Name: Fewer tools. More impact. Make your intranet the center of work.
Uploaded: 2026-09-16T15:34:44.200Z
Duration: 43 min 36 s
Description: Fewer tools. More impact. Make your intranet the center of work.

Transcript for "Fewer tools. More impact. Make your intranet the center of work.": Okay. So welcome, everyone, to the presentation today. We are thrilled to collaborate with the Institute of Internal Communications, with a new presentation around fewer tools, more impact, and how to make your Internet the center of work. So my name is Angie, and I'm thrilled to be here to, share with you some insights because what we're seeing today as internal communications leaders, you on the front lines of navigating modern workplace complexity, you're likely fielding questions, really tough questions from executives on how to be able to scale internal communication strategies, not just, again, for communications one way broadcasting, but across HR, IT, and operations. So today, my goal is to take aim at that single biggest barrier, I think, that might be standing in your way, and that is the barrier of digital friction. So getting everyone into a digital platform. And then my goal really is also to share those actionable strategies that we've seen with some of our customers at Lumapps to cut through the noise, to eliminate tool sprawl, and, of course, establish your Internet as a vibrant centralized engine of work. Before we get started, one of the most popular questions that we always get, during webinar is, is the session going to be recorded? The answer is yes, and we will be sending the recording as well as some follow-up information directly to your inbox afterwards. So as long as you're registered, you will be getting the the the link to view the on demand recording. And, of course, if you have any questions that pop up as we go, please use the q and a module that is in the platform to ask any of those questions. We'll tackle those at the end of the session. And, of course, if something resonates with you throughout the presentation, we love to, keep the conversation lively. So please feel free to share your thoughts and chat with even our fellow attendees within that chat module. We have an action packed agenda. So just really quickly, we're going to kick off by dissecting the steep cost of today's fragmented digital landscape and what does that mean. We're gonna examine how the Internet is evolving into a true operational layer, not just a communications layer, and then dive into three core pillars that I think are really important around, the success, again, to make, the Internet the center of work. And that is seamless access, frontline efficiency, and bringing in practical AI to drive real value versus just adding another level of digital complexity or noise. And we'll wrap up with some key takeaways. And, of course, again, if you have any q and a, we will answer those at the end of the session. So hopefully, by the time we finish, we have a clear roadmap for centralizing that employee experience, not just with the corporate entities, but also with frontline teams and those, work the diverse workforce that we have today. And you might be wondering who am I? My name is Angie Parsons. I'm the director of product marketing at LumApps and, you know, really an expert a little bit in internal communications. We have a ton of customers who are using their Intranets as a really interesting way not just to communicate to their employees, but also bring work in. So these are all examples that come also from our, our customer base. Before we get started, we have a quick poll for you. It'll be popping up here shortly on the screen. And let's see. The question that we have to ask is, how is your organization moving beyond one way broadcasting to strategic actionable internal communications? We'll just give us about thirty seconds to chime in. But are you bringing in workflows, for example, that, are about embedding into your line of business task forms, approvals directly into the communications? Do you have two way communication feedback loops? So whether you're using pulse surveys, sentiment tracking, you know, using tools to gather real time q and a sessions. Are you role based targeting personalization across your content, department locations, and employee needs? Are you bringing in AI powered assistance? So conversational AI, maybe some search, maybe some agents to trigger immediate employee actions, or maybe you're just still, you know, kind of, just really doing the typical, internal communications with broadcasting, relying on top down newsletters, corporate, updates, static Internet per posts or emails. And maybe you're doing all of these or would like to do all of these. Just a few more seconds. And it looks like we've got a few votes coming in. Two way feedback loops. Nice. Targeting. That's great. Okay. I think that is interesting to see because I think we'll address a lot about, each of these throughout the presentation today. Alright. So let's move back to the presentation, and we'll get started with the first kind of topic of today, and that is around the cost of digital friction. So if we look at some hard data around digital friction, we're seeing a pretty big strategic momentum that's actually quietly draining, that strategy that you might have. Some numbers that have given us a little bit of pause is that over a third of employees, around 36%, say that they can't access the critical tools or information they need to do their jobs. So we might have the best Internet out there, but if the employees can't access it or they don't find the information relevant, that's a really big problem. Meanwhile, enterprise tech stacks have ballooned to an average of a 112 disparate tools per company. So we're throwing a lot of applications, a lot of technology at each of our employees thinking that that might improve their productivity. But in fact, it's quite creating the opposite effect. We see that on average, it's been reported that two full hours are lost to productivity every single day by workers. And that's because, again, it's just a lot of noise for them. About a quarter of their entire workday is spent hunting for answers rather than helping them get work done and drive results. So whether we realize it or not, internal communications is actually now, in a really great place to be the center