Lejre Kommune strengthens cohesion on Omnia

The new solution has also made it considerably easier to create and publish content, attracting more editors to be actively involved in creating and keeping news and other content fresh and accurate.

“The intranet basically fills three needs for us. It serves as a news channel, a collaboration platform, and a centralized toolbox with information and resources the employees need to execute their daily tasks. With Omnia as our new intranet platform these needs are well provided for”, says Claes Amundsen, Head of Communications and Media at Lejre Kommune, and continues:

“It’s much easier to create and lifecycle manage content in Omnia compared to our previous solution and the editors find the admin interface very intuitive. Furthermore, its targeting capabilities help us create and direct news and other content to the right users, making the information more relevant to them."

Coupled with the fact that the new intranet is perceived as more attractive, Claes believes that traffic will most likely increase and thus also the engagement.

“We were also able to integrate all our Microsoft 365 accounts on the Omnia platform, opening communication and collaboration between all employees. This will strengthen our cohesion”, Claes concludes.

An upgrade connecting the entire organization

Legend has it that Denmark’s birthplace is nestled in the hills of Lejre and that it was once the seat of ancient kings, the Scyldingas. Today Lejre is home to more than 28,500 citizens and attracts thousands of visitors every year, eager to explore its rich Viking remnants and history. The municipality has approximately 1850 full-time employees and is organized into nine centers, such as Welfare & Care, Children & Education, and Technology & Environment.

Lejre Kommune's previous SharePoint 2013-based intranet was fully functional, but out-of-date and difficult to keep updated and secure, partly because Microsoft no longer provides support for SharePoint 2013. In addition, its capabilities for creating shared spaces for collaboration and facilitating efficient communication were limited. According to Claes, it was also somewhat unattractive and uninspiring to navigate.

“We needed a modern and robust platform that would smoothly integrate with Microsoft 365 and help us improve our internal communication and collaboration. We met with Omnia’s experts and decided Omnia was the solution that best suited our needs. Moreover, we understood that it could be implemented quickly and its intuitive interface and built-in collaboration and targeting features appealed to us a lot”, Claes points out.

After the groundwork was done, Lejre Kommune started the implementation project in September 2022, coached by Omnia. The new intranet went live only three months later, on December 1.

“Our top priority was to have the new intranet up and running as fast as possible, and Omnia certainly delivered on its promise. It was an agile project in every sense of the word. We intentionally launched a light first version of the intranet with the ambition to continue developing the intranet after its rollout”, Claes emphasizes and adds:

“With Omnia, it’s rather easy to create, edit and publish new pages and content, and managing media files, so it has been well received among our network of writers and editors.”

Jacob Udby Olesen, Senior Digital Workplace Consultant at Omnia, highlights one of the challenges they had to address from the very start:

“We had to figure out how to integrate employees working in schools and other educational areas on the same Microsoft 365 Business platform as the rest of the municipality. These approximately 500 users, running Microsoft 365 Education license, could not communicate and collaborate with colleagues outside the education sphere on the previous platform. We solved this by tweaking Omnia’s connectors and with a little help from Microsoft.”

Less pressure on the Communications Department

Because Omnia being more intuitive and easier to use, especially regarding platform administration and content creation, more editors have joined Claes and his editorial team after the launch.

“We have many more editors now managing their respective units' pages, content, and news feeds. It frees up a lot of time for us in communications, as before it was just me and my closest colleague who had access to the publishing platform. Moving forward, we need to better understand what's driving traffic and what improvements our users want, so that it better reflects their needs and acts as a meeting point for the entire organization”, Claes notes.