The digital workplace for Puurs-Sint-Amands

Since 2019, the Flemish government has been encouraging as many municipalities as possible to merge. With this, the government wants to offer more efficient services and a stronger organisation to residents at the local level. Puurs and Sint-Amands also joined forces. But how does a merged municipality align its internal communication? Which IT structure fits best within the new setting? How can you collaborate digitally more effectively? Cronos Public Services joined the journey to set out the markers.

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After the 2019 merger, a number of pain points quickly surfaced at Puurs-Sint-Amands. Documents were fragmented across various servers, there was no common intranet and employees did not always get access to essential information. The use of SharePoint helped in a first phase to streamline communication, but in the end it was decided last year to implement Microsoft O365 and Teams. For this, the merged municipality looked for the right partners and, via Cronos Public Services, came into contact with The Flow Consulting. This Cronos competence center knows the Microsoft landscape inside out, and helps organisations with the continuous optimisation of their daily operations.

Tineke Coeckelbergh, Expert in information management and information security/DPO at Puurs-Sint-Amands: “We immediately had a good feeling about their approach and vision, and then decided to work with them. We have enough competent people in-house, but the specific knowledge was lacking for the setup and implementation of a digital workplace within O365. That is why a partnership with The Flow Consulting was the right choice. The direction did remain in our hands.”

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Two speeds

A merger requires a real transformation, both technologically and organisationally. Puurs-Sint-Amands opted for a top-down approach in which everyone is involved. “In a structural change, management plays a role-model function,” knows Benny Van de Velde, Trusted Advisor at The Flow Consulting. “Often too little focus is placed on the consequences for employees. Rolling out Microsoft Teams and creating an intranet takes relatively little time, but people also have to be able to adapt. And in the meantime, on the IT side, new applications are added almost weekly. At Puurs-Sint-Amands they realised that aligning those two speeds requires continuous governance. During the introduction of O365, ambassadors were appointed who, after training, could guide colleagues. They are the feelers of the project team. We are not consultants who just do the work, but rather guides who set out the markers. With The Flow we always follow the client’s rhythm.”

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There is De Vedette!

The coronavirus crisis of course also played a role. Microsoft Teams was introduced into the organisation in an accelerated way out of necessity in the spring. Physical workshops were no longer possible, but Cronos Public Services took a flexible stance and organised the trainings online. The employee portal – as a replacement for the intranet – definitively took shape and was launched at the end of May 2020 under the catchy name “De Vedette”, a nod to the Moortgat brewery in Puurs. Tineke Coeckelbergh: “Employees were allowed to help decide on the name and that was appreciated. The portal is the gateway to the organisation’s information: who is who, news items, information about HR matters, the organisation chart, templates and house style, but also access to personal files and teams.”

In the future, De Vedette will be a component within Teams. The portal will then become a central and interactive work instrument with news, documents, collaboration spaces, etc. The challenge this year is to offer sufficient relevant content. “You can compare it to a news site,” explains Benny Van de Velde. “If you only post something once a week, you get few visitors. That is why it is important that communication also comes from the employees, among other things via a digital noticeboard for more personal messages. In my view, such a portal is also relevant for other governments and organisations. They can easily personalise their structure that way within a central communication channel.”

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User-friendly PMO app

The entire project runs until December 2024. So there are still quite a few stages to complete. Puurs-Sint-Amands continues to focus on optimising, automating and digitalising certain processes in the organisation. For example, for requesting a train ticket, or to facilitate the onboarding of new employees. For project managers within the merged municipality, a user-friendly PMO app is being developed by Cronos, and Microsoft Intune enables modern management of PCs, smartphones and tablets. “After 2024 the work is still not finished, because digitalisation is a continuously changing process,” knows Tineke Coeckelbergh. “Moreover, around that time the construction of a new administrative centre that centralises all services should be ready. Next year we will have a good picture of where we stand with our digital workplace and what the plans are around working from home and the new administrative centre.”

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Tailored to every government

The merger between Puurs and Sint-Amands proves that budget need not be an obstacle to a major transformation. Tineke Coeckelbergh: “You can customise a digital workplace according to an organisation’s profile. Within local governments, knowledge of O365 is usually limited, and that is where Cronos offers great added value. Among other things by helping to build expertise at the rhythm of the government and the administration. The Flow Consulting has various profiles in-house who can help with project management, analysing and optimising business processes, building apps to digitalise and automate certain processes, the adoption process of the new technologies, etc. Their action plan is clear, professional and manageable. They offer services tailored to the client and are very flexible in that.”

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“The entire project runs until December 2024, but we won’t be finished then. Digitalisation is a continuously changing process.”

Tineke Coeckelbergh, Expert in information management at Puurs-Sint-Amands