Isabella Group chose Colibo as their intranet supplier over another big intranet company. They will launch their Colibo intranet soon. The intranet will function as a collaboration point for all their companies in Denmark, Norway, England, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland.
User-friendly intranet for an outdoor Company with international offices
Isabella Group has spent some time finding the right intranet platform because they needed a user-friendly solution. They have sales offices and production in multiple locations in Europe and the employees need to be able to post news, and it is necessary with an intuitive setup so that everyone can access the system despite their level of IT-experience. This was one of the strengths that made Colibo appealing.
Sales offices in multiple locations in Europe made it important for Isabella that their employees, who work far away get closer, so the company can become one unit and working on the same platform so they can share knowledge with one another across the whole organisation and national borders. This was the main tipping point in Isabella’s strategic decision process when choosing Colibo as their intranet supplier.
Choosing Colibo
Isabella used to have a classical intranet and a Facebook group for their employees. The classical intranet used a typical top-down communication from the internal communications department. Isabella’s traditional intranet was built on a website, where the employees didn’t have any form of active involvement.
Isabella wanted a dialogue based intranet so they could become more homogeneous and become closer to each other. It was important for Isabella that their future intranet was dialogue based so they have the option of 2-way communication, instead of the 1-way communication they used to have with their previous intranet solution.
Academy Manager Tina Skjødt, who is responsible for the internal communication at Isabella Group says:
“We wanted a homogeneous communication platform which is structured; less hierarchically, purely organisational and with more fluidity. This is where the intranet will help and promote cooperation and knowledge sharing across national borders and departments so we can break down the silo-thinking.”
Facebook as intranet solution?
Beside their intranet solution, Isabella had a closed Facebook group where the employees could communicate.
“The Facebook page is the one that brought the company together across national borders.”
There are several disadvantages to Facebook as a work platform as not all employees want to use Facebook and it is not all the employees who want to mix their work with their private Facebook profile. The consequence is that those employees, who don’t have a Facebook profile, don’t get all the information from the company.
Facebook is popular in Denmark, but in some other countries Facebook it is not that popular. When Isabella was looking for an intranet-platform they also considered Workplace by Facebook, but Workplace by Facebook missed the document section; a feature that Colibo offers.
The phonebook shows the most important contacts
One of the features Isabella expect to utilize the most is the phonebook. The phonebook has the function to show those you have had the most contact with, so they are placed highest on the list in the phonebook. Those you work with are closest to you, and this makes sense for their philosophy that siloes shouldn’t exist. They want to have a fluent organisation, where employees work across departments and in projects, in close contact with each other.
About Isabella
Back in 1957, Søren Odgaard started the first production of Isabella tents in Vejle – and since that day Isabella has been focusing on quality. At the beginning of the 70’s the company chose to focus on the sewing of tents for caravans solely, but today they also market camp-let tents, tents and outdoor accessories.
Isabella Group’s headquarters is located in Vejle and they have sales subsidiaries in Norway, Germany, England and The Netherlands and production in Poland and Denmark.
