Sponda is a property investment company that owns, leases and develops office, commercial and retail premises in the biggest cities and growth hubs in Finland. The company employs around 130 people.
Sponda’s goal for internal communications is to ensure efficient flow of information, build team spirit within the organisation and increase employee engagement. The company fosters a culture of open communication, efficient communication channels and leveraging feedback.
The intranet is one of Sponda’s most important internal communication channels. The communications team work tirelessly to ensure that the content is up-to-date, relevant and easy to find. The team is responsible for uploading content, developing the structure of the intranet and improving the user experience. The intranet is being constantly developed based on user feedback to better support the organisation's communication goals.
Modernising the intranet became necessary when Sponda learned in 2023 that support for its previous intranet solution, Valo, which the company had also adopted with Advania’s support, would be phased out. Fresh Intranet, like Valo, is a SharePoint-based solution, which made the transition a straightforward process.
Sponda could see several benefits to Fresh, including seamless integration with a Microsoft-based environment.
The properties of Fresh appeal to both content editors and users
Fresh Intranet frequently gets praise for its user-friendliness and modern appearance.
‘Our users feel that navigating the intranet is easy and intuitive. Our administrators are impressed with the wide range of content management tools that Fresh offers, which make publishing content easier and faster,’ says Sponda’s Brand and Communications Manager Anita Riikonen.
Sponda ran a user satisfaction survey towards the end of 2024 to collect feedback on the navigation, content and news themes featured on the company’s intranet.
‘The feedback was extremely positive, and the majority of respondents said that they use the intranet on a daily basis. The survey also gave us some exciting ideas for future news features,’ Riikonen says.
Riikonen and her team enjoyed working with Advania.
‘The project was fast, smooth and delivered as promised. We wanted to avoid our staff’s having to learn a completely new kind of user interface and asked for the set-up to be kept as close to the old one as possible, and this is exactly what we got.’
