Solana: Intranet available worldwide in less than six months

An IT project. A target date. With less than six months to go – working in tandem, we successfully implemented a globally deployed intranet for the Solana Group. Today, the intranet serves as an informative platform for staff, providing all relevant company news and content, whilst also encouraging them to interact with one another.

Cross-company, cross-location and cross-country intranet in German and English  

Simplifying work processes in a decentralized work environment 

Facilitating information and knowledge exchange  

Intranet based on SharePoint Standard without additional framework 

Clear and easy-to-understand structure as well as a graphically user-friendly interface  

Integration of metadata for a better control and organization of general content  

PNP Search for individual search filters and display templates 

Stronger identification with the company group  

Improved connection of satellite offices, also due to mobile version   

Implementation of new and faster onboarding and offboarding processes for new employees  

For its internal communications, the Solana Group previously used, among other things, a web-based newsletter which was sent to all employees once a month in German and English. In order to provide company news more regularly and faster, and to offer employees a platform for exchange, a new main communication tool was needed. The new tool should offer an appealing design, be easy to use, and be available on mobile devices. Another requirement was to maintain multilingualism, because the Solana Group operates on an international scale. With its own subsidiaries in ten countries and representatives in 23 other countries, the new tool had to be available in German and English. Since the Solana Group had already partially implemented Office 365, a SharePoint-based intranet was a suitable fit for the IT landscape. In addition, it was also a cost-effective solution due to the existing licenses. 

The project team led by Kathrin Meyer, Communications Manager at Solana GmbH, was entrusted with the introduction of the intranet across the company, its various locations and countries. "A particular challenge was to complete a first version of the intranet in time for the annual company-wide conference. This was an ambitious goal, as the conference took place just a few months later. Therefore, we needed an experienced partner at our side," told Kathrin Meyer about the start of the project. The choice fell on novaCapta, which accompanies organizations from the idea through the go-live to sustainable operation. 

Given the tight project timeframe, the focus for the first release was on providing news, content pages, documents and a search function. Other functions were to be added at a later date. During the conception phase, the technical basis of the future intranet was jointly developed in a Microsoft DEV tenant. The project team decided to integrate metadata for controlling and sorting general content. 

After the conception phase, the new production environment was made available in weekly meetings. The future editorial staff was trained to use the new system and additionally provided with learning materials. The knowledge and skills learned were later to be shared by the editorial team with other departments to enable them to share content independently. For the first release at the company conference, however, it was up to the editorial team to fill the intranet with content. 

The intranet was completed by novaCapta on time, and the editorial team added news, event information, link collections and templates until the go-live. The intranet's search function exceeded the usual SharePoint standard, as PNP Search was used to implement a customizable search in different areas of the intranet, including individual filtering options. 

At the conference, the new intranet was introduced under the name SolaNet. "Employees appreciate the fact that information is communicated at shorter intervals and thus in a less concentrated manner, that important information can be found in one central location, and that they can get involved with their own content," Kathrin Meyer summarized the feedback of the company. Volker Jacobs, project manager at novaCapta GmbH, added: "The collaboration in this project was so successful, because work was done constructively at all times and, above all, with short decision-making paths, so that the goal was achieved on time for the company conference." 

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