When Oras Group's intranet needed a new look and a more modern user experience, IT Manager Aki Saurimaa turned to HiQ. By that time Oras Group had already been using the HiQ's FRENDS integration platform to bring cost savings, increase transparency and improve error management. From these points of view, it was natural to extend the collaboration to Office 365 Elevate services.

"Streamlining, speeding up the site and improving mobile usage were the main goals of the intra-reform. The old intranet had coded functionalities that had broken down over time. In the new one, we wanted to use as much of Microsoft's default functionality as possible," describes Saurimaa. 

The implementation of Oras Group's new global intranet proceeded flexibly and agilely. There were no hesitations in pivoting when necessary. All communication and project management related to the building of the intranet was handled via Microsoft Teams.

During the development of the intranet, different models were tested, and tailoring brought to production followed an expedited schedule. In between, tight sessions of a few hours were squeezed, with an always 100% focus.

"We immediately tested the new features and HiQ immediately started fixing or developing more as needed. The changes were quickly implemented and we could move on to the next thing. This approach was very well suited to this particular project, as we didn’t actually have the stone-cut release date we were aiming for. The agile development was followed and executed by way of almost real-time communication in Teams," says Saurimaa.

HiQ also took care of transferring content from the old intranet to the new one. Once the technical implementation was complete and the contents transferred, a decision was made to publish a new intranet – this decision too took place in the Teams Discussion Area.