Successful integration of SharePoint makes you look forward to Office365.

Today Vorsselmans is working for a year and a half with a new intranet portal built in SharePoint. Together with Luc Bruyninckx -ICT responsible and CNC programmer for machine control - we can look back on a successful integration project.

Luc: "Initially the question came from the HR department, which wanted to develop an information platform to inform employees from a single central point. Since we have had good relations with VanRoey.be for more than 12 years, we did not hesitate to ask for advice from the SharePoint experts. ERP solutions were also on the table at that time, but SharePoint seemed to be even more in line with our needs and offered us more flexibility.

Koen Van Loon; Sales Manager Business Solution at VanRoey.be visited Vorsselmans together with colleagues and says: "When setting up a new intranet environment within SharePoint, it is very important that we understand each other. Dialogue is everything, we listen carefully and put possible usage scenarios extensively on paper, after which we can give a relatively quick example of what the final result can look like.

Luc: "Indeed, because what started out as an HR question quickly resulted in a more comprehensive solution that we wanted to do more with. In addition to the personnel component, we also looked at our R&D department, which wanted to present ongoing projects to colleagues via SharePoint. All the ISO-related documentation material and test reports from system suppliers were also candidates to be made available centrally. Before that, this was done via a shared directory... Ideas were bubbling up, and that's what's great about SharePoint: we can continue to develop it! The demonstrations and the basic structure looked good; fresh and fresh.

Koen Van Loon: "Afterwards it was 'first things first', so after we had discussed the proposed structures with Luc, we first started with the HR section. Company regulations and policies are central, but today, for example, employees can also request leave days via the intranet."

Luc: "In the end, the HR component turned out to be just the tip of the iceberg. The ISO and R&D related branches of our intranet are now much more extensive.

There is a delicate boundary between oversupply and lack of information on the intranet: oversupply makes it too bombastic, people don't find their way around and quit. The same applies when there is too little life in the brewery. When news dates back to a year ago or an outdated module doesn't show any content anymore, there's little chance that you'll pick up a piece of news; you simply don't look anymore. I think that today we've found a healthy balance between relevancy, simplicity and quantity to satisfy our employees.

Today we've filled the home page with so much more than we initially intended; it shows our vacancies, calendars, news items and there are plenty of tiles that people can use as a shortcut to perform all kinds of actions or find information in no time at all.

• A who's who, because with 150 people in various departments, it can be difficult to know everyone, especially newcomers.
• The IT Helpdesk where people can easily create a ticket.
• A 'Maintenance' page that works like the IT helpdesk, but then to make notifications of jobs such as a defective lamp, a leaking faucet, a loose tile...
• An overview of the holiday arrangements of our suppliers.
• An overview of important 'SOS' numbers...