Oatly globalizes their internal communications
With the launch of a new Omnia-based intranet, Oatly has created a global platform for their internal communications. The new solution supports employees in their daily work in every corner of their worldwide organization, providing them with news alerts and insights into what’s going on at Oatly while at the same time strengthening internal collaboration and cross-border communications.
– With Omnia, we have for the first time created a unified, dynamic, and user-friendly global platform for internal communications. Through our much-improved digital workplace, users can also access our e-learning system, Teams, Office 365, and other work tools. This will significantly boost our internal collaboration throughout the world, says Johanna Wahlberg, Communicator at Oatly.
More appealing intranet
The company was founded in the 1990s after the discovery by a research team at the University of Lund that natural enzymes can convert fiber-rich oats into nutritional liquid food. With a patented enzyme technology for the production of oat-based food, Oatly produces a wide range of products, such as a variety of oat drinks and oat-based yogurts, creams, and ice creams. With production and global headquarters in Sweden, as well as offices and production sites in a growing number of locations around the world, Oatly is now present in almost 30 countries across Europe, Asia, North America, and Australia.
Up until December 2019, Oatly used an out-of-date Sharepoint-based intranet with insufficient accessibility, functionality, and interactivity. To establish more unifying and engaging internal communications, with relevant content for the entire organization, there was obviously an urgent need to modernize the platform.
– The former intranet was used only by a few people in Sweden and Germany. The system was neither user-friendly nor particularly appealing, which consequently generated very low usage. And it wasn’t possible to personalize the content. Moreover, we needed to match our internal communications with our external and unify our organization via a common global platform. Precio Fishbone’s intranet solution Omnia offered a flexible and adaptable platform, fitting our needs perfectly, Johanna explains and adds:
– Precio Fishbone’s consultants are very customer- and solution-oriented and keenly interested in further developing their platform, which reinforced our trust in them. During the course of the project, we have also noted that they are more than willing to listen to our ideas for improvement, while always considering the possibility of incorporating some of our suggestions into the platform for the benefit of all their customers.
The overall implementation project, including the development of a new and unique Oatly design and information structure, started towards the end of 2018. The new Oatnet was launched in Europe and Asia in December the year after and in the USA at the beginning of 2020. The intranet is now fully implemented in all units and countries where Oatly operates.
Values-based communication available for all
– The new intranet makes possible more inclusive and values-based internal communications throughout our entire organization. All employees can for the first time access the same information at the same time. Oatnet has also made it a lot easier to contribute, comment on, and share information across unit and country borders. And with Omnia’s smart functions for targeting and personalization, the content is now much more relevant for everybody, Johanna emphasizes.
A large proportion of Oatly’s employees are on the move most of the time. So it’s obviously of enormous value for them to access the intranet, and the information and discussions it provides, via a mobile.
– Omnia’s responsive design and mobile app make it a lot easier to keep updated on things that are both good to know and nice to know, regardless of where you are. It also enables us to meet various information and communication requests from within the organization, particularly when addressing the needs of our many deskless employees, Johanna underlines.
