CASE STUDY Flender GmbH
MyFlender: The intranet at the heart of the digital workplace
About Flender GmbH
Flender is a leading international manufacturer of drive systems that has been synonymous with mechanical and electrical components of the highest performance, innovation, quality and reliability for 125 years. With around 9,000 employees in 33 countries, Flender offers a wide range of gearboxes, couplings, generators and related services with a focus on key industries such as wind energy, cement, mining, oil and gas, power generation, water and wastewater, marine, cranes and materials handling. Flender products and services combine state-of-the-art technology with extremely high quality and have been ensuring optimum power transmission for decades.
Initial situation & goals
Since 2005, Flender had been part of the Siemens Group as a business unit and thus also part of the internal communications landscape at Siemens, both on the corporate intranet and the other communication channels. After it was decided that the company would leave the Siemens Group in 2021, internal communication at Flender faced the major challenge of standing on its own two feet. An interim solution was therefore initially created based on SharePoint, which still mapped the most important basic functions for the intranet as part of the Siemens IT infrastructure in order to maintain communication with employees. At the same time, the go-ahead was given for a new global intranet based on SharePoint Online, which was to be established as a central element of corporate communication in Flender’s Microsoft 365 infrastructure and application landscape. Many decentralized SharePoints at the different locations had to be captured and all content had to be integrated into the new myFlender in order to create a living, global intranet for Flender and thus a “single point of truth”. The main goal was to make all relevant information digitally accessible to all employees in a pragmatic and well-structured way, thus mastering the change from a debt to bring to a debt to pay. This meant reducing the number of information channels as well as the constantly growing number of e-mails.
The project
Due to the many advantages that Microsoft 365 offers – primarily in terms of integration options – this was the basis for myFlender right from the start. The start page in particular was heavily customized, with expressive images and a design and features based on the Flender website. Together with the IPI and feedback from employees, we considered which functions were necessary to ensure acceptance outside of the headquarters. A lot of time was invested in picking up the colleagues, talking to site owners, training them and enabling them to bring the content into the new intranet with the help of ready-made templates, which is a central component of the digital and modern workplace at Flender.
The solution
With the help of Viva Connections, the intranet was integrated into Microsoft Teams and thus also made available on mobile devices. This created a cockpit for employees to manage their day-to-day work.
The intranet is integrated directly into the sidebar in Teams and offers an all-encompassing search function. Administrators can focus on important news in the header area. Each department and business unit is able to create news items on the subpages that are displayed on the homepage. This was technically implemented with a news filter and a mixture of active and passive personalization. The information for passive personalization is taken from the employee’s SharePoint profile. This means that they are automatically shown global news and news from the region in which they are based, as well as security and IT incidents. All other channels (e.g. Legal & Compliance) can be actively deactivated. This ensures that employees are not flooded with information and that only what is really of interest is displayed.
In addition, a chatbot, the “Flender Communicator”, offers the possibility to push important news, such as IT disruptions or information from the management. A chat message in MS Teams with the selected news is automatically sent to every employee, ensuring that it has a high level of visibility and reach. The right-hand section of the intranet is used to make access to relevant information and applications easier and more efficient for all employees. The “IT Support Hub”, “Marketing & Corporate Design” and the “HR Intranet” are important pages that are accessed very frequently and are available here directly as quick links. Via the floating buttons “My Applications and Bookmarks”, which are also displayed on all subpages, employees have direct access to all the applications and links they need for their daily work and can compile their own favorites. For example, an employee from China can bookmark all relevant pages for China and save themselves the tedious task of navigating through the respective subpages.
Challenges & outlook
The redesign of the myFlender intranet, which went live in June 2023, was a major step towards a digital workplace that has brought and continues to bring many challenges.
- Blue Collar Communication - currently no access to myFlender: The aim is to integrate colleagues in production via an employee app or initially make the mobile view of myFlender available on private devices.
- Internationality - awareness, acceptance and use at the foreign locations can be expanded: The content of the local intranet solutions must be further integrated in order to gradually eliminate them and thus further increase the incentive to access the global intranet.
- Language concept - currently 5 language versions, high translation effort: Automatic translations are to be further expanded in the future to ensure a good user experience for all employees - regardless of their location and language - and at the same time the lowest possible maintenance effort for the editors.
- Resources - small team from CC & IT: Four people worldwide who drive the topic of “MyFlender” forward, coordinate content and news and provide technical support. The content of all divisions and locations is therefore not yet complete.
- High effort due to customizing and bugs: The strong customizing of the start page requires increased effort on Microsoft's part after updates to ensure that everything works as it should.
“We are definitely not there yet, but we are on the right track. It's a clear step forward. And we look forward to driving the digital workplace forward.”