of workplace and employee experience. But work employee experience really can differ differently across, departments. For us as internal communicators, of course, it's about reach. It's about clarity. But then we because it's technology, IT really wants to focus on security, and cost consolidations. HR, they want retention, and they want to improve that employee experience. And operations, they just, you know, really are focused about getting things done, getting things done efficiently, and even being able to scale that, business wide. So while those are, you know, our charters, the employee, though, they actually feel a lot of fragmentation between all of these. It's not the same experience for the end user. Especially, again, we're throwing a lot of information at them, a lot of applications, a lot of tools, and new processes. So we're expecting them to accelerate execution, and it's just slowing them down. As we also see, we now have a very diverse workplace landscape. We have frontline workers. We also have, again, the the typical desk based worker, the corporate worker. We might have, remote workers and or even hybrid workers. So depending on your industry, you might have a a pretty broad mix of a diverse workforce, all, again, consuming information needing to get work done. And that front door of the company should actually feel the same to them. They really want, again, an employee hub that connects all of the employees to be able to give them success at work. And in years past, that might have been the goal of the Internet. Today, we're really thinking about this as a promise of a unified hub that's not just Internet communications. How do we elevate the internal communication strategy from just reactive services to actually being able to drive business strategy, what we've seen is that it really starts by recognizing that high performing teams, they're not just pushing out content. They're actually architecting the entire communication environment. So as you, an experienced architect, you are guiding your employees through an actually a narrative, a journey. And we might be starting off with targeted broadcast messages just as we always do across key channels. Then we're actually going to be starting to orchestrate a connected experience. So those different channels might be through mobile, through desktop, and different touch points, that are actually coming straight directly to the employees. And that then helps activate an immediate follow through with, actions that are done through either tasks, forms, maybe sign offs, validation that they receive the message and to know what to do next with that message. And we're then constantly optimizing performance. So being able to have some real time engagement analytics lets us, as internal communicators, know what to do next. And that in in turn, makes sure that internal communications isn't just about, you know, more noise, shouting louder, more communication. It really is about, like, a strategic way to remove the friction between hearing the message and then actually taking action. So as we talked about, we have a few pillars as we see it on how successful organizations are making that shift from just an intranet to really that center of work. The first one being that the Internet is becoming an operational layer for action. So when we looked at the last slide, we had kind of the broadcaster, the orchestrator, the awareness, and then the action and measure. And that is all enabled by what we call that employee hub, where the Internet was a part library repository of information. It was very top down. What we see is the Internet of the future becoming that operational layer. And as internal communication leaders, we're not just about creating more content, but about connecting the work. So we're gonna need to design an entire workforce experience, employee experience that helps the individuals learn to understand, act, and keep moving and delivering on the work. So if we imagine what our employee hub should look like, we think about this as not just a place to publish. So, of course, it's gonna have that layer of message messages, updates, information, company, knowledge, tools, and we're then also going to embed those, applications right where they're getting this information. So that now becomes the orchestration layer that we were talking about. It's bringing in all these elements. So whether that's like leadership updates, the knowledge base, the SOPs, the FAQ, we're bringing together maybe more toolkits, that people can access, whenever they need it in a digital format. We also can embed training and knowledge checks to make sure, again, that they're not just receiving the information, but they're actually doing something with it. And we can then bring in things like tasks, workflows, forms to help automate those things and get them checked off their list. Finally, I think a big part of the measurement is really those listening signals and feedback loop loops. So, again, it's not just us pushing, but we're continuously working to improve the process. And that to me is what an AI employee hub should really be, more more like, again, to move beyond just a traditional intranet, connecting those tools, the people, the knowledge. And it's not just, you know, here's another tool that we're giving you. It's bringing it all together. So the approach that we, wanna take, to help bring this communication collaboration platform to life will then really benefit all of our internal communication stakeholders, whether that's the internal comms professional like ourselves, where we can create and deliver content faster, we can improve on that impact and help design communication strategies that drive alignment and action. Then our desk based workers, for example, can make sure that they're staying connected with the team, that they have instant clarity on the work that they need to do, that they're able to complete their task faster, and it just provides them with a clearer workday. And then the forgotten frontliner actually is not forgotten anymore. They can gain primary work tool right in their pocket. Again, the mobile device, it comes to them instead of them having to sit behind a desk to get that information in their off hours or during breaks. So we have a continuous loop where corporate communication now is fostering engagement, and