Over the years, Compass365 has delivered numerous intranets for companies large and small.  Some of these intranets were built on out-of-the-box SharePoint, while many others were built on SharePoint and the Akumina Employee Experience Platform (EXP).  Each client’s needs varied, but regardless of how generic or tailored each build, in all cases, Compass365 delivered flexible communication platforms.

Recently we have heard multiple clients express one of two sentiments because of the Covid-19 pandemic.  Clients express a sense of relief because they previously launched a communication platform and can easily communicate with their employees in these unprecedented times.  Or they regret not having launched their platform sooner and describe resorting to less ideal ways to communicate with their employees, including email or outdated and cumbersome platforms.

For those that resorted to email, their challenge is clear – email is static.  Once an email message is sent it cannot be updated.  Updates and corrections to that first or last communication require more emails which again cannot be updated.  In this scenario, employees find themselves with no shortage of emails from corporate, divisions, departments, subsidiaries, partners, vendors, etc. inundating their already stuffed inboxes.

Dynamic situations like this pandemic call for dynamic and easy-to-use modern communication platforms.  This is where SharePoint and the Akumina platforms shine and deliver organizations immense value.  These platforms centralize and simplify communications and provide corporate communication teams the ability to quickly spin up new sites, pages, and components to support any situation.

Most effective communication plans include one or more of the following communication facets or channels:

• Periodic News Posts
• Policy Documents
• Virtual Flyers/Posters
• Leadership Communication/Messaging
• Frequently Asked Questions
• Link lists

Each of these communication facets can be implemented on the SharePoint and Akumina EXP platforms.  The following table proposes several target components on each platform that could be used to satisfy each communication requirement.

While both platforms can work to execute an organization’s communication plan, the Akumina EXP platform’s advantages over standard Modern SharePoint raise the bar.  These advantages include a high level of control over branding and dedicated content apps that facilitate and streamline content management.  Akumina also includes numerous flexible widgets with interchangeable views to display content, and a widget framework to extend beyond out-of-the-box functionality and create new widgets as needs arise.

It is unclear how long this pandemic event will continue to disrupt our day-to-day lives.  It could be many more weeks or months before we settle back into some sense of post-pandemic normalcy.  But whatever the new sense of normal turns out to be, one thing is certain – this will not be the last time companies need to deal with events that require a quick and agile implementation of existing or new communication plans.

Is your organization ready?

Contact us today to learn more.  Compass365 has successfully helped many other organizations and we can partner with you to understand your needs and implement your communication plan on a modern platform today.