Summary
Improved employee engagement: employees are excited about their new intranet and volunteer to administer their team pages.
Increased productivity: Florence Bank could easily double the number of forms they create and maintain every week with the online forms feature.
Trusted support: during implementation and beyond, the team at Florence Bank knows they can always rely on IC’s responsive support team for help and best practices.
Honestly, our new IC company intranet is so much fun. The fun is also contagious, as we have people now volunteering to own their department pages. It’s great to see the lightbulbs turning on, and we’ve been able to reenergize our employee base during COVID-19. Our intranet is now so easy to update, and I can say truthfully that this is one of my favorite projects I’ve worked on. The IC team is phenomenal, and you guys have really knocked it out of the park!
– David Limero, Vice President and Information Technology Manager, Florence Bank
About Florence Bank
Florence Bank, headquartered in Florence, Massachusetts, is a mutually owned savings bank chartered in 1873. Currently, the bank serves the Pioneer Valley through 12 full-service branch locations in Florence, Northampton, Easthampton, Williamsburg, Amherst, Hadley, Belchertown, Granby, Chicopee, West Springfield, and Springfield. Additionally, Florence Bank offers 25 ATMs and a wide range of financial services, including investment management through FSB Financial Group (FSBFG) to consumers and businesses.
The 215-person team at Florence Bank is proud to have been consistently voted best local bank by the readers of the Valley Advocate and the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
The problem: an aging & cumbersome company intranet
Florence Bank knew that the organization had a problem with their intranet. Their custom-built company intranet was aging and becoming problematic to maintain. It also had a steep learning curve and required the support of the IT department for content updates and design changes.
Because of these challenges, the intranet was becoming stale over time and was lacking the employee engagement and social features of newer platforms. Users also struggled with:
- Organization of important documents and content
- No search or indexing capabilities
- Sharing essential updates and events with the team
Florence Bank knew it was time to make a change and explore more engaging and intuitive options.
The solution: IC’s feature-rich company intranet
In 2017, Florence Bank began evaluating company intranet providers. Having heard of IC through several references, they were impressed with the intranet solution’s feature-rich platform and intuitive interface. Ultimately, they decided to become partners with IC and began implementing their intranet solution at Florence Bank in 2020.
With IC, we were able to improve upon our old company intranet in almost every way. Having a system that’s intuitive and not intimidating for the average person to administer is powerful.
– David Limero, Vice President and Information Technology Manager, Florence Bank
The result: a powerful & intuitive company intranet
After implementing their new company intranet, Florence Bank is thrilled to be using a robust and easy-to-use modern intranet platform. Here are some of the key features that the team is using to improve employee engagement and productivity with their new intranet:
“Like a pizza” customization options
With IC’s intranet platform, the team at Florence Bank was thrilled to discover that they could take advantage of the platform’s out-of-the-box features (such as their powerful, “Google-like” search functionality) and then pick and choose which add-on features and widgets to use. This meant that Florence Bank could build a solution that was tailored to their wants and needs rather than overflowing with unneeded applications.
For example, the HR department at Florence uses several of the ready-to-use widget options to draw attention to announcements like employee anniversaries and new hires. It has been a fun and valuable way for their team to get to know each other, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when employees cannot physically be together. In addition, each of their team sites features a “meet the team” widget allowing people to easily find each other and connect in ways that were not previously possible.
Our new IC company intranet was, in other words, just like a deluxe or special pizza. It was up to us to take off what we didn’t want or to eat everything!
– David Limero, Vice President and Information Technology Manager, Florence Bank
Online forms
Several departments at Florence Bank created operational efficiencies using their new company intranet’s online forms feature. These forms require zero coding knowledge, and the form workflows have allowed Florence Bank to eliminate several antiquated forms previously built in Word and Adobe. Although the team is relatively new to online forms and workflows, they’ve already replaced several cumbersome processes, such as email approvals.
What’s more, all these forms and workflows can be built and updated by non-IT staff. This empowers all intranet users to build and maintain the forms they need themselves. For example, with their legacy intranet forms, the IT department at Florence Bank was dealing with three to four calls per week related to forms. However, David Limero could now easily see his organization creating and updating double that number without the need for IT support.
The team at Florence Bank plans to create many more online forms and to use the survey, quick poll, and other social features to keep employees coming back to the intranet in the future.
Identifying opportunities for improvement with analytics
Now that Florence Bank has launched its new company intranet, the next phase of the rollout involves identifying opportunities using IC’s advanced analytics feature. This analytics feature is a powerful way to identify gaps and highlight what’s working and what isn’t.
Knowing what our gaps were and being able to alleviate these frustrations for our staff was something we were unable to accomplish on our previous platform. Continual investments in educating staff on the full capabilities of IC will drive more innovation and creative problem solving by our power users.
– David Limero, Vice President and Information Technology Manager, Florence Bank
Support from IC throughout the journey
Migrating to a new intranet platform is a journey, no matter where you start. The team at Florence Bank was thankful to have the IC support team on board to help them throughout their journey. Here’s what they had to say:
The IC support team was a great resource along the way. They helped us set realistic expectations of how the site buildout should progress. Towards the end of the project, the IT team sent several (often last-minute) technical questions to the support staff, and they were very responsive and helpful. We were able to customize just about everything we wanted without sacrificing functionality. We were very satisfied with the level of expertise and responsiveness of the IC support team.
– David Limero, Vice President and Information Technology Manager, Florence Bank
Discover the benefits of IC’s company intranet for yourself
See how our company intranet solution could benefit your organization! Simplify your processes, drive employee engagement, and save time by switching to IC’s intranet solution. The first step starts by booking a no-obligation call with our team to see our software in action. See how much easier your processes could be by booking a call now!
We’ve been able to streamline communications and drive users towards a centralized single source of information that’s maintained by department stakeholders instead of relying solely on our IT department. It’s really generated a lot of excitement, and it’s great seeing employees so engaged.
– David Limero, Vice President and Information Technology Manager, Florence Bank