Digitalisation in action: Boplan steers towards efficiency and collaboration

The essence

Boplan is mainly known for the safety solutions it provides to more than a hundred international cycling races. Yet it is first and foremost a Belgian company that is specialised in impact protection and other flexible safety barriers in industrial environments. Due to a strong growth phase, Boplan faced the challenge of digitally optimising their working environment. With 300 employees spread across the head office in Belgium and the business units in various countries, there was a high need for more efficient collaboration and structure. Boplan relied on the experts of The Flow to guide the transition to a fully operational Microsoft 365 environment.

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Approach

Three hundred employees is a lot, but quite manageable. Part of the challenge also lies in the diversity of the team: geographically spread, a combination of blue-collar and white-collar workers, people who spend their days at the office or travellers who sometimes don’t sit at a desk for weeks. But thanks to Boplan’s clear internal structure and by deploying the best practices of our Trusted Advisors, the action plan was quickly set up.

After the necessary preparation, 3 phases were rolled out:

• Phase 1: Personal productivity
  The technical implementation and the expansion of knowledge around the personal use of OneDrive, Outlook and other M365 applications.
  
• Phase 2: Collaborating and structuring
  Implementation of a Teams environment, linked to a newly structured SharePoint environment, shared document use, document libraries, etc.
  
• Phase 3: Intranet and automation
  The further development of an internal SharePoint platform (intranet) and continuous optimisation by means of the Power Platform.

Frank Vanhamel, Digital Success Manager at The Flow: “We always start with a pilot group that has a higher digital maturity – we see that in our Digital Maturity Scan at the start of the project. These employees can then be deployed as ambassadors and as first line support for other departments that follow in the roll-out. It is an approach that we know works, because internal motivation and guidance is very valuable.”

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Every department, from logistics to HR, went through four workshops: Start kick-off, Design workshop, Training and Aftercare. Throughout the journey, The Flow also supports with change management communication.

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That communication is important from the start: “From the kick-off we emphasise the why of the switch to Microsoft 365: promoting collaboration and efficiency. It is crucial to get all employees on board with the story and thus arrive at a successful change journey.”, says Frank Vanhamel.

During the Design workshops we brought the department heads together to look at the ideal way of collaborating. Not only within the team, but also across departments. Which division works best? Which templates must definitely be there? Are there similarities with other departments? And above all: what needs and expectations do the employees have? The Flow facilitated and thought along with the organisation about the best possible outcome of a collaboration structure.

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After that followed the technical migration and the hands-on trainings for the employees: on site for (most) people in Belgium and digitally for the offices abroad (United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, United States, Poland and the Netherlands). In addition to the workshops, we also ensured permanent availability for questions. In addition, workshops could be rewatched and training documents were made available digitally.

Steve McLean, IT Project Manager Boplan: “An important aspect in our digitalisation is the human-centred approach. And so, in addition to the roll-out among all white-collar staff, the blue-collar worker should not be forgotten either. With the blue-collar workers in Belgium, we deliberately focused on the general use of SharePoint as an information source. In addition to an account with access to Outlook and SharePoint, there is also access to a newly created Intranet environment, supported by a tailor-made training in the user’s language. This way they too were fully brought on board with the Boplan family.”

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Collaboration

Steve McLean, IT Project Manager Boplan: “I came to The Flow via Benny (Van de Velde, managing partner of The Flow), whom I know from earlier, positive experiences around Digital Workplace. It was quickly clear that I wanted to make this journey together with The Flow, because of their experience and expertise. The collaboration therefore went very smoothly, with an absolutely strong team. They each have a strong dose of expertise and the communication was always smooth.”

That team was led by Frank Vanhamel, Digital Success Manager, who was assisted by five other The Flow employees in the roll-out of the workshops (Dries Rondelez, Felipe Olea Bastias and Kenny Van Dessel), the communication (Maïté Van Rampelbergh) and project management (Mario Van de Velde).

Thanks to a smooth collaboration between The Flow and Boplan, we could tailor the approach per target group and department for maximum result. #teamwork

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“The collaboration therefore went very smoothly, with an absolutely strong team. They each have a strong dose of expertise and the communication was always smooth.”

Steve McLean, IT Project Manager Boplan

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Challenges

The project went quite smoothly and quickly; in barely a year phases 1 and 2 were implemented. Still, there are always some challenges.

Steve McLean, IT Project Manager Boplan: “The change management itself in particular was challenging; effectively getting everyone on board around the ‘why’ of this implementation and the added value of the roll-out of certain standardised workflows and document libraries. Maïté (Van Rampelbergh, Change Communication Manager The Flow) helped enormously with that. Throughout the entire journey, clear communication was ensured and uncertainties were proactively answered.”

Frank Vanhamel, The Flow: “There are also always differences in learning pace, digital maturity or even availability. We could easily accommodate that by offering enough flexibility ourselves and ensuring sufficient support, both by us and by the ambassador network.”

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Results

Measuring is knowing, and we do that both quantitatively and qualitatively with a Microsoft 365 adoption report, satisfaction surveys about the workshops and technical roll-out, usage reports and a Digital Maturity Scan. The combination of an established measurement method on a quantitative level combined with personal feedback from employees ensures clear and valuable results.

Frank Vanhamel: “Microsoft’s adoption report shows very nice results. At the start of a project we do a baseline measurement and during the roll-out of the project we do various follow-up measurements. That report shows an increase of 33 points for the people dimension. Compared to a peer benchmark of similar companies, Boplan has a nice lead here. The total adoption score rose from 59 to 89 points (out of 100).

In the workshop satisfaction surveys we saw an average score of 4 out of 5, which points to a successful approach by our trainers.

We also use the usage reports within the Microsoft 365 environment, which qualitatively measure the use of the applications such as Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive, etc. There we saw clear growth in the number of active Teams channels (+150 channels) and a noticeable increase in the number of active internal users.

Steve McLean, IT Project Manager Boplan: “In the warehouse among the blue-collar workers too, we see an increase in efficiency through the use of the ‘Boplanet’ intranet portal. Where previously everything happened via paper documents – ordering sandwiches, questions about leave, requesting replacement work clothing, etc. – now all happens in one handy online portal. Not only are the employees helped faster, but the HR department also has less recurring work because information and requests are digitalised and structured.”

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Future

Now that the foundation has been laid, Boplan looks forward to phase three: the further development of the intranet portal and the implementation of automation tools for creating apps and workflows. This is planned for the last quarter of 2024, in which we look at possibilities to roll out citizen development within the organisation and train a few people.

The ‘Boplanet’ intranet on SharePoint has already been rolled out, but will be further optimised. In addition to a clear focus on information around internal processes and HR, the portal is expanded with extra functionalities and internal information around processes and operations.

The collaboration with The Flow will in time be gradually phased out, with all knowledge then secured with Boplan employees. That transfer was an important condition for both The Flow and Boplan.

We are proud of this collaboration, which illustrates that strategic planning, flexible adjustments and a strong focus on user training and feedback deliver a wonderful result.

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