Healthy ruminants, poultry and pigs thanks to Dierengezondheidszorg Vlaanderen and SharePoint

Managing information centrally and sharing it efficiently with all employees, farmers, veterinarians and partners is crucial for the proper functioning of DGZ. Danny Geyssens, IT Manager says: "We bought SharePoint but failed to implement it across the organization. Only limited use was made of it, especially by the ICT team. It was clear to me that a different approach was needed to make this project a success.

"During VanRoey.be's end-of-year event, a number of existing clients presented their successful SharePoint implementation process themselves," says Geyssens, "and VanRoey.be's role in it proved crucial. Based on these testimonials, we decided to request a quotation for the implementation of the 'VanRoey.be SharePoint Framework', which had already been thought out in detail, was very well done and received a great deal of positive feedback, and we decided to build up our environment in the process. As a result, we developed a variant of the standard VanRoey.be concept.

Geyssens: "For us, it was very important to include the 'intranet' concept in the story straight away. The goal was for all employees to jump on the cart and continue to use the system intensively, even in the long term.

That's why the DGZ Connect home page has been set up so that it can literally function as the 'start of your working day'. Here, employees can find an overview of internal news items, telephone numbers of specific employees, shortcuts to the web applications and they can navigate to all the other parts of the site.

The fact that the whole thing has been given a pleasant layout also plays an important role, as employees find their way quickly and efficiently by using clear tiles with clear icons. The whole thing works intuitively and does not look too technical, so the environment is set up in such a way that users can work in it without the intervention of the IT department. As a result, we notice today that everyone, even those with little SharePoint knowledge, can find their way around very quickly.

In addition to user-friendliness, the platform also offers a wide range of integrated functionality to work together in a more structured way. We will explain a number of important aspects of the set-up:

• Project portal: Danny: "Today, our employees can create new project sites and projects themselves with approval processes. They get a clear overview of all projects in which they are involved, as well as a live overview of all outstanding project tasks.
• Consultation portal: "Employees can also create their own consultation sites. Again, on the home page, they get an overview of all consultations and outstanding tasks resulting from this are listed.
• General Info: "Libraries with common general documents for employees, such as collective labour agreements, policy documents, training presentations, etc., are now made available centrally. And thanks to version history and check-ins, we avoid misuse or duplication of work."
• Team sites: "Our team sites, on which teams can build their own sub-portals, are slowly but surely beginning to take shape. The biggest challenge here is to choose and implement the right solution within all the possibilities offered by SharePoint.

A new way of working

"Calculating the result of this implementation is difficult because it is a completely new way of working. SharePoint has now been fully implemented and the intranet in particular is being used well. there is a longer adoption period for the other components, but we do notice that more and more people are starting to pick it up and use it. we must continue to invest in supporting our employees in order to get the most out of SharePoint, but that is self-evident in such a large project.

On a good cooperation?

Danny: "That's right, we are very pleased with the cooperation with VanRoey.be, which was always perfect, even though we often work together remotely. You respond quickly to e-mails and any problems is always solved quickly, this efficient response is a great asset, but not the only one, and we particularly appreciate your willingness to share knowledge, so that we, as the customer, are able to manage the solution ourselves as much as possible, and we always receive clear documentation and a general explanation of the concept, combined with a general explanation of the concept, was given at the launch.

"But you don't have a problem with technical aspects either: even when adapting code that you have written yourself or other aspects of the SharePoint configuration, we never get any head wind; on the contrary, we even get all the help we need to get started ourselves. Last but not least, the confidence is complete. SharePoint is not the only project we have realised with VanRoey.be, it's yet another success story after successful renovations of, among other things, the infrastructure with Managed Services, GDPR-ready security, license management, Office 365, ...".