The challenge

The Antwerp Fire Brigade had an outdated intranet, which - although managed by the communication department - had not been used quite frequently by them nor by the other departments in the past years. It was there and that's about all. The communications department wanted an active and attractive intranet again.

In addition, there was an internal segregation between administrative and operational staff. This is understandable due to the nature of the work, but a new intranet might help bring those two worlds closer together.

They started looking for a tool that could fulfill a dynamic role. A place where you can view static, general information (such as news, processes, procedures, etc.) on the one hand, and interact with each other in a community on the other. Moreover, there was a need for a place that you can make your own, based on your profile, your position and your interests. So an individualized view.

In short, they were looking for a cool, interactive tool that works for them on top of Google Workspace. To bring people together and to offer added value at an individual level.

The solution

Antwerp Fire Brigade already was a customer of g-company, for Google Workspace. When they asked for a renewed intranet, we presented them with the different options within our ecosystem: Google Sites, Happeo and Lumapps. The choice fell on the latter tool, because Lumapps primarily looks at the structure of an organization and places the social environment on top of it. This working method is most in line with the organizational structure and the wishes of BZA.

Every customer has ideas about what they want with an intranet, this was also the case at BZA. It is important that those ideas are structured, because you start out completely blank. g-company played an important role in this: our consultants started by asking a lot of questions. What exactly do you need? How should it work? What should it look like? Who can see what? What do you want to achieve?

Based on these questions, the ideas were converted into a concrete design that g-company implemented together with BZA.

On the back end, in terms of IT, we made sure that the Google admin part connects seamlessly with Lumapps. In this way, for example, Lumapps uses the same rights structure as Google Workspace and you get access to certain parts on the intranet based on your Google Groups memberships.

The third aspect that g-company helped with is the graphic design, in which a graphic framework has been placed on top of the Lumapps environment, to meet the desired branding.

Usually, g-company also trains the end users after implementation, to help them get to know and use the new intranet. However, BZA has chosen to do this training internally, something that we only encourage since the organization has to carry it itself after all.