Romec share their intranet success story at Interact seminar

 •  15 Feb, 12  •  2 min read

At our recent Manchester Intranet Fundamentals seminar, Nigel Williams from Romec gave all attendees a great presentation about the Romec intranet journey.

Nigel explained that as one of the UK’s leading providers of integrated facilities management solutions, Romec faced a number of difficulties including no single communications source and a reliance on bulk emails, leading to knowledge silos throughout the company.

Romec had a number of specific objectives for their intranet including:

  • Reducing knowledge silos
  • Improve communication between the 4,500 workforce and reduce the reliance on the internal email system
  • Implement an easy-to-use intranet solution, suitable for non-technical staff
  • Engage remote workers with a low bandwidth version of the intranet available

During his talk Nigel explained some of the tools that he had implemented from Interact, which helped fulfil his objectives. In particular he discussed how the collaboration tool ‘comments on documents’ led to a far flatter structure in Romec, with front line employees now using the intranet to ask questions directly to managers and getting a faster response as a result. A big improvement from previous top-down communication.

This is increasingly leading us to break down the knowledge silos Romec has had in the past and allowed for a reduction in emails.”

A great story Nigel shared was how Romec implemented an innovative ‘treasure hunt’ style competition to launch the intranet to their company. Romec designed the competition to get users familiar with how to navigate through the many features of the new intranet including the search, electronic forms and employee directory. They put up teaser posters across 1,800 offices and a series of countdown emails were deployed. We learnt that to ensure a high user uptake in the competition every Romec employee received a postcard to their home along with a letter and VPN password if they weren’t able to access a work computer. This also ensured employees without company technology weren’t being left out or left behind.

 

The Romec intranet is now a one-stop shop for communication and collaboration, providing people with a transparent way of working together.”

After having their new intranet for over 2 years, Nigel told us about the many benefits the intranet has bought to Romec:

  • Internal communication in Romec has been transformed via Interact Intranet’s ease of use
  • The electronic forms have saved Romec on average GBP10,000 per form since implementation
  • Rapid, direct feedback is achieved by all from the comments boxes
  • There has been a huge increase in participation in company campaigns
  • Company information is now searchable, usable, dynamic and timely
  • There has been a 30% reduction in internal emails
  • The Purchase Ledger team of three have saved approx. 114 hours per month
  • The IT Helpdesk team have saved approx. 25 hours per month
  • Use of the Employee Directory has led to 70% less internal calls to the reception
  • The use of the Preferred Supplier Database contained within Romec’s intranet has led to GBP80,000 a year company savings