Our continued engagement with dlr internal content editors is aimed at helping County Council staff to decentralise content publishing, setting guidelines and best practice standards for content optimisation. At the same time, we work with the internal IT and Communications teams to provide ongoing consulting and support services to constantly iterate on the solution and improve the services offered to staff members.
DLR LINK
The Digital Transformation of Staff Engagement
A FEW PROBLEMS TO SOLVE
Digital transformation is more than a buzzword. At its core, digital transformation translates into using technology to increase customer or employee engagement, create operational efficiencies and improve business processes.
After a successful launch of the external facing communication platform, we engaged with dlr County Council to redesign and rebuild their internal communication platform, the dlr Link. After conducting internal research to achieve a deep understanding of organisational and user needs which enabled us to challenge the status quo, we developed a digital transformation programme that touches all areas of staff engagement.
The newly built platform provides solutions for:
not only creates operational efficiencies by streamlining and automating old paper-based processes to internal digitised workflows but also acts as a communication ecosystem that enables cross-departmental visibility and collaboration.
OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCIES
By streamlining and automating paper-based processes
CROSS-DEPARTMENTAL COMMUNICATION
Increasing visibility though a communication ecosystem
IMPROVE STAFF ENGAGEMENT
While not being disruptive or burdensome to their existing busy workflows
OUR PROCESS
We employed a user-centred discovery and design process using the Agile methodology to manage change and constantly iterate on proposed solutions. Our team conducted internal project stakeholders and users meetings to understand the platform requirements and identify the current issues being faced within the organisation. We defined the problem space and prioritised the areas we wanted to tackle early.
We quickly realised the complexity of the project and as a response, the best course of action was to implement a digital transformation programme. Together with the internal dlr Link team, we developed a process to get buy-in from key organisational stakeholders, who were instrumental in the success of the programme. Transforming internal processes and implementing automated workflows to streamline the way things were done revealed not only technical challenges due to multiple systems that have to integrate together but an important and often overlooked behaviour change aspect that impacts the organisation across the board. A successful workflow is one that is used correctly and gets the buy-in not only from the top tier of management but from every single member of the organisation that will use it on a daily basis.
Thus, a key challenge was to implement a solution that will be easy to use and not require extra effort from staff members that were already stretched with daily tasks. The staff engagement programme we developed is successful because it doesn’t stand in the way of people achieving their daily goals, it doesn’t add up to their workload but enables them to be more efficient.
Department information and documentation, staff visibility via a quickly accessible directory, staff engagement and communication, corporate events calendar, searchable internal policies and documentation and streamlined internal processes (e.g. HR applications) were at the top of the organisational priorities. From a staff member perspective, the need to have clear visibility over organisational structures, quickly access policy information and documentation as well as the ability to get in touch or get professional support from colleagues working in other departments (IT help desk, Finance, HR), quickly fill in HR applications or stay up to date with organisation-wide communication were important problems to solve as part of the project.
OUR SOLUTIONS
We developed a Drupal 8 based platform that enables content creation and publishing across various internal departments. It removes the bottleneck from a small centralised content publishing team and enables internal departments to create their own content and publish it to the entire organisation timely and efficiently. The dlr Link plays a significant role in promoting awareness and understanding of the vision, mission and values for all dlr staff members. It also provides an effective mechanism to promote and share policy and operational activities in the organisation.
The company-wide Message Board acts as a replacement for mass-communication emails that were becoming misused and overused, causing staff to miss important information. Our solution taps into well-established design patterns that staff would be familiar with from using various applications outside their work. The Message Board uses a tiered approach allowing everyone to publish messages, while at the same time differentiating the important ones from every-day notice board types of communication. The message board allows an easy interaction that is not intrusive, and forces mass communication to be swift and to the point, to reduce disruption and increase efficiency.
The dlr Link platform manages the Council’s corporate events calendar and provides digital workflows for corporate, finance and human resource processes to streamline and facilitate social engagement and efficiencies within the organisation. The automated workflows aim not only to streamline internal processes but also endeavour to save paper, by digitising the entire application and approval process.
Technical systems integration was crucial to building a sticky factor for dlr Link. In our endeavour to streamline access to information and increase efficiency, we built a single-sign-on solution (Drupal 8 and Active Directory integration) that removes the burden of remembering yet another username and password, and automatically allows staff members to be logged-in into their personalised account that recognises their profile, organisational hierarchy, system permissions and application repository. The dlr Link seamlessly integrates with all dlr external-facing publishing platforms creating a single access point for staff engagement.
The platform foundation relies on mirroring the organisational structure and hierarchies built from the ground-up with flexible groups and specific permissions that are key to workflow implementation and success. With limited administrative resources, the platform had to be easily managed and allow staff members to be moved quickly between departments, or from a particular role to another, inheriting permissions and hierarchy responsibilities within the platform in a seamless manner.
Monsoon Consulting brought competence, professionalism and robust problem-solving expertise to a complex and challenging internal Intranet project.
From low-level development issues through to mission-critical functionality, Monsoon Consulting delivered a high-quality service. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has developed a strong working relationship with Monsoon Consulting team which has helped us meet our on-going strategic goals.
From low-level development issues through to mission-critical functionality, Monsoon Consulting delivered a high-quality service. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has developed a strong working relationship with Monsoon Consulting team which has helped us meet our on-going strategic goals.
Conor Peoples
THE RESULTS
OTHER SUCCESS STORIES
UNIPHAR GROUP
30% uplift in online order value
- High-capacity fulfilment while maintaining accurate inventory data
- 33,000+ financial documents accessed monthly
- Customised pricing with personalised account management and discounting
TOPLINE GROUP
B2B buying group with over 160 stores across Ireland
- 24/7 Self-service Functionality
- Complex ERP Integrations
- Customised GDPR-compliant hosting
PUNCH PUBS
100 pieces of unique, custom-built functionality
- 200% increase in Page Speed and Performance
- Checkout simplified from 5 to 3 clicks
- 8% increase in promotions claimed
UNIPHAR GROUP
30% uplift in online order value
- High-capacity fulfilment while maintaining accurate inventory data
- 33,000+ financial documents accessed monthly
- Customised pricing with personalised account management and discounting
TOPLINE GROUP
B2B buying group with over 160 stores across Ireland
- 24/7 Self-service Functionality
- Complex ERP Integrations
- Customised GDPR-compliant hosting
PUNCH PUBS
100 pieces of unique, custom-built functionality
- 200% increase in Page Speed and Performance
- Checkout simplified from 5 to 3 clicks
- 8% increase in promotions claimed