Challenges
- Antiquated employee portal with limited functionality
- Mobility: many workers do not work from desks but are out in the city
- Incident monitoring and communications were hard
- Each department had specific needs, lots of people work in different areas with different interests
- Workers needed to access apps at the right time on the right device.
Project Summary
BSM engaged Microblau to help them create a digital workplace – one place where workers could find their schedule for the coming weeks, where they could make vacation requests and fulfill their HR needs. BSM wanted a way to get information out in real time to workers on the ground if any incidents arose affecting their daily work and be able to provide services for its 1700 workers across 24 business units.
Business Benefits and ROI
- The new digital workplace becomes the source for all work-related information
- User-centric – personalization at the individual and business unit levels, making content timely and relevant
- Access to all business apps enabling workers to work from any device anywhere
Infinitum Digital (formerly Microblau) is an official partner committed to Ibexa solutions, with more than 15 years of relationship for Spain. Our team of certified Ibexa developers guarantees a high level of experience with more than 70 projects completed for B2B/B2C clients as diverse as VisitAndorra, UNIR, UAX, BSM and Bellota.
We are a trusted Ibexa Partner. Our commitment to the Ibexa ecosystem has been recognized with three awards: Contribution of the year 2008, Advocate of the year 2020 and best Spanish Customer Project of the Year 2022.
Classic CMS & Intranets are dead. To envision The Digital Workplace, think first about Employee Experience and use an outstanding DXP to deliver it.
Why Ibexa?
Facilitating a digital workplace for a mobile workforce is at the heart of this project. BSM wanted to enable all users across all business units to have their own personalized digital space and empower them to collaborate, use and manage documents and information, access relevant business applications, and be able to connect to the workplace over any device at any time.
BSM selected Microblau in a joint venture with FHIOS to create a work ecosystem where all personnel could carry out their daily functions, collaborate and manage their work. To succeed, Microblau realized it needed to:
- Deploy a powerful Digital Experience Platform (DXP) to manage content, personalization, and integrations
- Put users at the center of the project and understand how they work and what they need to perform their jobs
- Incorporate Business Apps. Make sure people can access the apps they need to get their work done.
Developing an integrated platform
Today’s world is all about disruption, with mobile and BYOD the norm, not to mention new ways of working, multiple touchpoints, and the ‘now’ economy of instant interaction, highly individualized customer and employee experiences.
Recognizing this, BSM selected Microblau to create a work ecosystem where all personnel could carry out their daily functions, collaborate and manage their work.
Other collaboration platforms figured highly in their priorities, and having the ability to receive real-time information via instant messaging, for example, if it was necessary to close certain services due to a particular incident, was essential.
Another consideration was a single point of entry and content management. Personalization was another area of discussion not just for the employee but a landing page for each business unit was also important – so that workers could access relevant information and news specific to their discipline.
One place for everything
Knowing that this project has to withstand the test of time and be available for the next five to 10 years, it needed a solution that would last, was scalable, flexible, and had interoperability (with API connectors) as well as provide editorial flexibility, customization, and personalization. Microblau chose eZ Platform, a Digital Experience Platform (DXP) with a powerful content engine and strong personalization capabilities. It can seamlessly integrate with other systems. Here, it is connected to Office365, to Moodle LMS (Learning Management System), and to VisualPlan (for work rosters and calendars).
Authentication to the site is integrated into the corporate authentication system using ADFS (Active Directory Federation System) via SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language). Once in, a user can see their personalized page which is populated by integration with Meta4, the HR application which provides them with their data, divisions, and permissions to their specific business applications.
The Mis Cosas (my things) area enables a worker to access their HR data, such as bank information, academic qualifications, and view the people that report to them etc. It’s here that they can ask for time off and can see their vacation allocation and make requests to attend a course and will receive approvals via this page from their boss.
An Intuitive Digital Workplace
Managers have El Rincon Del Manager (manager’s ‘corner’) – where they can review their team and approve (or deny) requests. They get an aggregated view of every action, for example, seeing which employees are requesting to attend what courses or asking for time off. Approvals are then sent back to each employee’s page.
Integration with O365 means that people can see information from their groups in Teams or, if someone books an appointment, it would show up in their calendar. If there was a discussion in Teams about any particular cross-functional active group, they could see that information too.
Other calendar entries can be added via the integration with Moodle LMS. If there are things scheduled, a worker sees the notifications in their private calendar through the portal. They can also link directly to Moodle through the Single Sign-On. Additionally, they can access their work roster via the VisualPlan application integration. They see their specific shifts and can track their work schedules for the forthcoming weeks.
For that just in case scenario, alert systems have also been put into place. Maybe some systems are down, or some city areas are closed which has meant service changes need to be set up. A backup instant messaging system has been put in place so that everyone still has a means of communication.
Our challenge was to maximize the Employee Experience, therefore a performant DXP was a must in the project.
Each business unit has its way of doing things, and this is reflected in how it manages its content on the portal. An overriding request from the outset of the project was for flexibility. Flexibility to layout pages in three columns as opposed to two, for example, or to have a news flash at the top of the page.
As most of the stakeholders in each business unit have their main job beyond the responsibility of updating the pages, they needed an intuitive drag and drop system to create pages in the way they want which they have through Ibexa DXP Page Builder. Additionally, they wanted to be able to add videos and image galleries, all of which are possible through Ibexa DXP’s multimedia integration.
For the ‘corporate’ part of the site, permissions are only given to those in HR and Marketing & Communications to update these pages and each business unit has at least one editor who is allowed to update their specific BU area. If they want to publish content that they think applies to everyone, then there’s a workflow in place for the main administrators to check it to ensure it fits with BSM’s strategy and message.
Although early in the project to judge its success, there are already very positive signs. More than 70% of council workers are logging on regularly, and more than half of all interactions are done on mobile. People’s reactions are good. Many feel it exceeds their original expectations. They see that they have been heard and have a digital workplace fit for their needs with self-service, communications, and access to the tools and resources in a single place. They are now in a position to better serve Barcelona’s citizens.
