Radiators, heating systems and ventilation: that is the core business of Vasco Group. The Belgian family-owned company has sites in several European countries. To improve internal communication and increase employee engagement, Vasco Group looked for an efficient solution. Choosing Involv Intranet was a logical step, says IT director Hans Steenbreker.
+300 users
8 Countries
Climate technologies
Challenge: engaging employees and connecting them better
For Vasco Group, the main challenge was to strengthen employee engagement. Hans Steenbreker puts it like this: if you want employees to feel more connected to your company, you have to recognize that they need to get to know each other better. A good intranet can make a big difference there.
Solution: build on SharePoint, without starting from scratch
At Vasco Group, they already knew MS365 well, and SharePoint is part of that environment. So SharePoint was the natural base for their intranet. When Hans discovered Involv Intranet, he realized that Vasco is similar to many other organizations. Involv could support them with an off-the-shelf intranet, using components that are applicable in nine out of ten companies. The decisive difference was that other providers did not offer a ready-made solution and would have to build everything from scratch.
For the design, Hans deliberately chose an approach that involved end users. He brought employees together to brainstorm and shape the solution. In that process, he made no distinction between job titles or departments: every user’s input carried the same weight.
Employees were also actively involved during the rollout. Content was created by the departments themselves, with key users taking the lead. That made it possible to keep training to just three hours: once the ground rules were clear, everyone could get started.
Vasco began with four departments. Over time, three more joined, meaning seven departments are now live and nine still need to follow. Marketing helps keep the intranet lively, for example by adding a joke in the slider for birthdays. Employees also find shortcuts to the most-used business applications, so the intranet acts both as tag navigation and as a gateway to all applications. For now, the intranet is running in the Dutch-speaking entities, but ultimately it needs to be available across all ten European entities. That still requires an English version and additional work.
Result: live quickly, broad rollout, and growing use
What Hans values most about Involv Intranet is the speed of implementation. A team of eight people worked on it, and within a few weeks they had a strong intranet in place. If you had to build something like that from scratch, lead times would be much longer.
Today, the intranet is used by more than 300 employees in eight countries. Once the English version is ready and all entities are connected, Vasco expects to grow from around one hundred to 320 users.
Fast: full-blown intranet in only a few weeks
Smooth application with a high user adoption
Nice to have features
Only 3 hours of training were needed
