Organisational transformation through digitalisation for Pollmeier

Digitisation has had a significant impact on the life of society in recent years. Technological developments are changing the way we communicate, pass on information and consume knowledge. Companies are also increasingly being shaped by the digital transformation and must adapt their organisation to the digital transformation in the long term in order to remain competitive on the market.

This often involves a full-scale organisational transformation. Because enterprise digitisation is more than just an IT project. It stands for a modern way of working, a contemporary management style and company-wide technology that is always up to date.

In 2016 Pollmeier Massivholz GmbH & Co. KG decided to carefully restructure its digitisation strategy, relying on the support of Join GmbH and its NEUARBEITEN service.

Creation of a technical basis with the involvement of employees

Pollmeier is an international hardwood processor which, in addition to its headquarters in Creuzburg, Thuringia, has several locations in Germany and internationally. For this reason, their numerous employees are also separated by spatial distances. In order to achieve an effective and fast working method, it is therefore necessary to find an efficient platform for knowledge management and collaborative exchange. The plan was to deploy a new intranet based on Microsoft 365 throughout the entire company. Before this could happen, however, the existing Groupwise collaboration infrastructure and the Novell eDirectories had to be converted to Microsoft technology.

For this purpose, a migration of all Groupwise data (mailings, calendars, notes as well as document management) to Microsoft Exchange was designed and carried out. A special challenge was the changeover of the employees to the new system. In addition to the technical restructuring within an organisation, the employees must be consciously and actively involved in the design process. Against this background, the employees at the various locations were divided into work groups, which then received individual training sessions from consultants from Join GmbH. There they learned not only about the technological changes that had been made, but also how to use the programs. At the same time as the two to three-hour training sessions, the corresponding systems in the company were already being changed over. As a result, the employees were able to apply the knowledge they had learned and log on to the new system immediately after the training.

Introduction of the intranet for better collaboration

After creating a technical basis, Pollmeier’s employees now set about building a new intranet with Microsoft 365 together with Join GmbH. In addition to the goal of securing existing knowledge through uniform storage, the focus was on more efficient work by reducing the volume of mail and “paper processes”. In addition, flexible working options were created through mobile data access. At the same time, a shared intranet enables the comprehensive provision of information at all locations for all employees and creates a space for joint collaboration on documents.

The next step was to replace the existing Skype for Business communication platform with Microsoft Teams.This allows employees not only to communicate and share documents internally, but also to interact with external partners. In collaboration with Pollmeier employees, various content and templates are then designed to make workflows even more efficient and simple.

Shaping digitisation together

The special feature of our Neuarbeiten approach is the empowerment of companies to work independently on the Microsoft 365 platform, to develop new ideas and then implement them. We want to pass on our interest and knowledge to the individual employees so that they can ultimately drive their organisation forward themselves and develop an understanding of systems and services.

“Join is a constant companion to our digitisation strategy. By successfully communicating the technical change to our employees, Join has succeeded in enabling secure as well as borderless collaboration, while at the same time creating sufficient freedom for our own ideas and opportunities.”

Sven Raab, IT Pollmeier Group

Are you also looking for a suitable digitization strategy that fits your company individually? Our Neuarbeiten team will be happy to help you implement it!  Learn more about Neuarbeiten here.