City of Drummondville: Development of a modern and engaging intranet

The City of Drummondville has completely transformed its internal communication processes with its new intranet. Employees are provided with a centralized tool to stay informed on how the various municipal services operate and perform. Nexus worked with the City of Drummondville's implementation team to create an easy-to-use tool that allows the nearly 500 employees to interact with each other like never before.

Business challenges

The City of Drummondville had a growing need to share information (documentation, news, events, workflow processes), and managing email had become a cumbersome task:

Without a unified information platform for employee communications, email management was difficult;
Email was the only way to communicate with all employees;
As most employees do not have access to a fixed workplace (with a computer and an email address), a solution was needed that would facilitate internal communication and allow information to be shared and disseminated outside of municipal networks.

Given that the City was already using Office 365, SharePoint was the preferred and implemented tool.

Proposed approach

With an understanding of the customer's needs, the project team proposed a simple intranet that would accurately reflect the working reality within the city of Drummondville.

Nexus M365's experts proposed an architecture of five SharePoint sites, each with a clearly defined purpose, making it easier to structure information for the city's implementation team and creating a user experience focused on the reality of employees.

The developed intranet has four main communication spaces based on the type of message and its origin, making the communication objective clearer from the employee's perspective. To increase employee engagement with the new communication platform, Nexus implemented a number of features. These include :

Use of a digital form to register for various city contests
Custom search for employee identification based on their role and job responsibilities
Dynamic display of employee birthdays directly on the home page

''The expertise of the Nexus Innovations team, combined with an agile approach, enabled the delivery of an intuitive intranet focused on the needs of our employees while staying within the allocated budget. The results and benefits achieved through the completion of this project have exceeded our expectations.''

- Martin Choquette, Director | Information Technology Services

Solution adoption

Several adoption and training sessions were provided to contributors and intranet administrators prior to production deployment to ensure that the City of Drummondville employees were comfortable with the platform. Ongoing support is now provided to ensure the sustainability of the solution and to assist users with adoption.
Nexus provided two in-person training sessions for super-users, allowing them to have an expert guide to learn best practices for creating content and increasing engagement.
A training session was also provided to the Information Technology (IT) department to ensure understanding of the various configurations and to facilitate system maintenance over time.
Nexus assisted the City of Drummondville with the creation of a governance and accountability plan (RACI) to develop a clear strategy for maintaining the solution and addressing problem situations as needed.
Nexus advised the implementation team on how to communicate with employees to facilitate change management.
Nexus also visited the site for the launch event. It was important for us to be present and fully embrace our role as a partner in this project.
Through change management support, Nexus provided tools to help with the adoption process, especially for services that were more resistant to change. Whether these risks were potential or real, steps were taken to improve the message explaining why the City of Drummondville was adopting a modern intranet and what would change in their daily lives.

Impact on the organization and its people

Here are the observed results by Drummondville:

Time and efficiency gains following the centralization of documentation.
Improved sense of belonging through the sharing of photos and achievements.
From the launch until February 23, we were able to avoid sending 205 emails.

Here are the gains acknowledged by employees:

Facilitated content creation through an intuitive platform.
Centralized communications by type and source (corporate, city employee community, human resources, information technology).
Quick identification of employees through hybrid search. Better employee engagement throughout the employee lifecycle.
Enhanced user experience over time through a scalable platform.
Improved adoption through the implementation of change management activities and training sessions for users.

"Nexus has been a valuable partner for us in the execution of this project. The development of the intranet has provided the City with several positive outcomes, particularly in terms of efficiency, communication, document management, and strengthening organizational identity. We are very pleased to have benefited from Nexus's expertise to guide and support us in various phases of the project. In addition to being highly competent in their field, the Nexus team simplified and communicated information effectively, facilitating our understanding of more technical sections. They created a conducive atmosphere for innovation, and the atmosphere was always pleasant during meetings. It was a real pleasure to collaborate with them."

- Véronique Leroux, Project Manager | Information Technology Service

Project team

Joel Vézina: M365 Expert
Lyamine Benkhadra: M365 Developer
Alicia Villeneuve: Project Manager
Alexandra Lévy: Project Delivery Director