BIOFOS unifies and simplifies with Omnia
Danish wastewater treatment and energy company BIOFOS has strengthened and refined its digital workplace with a new Omnia-based intranet. The solution enables BIOFOS to create a more unified organization and to boost employee engagement, internal collaboration, and communications across all its units. The Omnia platform also allows for more targeted and personalized communication.
– Our new improved digital workplace enables users to access all news, internal discussions, education programs, and tools via a consolidated view and single access point. Omnia has also made it possible for those of our employees who are constantly on the move, working in different locations, to have individual and personalized access via their mobile phones. This makes it easier for them to find the correct and relevant information. It will also help us reach and engage the entire organization. The new solution will simplify our internal communications while boosting collaborations and the internal dialogue between our different units. All in all, this will lead to a more unified company, says Stig Dalum, Communications Manager at BIOFOS.
Quest for easily managed standard platform
BIOFOS is Denmark’s largest wastewater treatment facility. With its three plants in Lynetten, Avedøre, and Damhusåen, the company purifies wastewater from more than 1.2 million people living in Copenhagen. The residue from the treatment process is used to produce climate-friendly electricity, biogas, and district heating. BIOFOS has an annual turnover of approximately DKK 0.5 billion and employs around 170 people.
The company previously had a custom-made SharePoint-based intranet that was difficult and expensive to keep updated and aligned with the organization’s ever-changing needs. BIOFOS also wanted to separate the formerly fully integrated Management System from the intranet, with the aim of linking it to the intranet as a free-standing SharePoint application. In May 2020, a workgroup accordingly began researching the intranet market in their quest for a SharePoint-based standard platform that could offer smooth integration with Microsoft 365 and that was easy to manage and adapt. Omnia was their first choice, with implementation of the solution starting in August of the same year.
– We needed to get away from custom-made solutions requiring help from experts and programmers for only minor changes, add-ons, configurations, and governance routines. What we wanted instead was a platform that we could manage and adjust ourselves. When Precio Fishbone demonstrated Omnia to us, everything fell into place. The platform is modern, easy to manage, adaptable, and offers lots of functionality. Omnia’s user interface and visual capabilities were also very compelling advantages, says Mia Schultze, Manager Intranet Task Force at BIOFOS.
Employee participation is key to success
Mia explains that, in order to get an accurate representation of the organization’s needs and requirements, a great deal of time has been invested in finding the right decision-makers and reference group members for the implementation project. Another very important and time-consuming part of the project has been to sort out, select and categorize all the information to be migrated to the new platform. In filtering out the relevant information, they asked themselves “What do our employees need to know?” and “What is nice for them to know?”, with the latter content being subsequently distributed through alternative channels.
– We’ve had many highly competent and influential employees involved in analyzing user and functionality needs and work processes throughout the project. With the benefit of hindsight, we see that this strategy has undoubtedly been the right one, with the final solution successfully meeting our organization’s needs in all units and user groups. We have also put a lot of time and effort into refining, classifying, and targeting the intranet’s content. This has made it much easier for users to find relevant information, tools, collaboration spaces, and other resources, Mia points out.
A closer community drives engagement
The new intranet was launched in December, just five months after the start of the implementation project. Now users can, for instance, find colleagues and managers, media, and company news on the intranet. With Omnia’s Process Management module, BIOFOS has created a linked and visual presentation of the organization’s structure. This allows users to find decision-makers and their contact information by just clicking through the chart. Omnia’s Event Manager module is also used to create, issue invitations to, and manage social and educational activities. In further developing the intranet, BIOFOS is now adding a solution that seamlessly integrates Omnia and Teams. Another function, making events and educational activities created on the intranet available in Teams, will be installed during the summer of 2021.
– The intranet has been given a positive reception by the organization. We have observed increased activity on the platform and more comments on and discussions about news and other areas of interest. It’s obvious that our employees are happy about being kept in the loop about everything happening in the company via notifications, and that communication between units has become so much easier. We believe this will build a closer BIOFOS community and boost engagement in our common goals and visions, Stig Dalum predicts.
