice for their needs. As an in-a-box product, it requires very little time to be operational and is built on Office 365 and SharePoint platforms.

We’ve been very happy by the introduction of Valo Intranet. It’s completely changed the way we as a business communicate with each other. It’s made everything much more visible, transparent and fun!

Nicola Savage Communications and Marketing Director at The Wates Group

16

5 simple steps to getting your intranet running within a weekCase Study: The Wates Group

To help engage staff, Wates ran a competition to name the new intranet. The name “Edi” was chosen, providing a personality for their “Employee Digital Interface”.

Wates was keen to encourage enthusiasm for the new intranet early on so they shared the anticipated benefits of Edi and Yammer. They set up training sessions and put out a video walk through to increase engagement.

Read the full Case Study The Wates Group: Valo’s modern intranet trans-forms internal comms for construction company.

17

5 simple steps to getting your intranet running within a weekCase Study: The Wates Group

Valo turns Teams into a full-blown corporate communications tool

Learn moreabout Valo for Microsoft Teams

Your next step: Valo for TeamsIn a world where teams are remote, or distributed, Microsoft Teams has become the heart of digital workplaces.

However, it is vital to have one central place containing all the informa-tion from news to documents. Intranet is the online gateway for your orga-nization, helping you to keep your employees connected, informed, and engaged.

valointranet.com

By launching an intranet, like the Valo Intranet, that is inte-grated directly into your Microsoft Teams environment, you offer your staff the tools they need to work efficiently right at where they spend most of their days anyway.

5 simple steps to getting your intranet running within a week

18

Valo Intranet is easy to use, beautiful to look at and ensures your employees stay engaged with helpful information.

Build a better way to communicate

valointranet.com

@ValoIntranet

Fall in with yourdigital workplace

Microsoft Teams

Powered By

About Red Level

Learn More Here

Red Level, a Valo partner since 2017 and the 2019 Valo Partner of the Year, is a comprehensivetechnology services company, delivering scalable solutions designed precisely to our clients’unique needs – solutions that accelerate growth, reduce costs and enable collaboration. Red

Level enables communication and collaboration for organizations from 25 to 25,000+employees through digital workplace experiences. We guide our clients from problem solvingto solution selection to implementation through user adoption and training. And continue to

ensure our client’s needs are being met through ongoing managed services.