Founded in 2009, BDR Thermea Group (BDR Thermea) develop and supply innovative thermal comfort solutions that enable the global shift towards sustainable energy carriers. Today, BDR Thermea has over 6,000 employees and serves customers in more than 100 countries worldwide.
The Challenge
As a global business, communicating across an entire organisation can be incredibly challenging. In this instance, the BDR Thermea head office comms team had limited means of reaching all its employees. More specifically, one main news channel – a triannual digital newsletter, which required translation into 15 different languages. With an additional 27 separate local subsidiaries within the group, this was a significant task.
Supporting the organisation’s strategic change programme, the challenge was to reinvent BDR Thermea’s internal comms to provide valuable communications and insight to employees and subsidiaries across the globe.
The Solution
BDR Thermea engaged FSP on the creation of a SharePoint Online intranet solution, built on their existing Office 365 platform, with the focus on a core “One News Timeline” principle – one key communications channel for the entire BDR Thermea community. To ensure consistent alignment, FSP brought together all BDR Thermea communications teams, from across the world, to form a connected global community. The solution includes a custom automatic translation process (using Microsoft Power Automate and Microsoft Translator) to translate published content into the desired languages.
Additionally, FSP trained over 200 communication specialists across the globe and led co-design workshops with the BDR Thermea internal communication community, sharing the vision and providing them with the tools to make the most out of their brand-new intranet solution.
The Outcome
Each BDR Thermea employee can now see their own personalised version of the intranet that is tailored to their language, business, and location. The custom automatic translation process has ultimately reduced internal effort and saved BDR Thermea over £50k of outsourcing costs.
Since the intranet went live in December 2020, BDR Thermea have exceeded their user adoption targets, with over half of the global employee population using the intranet on average each month. Users previously limited to periodic newsletters as their only means for staying informed of global news, can now access the latest news with just a few simple clicks – a critical function during the pandemic. The new intranet has also helped to streamline the work of local internal comms teams.
BDR Thermea continue to see value from their original investment, with the company making full use of the benefits brought to them by their new communications platform.
Key Benefits:
- Creation of a brand new SharePoint intranet solution leveraging the latest functionality
- One core integrated news timeline enabling BDR Thermea’s head office comms team to reach all 6,000+ employees
- Access to the latest news and updates around the world
- Content and navigation tailored to a user’s language, location and business
- Automatic translation process via Microsoft Power Automate and Microsoft Translator covering 15 languages – making significant outsourcing savings
- Seamless and intuitive experience for users built by User Experience specialists
- Additional “Intranet Success Programme” providing content and best practice guidance post go-live