IDKIDS

The challenge

At the beginning of 2020, the group initiated a transition to the Google Workspace suite, replacing their intranet, based on Sharepoint for document management, and Wordpress for communication. They reconsidered their approach, aiming for an intranet that would allow for a more integrated and user-friendly solution. Their main criteria were:

• The platform must be flexible to address a heterogeneous audience and tackle cross-cutting topics, as many different brands, languages, countries, and professions collaborate within IDKIDS, constituting just as many typologies and therefore different entry points.
• News sharing needed to be revamped to provide more information and connect with each employee.
• The extensive document base of over 8,000 critical business documents had to be maintained, consolidated, and centralized, as it was crucial for store employees' daily activities, including merchandising, team organization, sales management, and more.

Like many companies during this crisis, IDKIDS struggled to maintain connection with employees now working from home. Previously, the group was cautious about what could be shared with the rest of the company, resulting in limited and formal communication. The crisis pushed IDKIDS to break down communication barriers to amplify employee engagement.

Plus, their previous system of Sharepoint for document management and WordPress for communication was quite cumbersome. WordPress, of course, doesn’t allow for sending segmented or targeted communication, and the internal communication team struggled with managing two platforms that didn't communicate with each other. These challenges led IDKIDS to turn to LumApps.

Why IDKIDS chose LumApps

Defining the goals of the desired solution allowed IDKIDS to position LumApps as the top choice, particularly for its simplicity, design, connectivity, and integration with business applications and collaborative suites.

To encourage employees to contribute and interact, the Internal Communication team turned to a solution that allowed each employee to express themselves and facilitate interactions in a more spontaneous and informal manner.

Additionally, easy administration of the site and content management was necessary for efficiency. LumApps offered improved intranet management and design capabilities that matched the group's desire to highlight the employer brand through shared communications and resources.

Furthermore, utilizing the capabilities of Google Workspace in integration with LumApps was a crucial criterion to ensure a smooth transition from the Microsoft environment. The successful implementation of the LumApps platform and the integration of Google solutions enabled IDKIDS to connect employees and maintain contact during the health crisis, something that wouldn't have been possible before. This highlighted the importance of internal communication in creating connections and reaching all employees with content that went well beyond official announcements.

Key Use Cases

Group News

A team of 4 internal corporate communicators regularly publish group news on the portal. These are primarily corporate news and internal information to ensure a certain level of transparency with employees, including project updates, messages on daily life at IDKIDS, activities of the group and brands aimed at future partners or employees. IDKIDS uses the LumApps campaigns feature to send targeted news by brand and country to share information with the right people and create a personalized experience. 

Personalized Knowledge Base

Access to more than 8,000 documents and resources is essential for employees' daily tasks. Through synchronization with the Active Directory, Google Drive folders are selectively shared and surfaced on LumApps with the same level of customization: each employee can find the processes and documentation they need in their store or department without being overwhelmed by irrelevant content in their context. Content producers can contribute autonomously by maintaining and updating content relevant to their scope, thanks to the page structure and access rights set up by platform administrators. For example, the HR team provides and maintains generic HR documents directly on the platform.

Sharing Communities

Open communities are an important aspect for IDKIDS, allowing employees to engage in discussions with their peers and management, bridging the gap between headquarters and stores, and considering feedback from the field. The IDKIDS community, the most active space, brings together the group for victories, news, store openings, uniting employees from all locations through bottom-up communication.

Content Translation

IDKIDS uses content translation widgets to provide a multilingual platform for all employees. The widgets make the translation task simple for contributors, saves valuable time for content creators, and improves the user experience since employees can consume information in their chosen language. Additionally, the interface is displayed in 8 languages according to the user's browser settings, enhancing accessibility.

The Result

Since transitioning to the Google suite and implementing LumApps, the collaboration environment offered by IDKIDS has become much more appealing. Easy communication, resource availability, and open exchanges in a centralized space have allowed the group to achieve a successful transformation of the working environment. Group news articles are now visible and distributed to a larger number of employees. The Internal Communication team is able to reach over 6,000 employees throughout France and worldwide, instead of the 600 most connected employees in the company they could reach before. By reaching this wider audience and using their IDKIDS Forum to do so, the group has seen a constant increase in interactions between employees.

The Internal Communication team has also transformed the formerly formal weekly communications sent separately to stores and central services into shared communication with richer and improved visual content. Furthermore, consolidating the group's resources and information in one accessible place for all has allowed teams to streamline their workload. Content can be created on a single platform and published in one place. Additionally, publication rights can easily be extended to a larger number of contributors. The group's knowledge base is also more intuitive and relevant, providing a positive impact for users who can quickly and easily access available documents.

We now share a lot more content developed through the portal, which allows us to offer more user-friendly content (videos, etc.), and with a design that makes content consumption more enjoyable.

About the Partner

IDKIDS teamed up with LumApps’ partner Inaubi to launch their project back in 2020. Inaubi guided the internal communication team through various project stages:

• Conducting workshops to define the portal's requirements, including usage, different personas, design, and navigation
• Building the portal and associated access
• Managing and implementing the change management plan
• Training and supporting the Communication team in content management and LumApps platform administration
• Monitoring usage over time to make any necessary adjustments
• Actively staying updated on new LumApps features that could provide added value to IDKIDS teams