A new global intranet to bring the organisation closer together

Bibby Financial Services provides funding solutions for small and medium-sized businesses.

With over 2,000 employees spread across numerous locations in the UK and throughout the world, effective communication is a cornerstone for great customer experiences.

However, the flow of information around the company was highly efficient; a dated intranet based on SharePoint 2010 had poor adoption, and a heavy reliance on email for internal communications meant messages were being ignored. International offices felt they could be better connected to Bibby Financial Services' UK headquarters.

A beautiful new LiveTiles intranet

Bibby Financial Services engaged Content Formula to implement a brand new, global intranet to transform communication and bring offices closer together.

We carried out detailed research, interviewing stakeholders and users, and made recommendations on how the new intranet could relieve pain points and deliver multiple benefits.

Based on our findings, it was agreed to implement a new LiveTiles (formerly known as Wizdom) intranet. This would not only create a beautiful intranet delivering personalised, relevant content to different groups and locations, but also integrate with other parts of the Office 365 suite which the company was in the process of adopting.

Meeting the needs of every location through content targeting

Content Formula worked in partnership with Bibby's Communications team to deliver a solution which centralises internal communications through news updates and a strong brand identity, but also ensures the needs of different locations and functions are met.

Relevant content and experiences are targeted to users based on their office and division; this involved helping the team populate accurate location data into Active Directory through an inventive data-mapping exercise.

Empowering locations to create content

Using LiveTiles's noticeboard feature, departments and global offices can also create their own local news which is also aggregated on the intranet homepage. Now the new intranet offers a dynamic feed of activity right across all locations, acting as a pulse for the whole organisation.

To ensure that local content teams were fully trained on how to use the intranet, Content Formula designed and delivered a "Train the Trainer" programme so local content champions could deliver effective training to content owners in different global locations.

A truly multilingual intranet though auto-translation

The needs of global employees are also met by translating content into local languages. If a piece of content has not been translated, Microsoft's automated Bing translation feature is enabled with content automatically translated into a user's native tongue based on their location. While machine translation is not 100% perfect, messages are still successfully conveyed for all employees across the world for the very first time.

The intranet also helps to drive collaboration between offices with dedicated templates for team and social workspaces.

Communicating as one company

Although it is still early days, the intranet has already proved highly successful in helping global offices to better communicate and work together, making Bibby Financial Services truly feel like one company.