Boosted availability with flexible intranet in Landskrona

“Our new intranet enables us to improve internal communication, knowledge sharing and cohesion across administrative boundaries. One of the big wins is that the intranet is accessible to more employees today. The fact that we can adapt the content to different target groups also makes it more relevant to them. The new platform is more cost-effective than our previous solution and has significantly better management and lifecycle functionality. I also find that editors appreciate the flexibility of the new intranet, such as being able to embed forms into a page. The intranet is much more vibrant and attractive now”, says Communicator Malin van 't Wout at Landskrona Municipality.

Cost-effective solution

Landskrona City, located in Skåne, is one of Sweden's southernmost municipalities. The Municipality has roughly 46,000 inhabitants and employs approximately 3,500 employees who work in eight different administrations. Landskrona also has a number of municipal companies.

The Municipality's previous intranet and external website were based on the Episerver platform. When Microsoft 365 and Teams were widely introduced in the organization, Landskrona began to review its intranet solution. A number of studies were conducted during the autumn of 2021. Among other things, interviews were held with several municipalities as well as intranet solution and CMS suppliers. Landskrona did this to find out of what other municipalities have done and what the market has to offer. The studies gave Landskrona a good idea of how they wanted to reshape their intranet and which solution suited them best.

“After our analysis, we concluded that the solution that best met our needs was to build a standard-based intranet on SharePoint. As we had introduced Microsoft 365 and Teams in all administrations a few years earlier, our IT environment was also prepared for SharePoint. Precio Fishbone had also shown us the benefits of integrating Microsoft Viva Connections with Teams. We thought this was a good idea as many of our employees start their day in Teams. There’s also no extra costs for Viva Connections as it is included in our Microsoft 365 license”, Malin points out.

Landskrona had previously worked with Precio Fishbone and felt confident with Precio Fishbone’s competence and service. Therefore, they chose to go ahead with Precio Fishbone's offer. Development work started in February 2022 and the intranet was launched in August the same year.

More relevant and uniting communication

Internally, the project took about one year – from pilot study to launch. It was extensive work where the editors had to go through, update, restructure and migrate all content from the old platform to the new. Previously, each administration had its own intranet, but now everything is consolidated in a unified communications platform.

“By targeting both news and content pages, it becomes as relevant as it can be for the employees. Now all employees share the same basic structure, and it binds the organization together better”, Malin emphasizes.

Increased availability

Malin explains that with Viva they have embedded the new intranet on a separate tab in Teams, which has improved the intranet’s accessibility considerably. Especially for employees who do not have their own computer. With SharePoint, they have also been able to efficiently integrate all of Microsoft 365 with the intranet.

“The smooth integration between SharePoint and Teams has also made it possible for us to improve the intranet’s accessibility for those who mainly use their phone at work. Many employees use Teams as their primary work tool. The fact that we now have a shortcut to the intranet makes it easier for them to access all of the intranet’s resources and for us to reach them”, Malin clarifies.

Always fresh information

One of the requirements in the procurement of the platform was that it should include a simple, but reliable, lifecycle functionality. The aim is to keep all content constantly up-to-date. Therefore, a Power Automate flow has been created. The flow keeps track of the intranet's pages and informs responsible editors if any content needs to be reviewed or updated.

“It has become much easier to publish, manage and keep the intranet tidy and updated. As a consequence, more information is published today and the intranet is perceived as being more attractive, relevant and engaging to the users”, Malin notes.