Champions
Italian intranet projects
Executive Summary
The 4 overall winners of the first edition (2019) of the IIC are
- Angelini Group
- Fastweb
- Rai
- Ferrero
These companies have each created projects of great interest in terms of design, content or intranet functionality. In a short phrase, innovation in internal communication.
Here is a brief description of the winning projects of the 2019 edition of the award:
Angelini Group - A new digital workplace.
Angelini has created a highly complex digital workplace, with a lot of care and attention taken in terms of design, a truly inclusive ideation process, which involved employees and took their needs into account. The strong profiling, the e-commerce dedicated to the staff and the excellent mobile version make this intranet a really successful project.
Fastweb - A dedicated app for desk booking.
Fastweb has created an application to support an innovative process of the company (the change of working methods in its new location), capable of improving people’s lives and involving them in the design process. Today employees have an evolved and inclusive tool which encourages and supports collaboration.
Ferrero - An advanced, profiled and multilingual digital workplace.
Ferrero took on the challenge of creating a single portal profiled in 10 different languages, suitable from employees and workers, to the independent user, and has succeeded very well in doing so. The design, customization, applications and initiatives made make this project an advanced and quality digital workplace.
Rai - RaiPlace - Attendance, training and information management.
Rai has created a sophisticated and multifunctional portal, capable of communicating with the various systems of the company and creating a unique and pleasant user experience for the employee. Online attendance management, my page, integrated notifications, and training are important pieces of a pathway towards efficiency and the centrality of people within the company.
Case studies
Below are the 12 projects that, out of the different categories of the award, have expressed elements of great interest and inspiration for anyone dealing with intranet projects. These are examples of interesting and innovative achievements and, in some cases, each with their own original and effective solutions.
Contents and initiatives- Gruppo Sella - Corporate values and multichannel logic
- Generali Italia - Organization chart, social wall and web radio
- IMA - Sector areas and targeted contents.
- IREN - of values and self-produced videos.
- Poste Italiane - Poste Italiane’s national football team.
- TIM - The campaign for inclusion.
- Gruppo Aboca - An inclusive APP for the employees.
- Bologna Airport - A location-based TV intranet.
- ISTAT - Online management of HR reservations.
- Fater - A personalized portal for employees.
- Sky Italia - Restyling, new editorial formats and an A-Z index for the intranet.
- SUPSI - A Customized Employee Portal
Some trends
Can we identify any trends among the cases that we have been presented with this year?
In fact, we can encounter some of them, some of which are also present in the international arena, some of which can also be observed in the projects we have had the chance to examine.
Below we have outlined some of the main examples.
Frontline training. More and more often, intranet projects contain areas dedicated to training that are particularly well structured, such as those created by Rai , Angelini and Ferrero . Sometimes these may be in the form of material libraries, video files, course catalogues or even real e-learning platforms integrated into the intranet. Other examples, as in the case of Fater, the training material is designed to be a sort of “path” within the intranet environment which enable the employee to acquire new skills necessary for the adoption of a new way of working.
The arrival of APPs. Although most companies approach the issue of mobility by adopting responsive versions of intranets rather than purpose-built apps (for various reasons of optimization), vertical projects are beginning to appear in the form of Apps, which, in many cases, support the desktop intranet (and are also responsive) for the execution of tasks and activities. This is the case for companies like Fastweb and Aboca, as well as some other examples we have observed.
Push customization. Many intranet projects are beginning to use sophisticated internal environment certain customization features: e.g. favourite links, widgets, filter options are now common place in many projects. These are some of the case examples: Rai, Angelini, Ferrero, SUPSI to name a few.
Targeted Content. The intranet is becoming ever more sophisticated and capable of reaching a diversified audience of employees based on their department, sector or nation. The IMA, Ferrero, and Bologna Airport projects express this trend well with their push profiling providing relevant content and eliminating “noise”.
Online and offline link up. In many projects the barrier between offline and online is gradually getting thinner: many projects are developed online and end up “live” or vice versa, or simply display greater cooperation in these two areas of internal communication. This strong tie between the physical world and the digital world is, perhaps, the characterising trait of Italian projects compared to foreign projects, and can be observed for the following example projects: Poste Italiane, Tim, Gruppo Sella, Iren.
New editorial formats. Apart from news and notices, intranet platforms are starting to provide high quality multimedia content, both audio and video, and sophisticated publishing initiatives, such as in the case of Sky or Generali Italia.
Widespread Social Networking. The social elements, linked to the evolution of the network in recent years, are starting to become widely accepted with a certain naturalness even inside, judging by the number of comments, likes and news feeds (already present for example in companies like Sky, Fastweb, Poste, and Tim) to a point where true communities (e.g. Fater and Generali) have formed where debates, and collaboration groups take place.
Towards the digital workplace. Companies are increasingly gearing themselves up to making the intranet the gateway towards an integrated application ecosystem, capable of communicating with the main internal systems so as to create a true digital workplace with a smoother and more effective user experience for their employees. An important challenge was met by the following example projects:Rai, Istat and SUPSI