the engagement is generating insights, and those insights are helping to improve future communications. At the same time, this is really great for us as internal communicators and the the end user, but that same hub can also create different value across other departments. So whether that's HR, IT, operations, if you see we have alignment across all four of these functions, we can help that friction even more because we're, bringing what they need for for their their charters, their goals, straight into one simple platform again. So that employee experience is easier, but we're all getting to achieve the things that we need to do. Employee engagement retention, that tool adoption by bringing it all into one tool, that's also cost consolidation, and operations still gets control and improved productivity. So if we wanna talk about the next part of what we call the core pillars of success, that really is around simplifying access to information. As we mentioned, we've got the hub, hub meaning that we're bringing all of this access into one place. And that problem that we saw earlier of 112 apps across a single business, we can make that experience a lot more seamless. We're bringing it all into one tech stack, and, that's, again, the the big part of eliminating this friction. And it's not really just to force more employees into another platform, but we're streamlining it into one place that they use every single day. So in order to shift from a tool first versus an employee first thinking, we are looking at simplifying that access. So to make this transformation, we have to really think about, changing the questions that we're gonna ask. Historically, we've think thought about software rollouts driven really about that tool first question. Where should the content live? It's a lot of governance. Which applications are owning these workflows? And how do we drive the adoption of those particular channels? That's all part of your implementation strategy of an intranet. But if we're taking kind of more of an employee first approach, the questions are gonna change completely. Let's think about what is the next useful action for the purpose person once they get a piece of information, or update. What context do we they need at this time? Maybe how do we break that up into a more strategic phase rollout? How do we remove a handoff or a friction point that they might have from taking again that information into actually doing something with it. And a modern Internet, again, being that center of work, isn't gonna replace, like, an HR system or an IT ticketing system, for example. We're really bringing it together. So we're not just gonna surface the relevant tools and actions at the right time. We're bringing it directly into the flow of their work where they're getting that information. And at Lumapps, what how we think about that is really displaying that third party application data directly into the Internet. So where they're getting their communications, they're also going to be able to access the applications that they need. If we think about that, that brings four major operational benefits. First, it's improving the employee efficiency by cutting down on contact switching and app switching, Then by bringing in kind of like a micro app experience embedded into the flow, it's also then increasing adoption of those applications. How many times have you heard of employees not being able to access a particular tool because they don't have the login information, or it's just very cumbersome to find the link to get to that application? If it's embedded right into the the same systems that they're getting their information in and it's already logged in, it's much easier for them to actually use it, and adoption will increase. I think that makes IT very happy because then they're getting more ROI for the applications that they've implemented. So also for IT, that helps reduce any support team workloads because you have less tickets for, let's say, a password login and calls to HR or IT meeting help and support because maybe that information already lives within your intranet. You might have an article on how they can self serve some of that information for themselves. And then, of course, if they can't fix the problem on their own, they can escalate it. And then it really turns that complex or legacy desktop apps into a simple mobile friendly micro app widget, which is really great then because you can implement it on a mobile device. Or for teams that are on the go, they can access it just as well as the frontliners and the dust based workers. So how do we actually put that into practice with microapps? At LumApps, we have microapps that are really across four five distinct, entry points where the employees can interact with those. The first being we have, like, an application directory, basically providing a clean hub for them to find these tools, these applications. Then we have, embedded into comms and email. Whether that's an application or in an email, the employees can take action directly within those internal announcements. We also have, that mobile application where they can get that micro app functionality maybe right from their home screen within their mobile app. And then, we also have micro apps embedded into search. If they're looking for, let's say, PTO requests, how do I submit a PTO request? The search will come up with, a result. And as part of that result, you might also see a micro app that says, hey, would you like to submit a PTO request right now? And that, again, is that secondary, not just being surfaced the information, but then being able to quickly take action on it. So the potential for micro app use cases really is pretty endless because we can take any connected tool, any process, and we can convert it into a lightweight widget that can be delivered through any of the ways that we just discussed. So for desk workers, for managers, they can be booking meeting rooms, submitting expense approvals, checking leave balances, and, of course, things like requesting IT equipment. They don't have to log in someplace else. They can do it with a micro app. And for frontline and operational teams, that also could be really thing easy things like being able to check their shifts, logging in, clocking in time, completing safety checklists, and, of course, accessing training right within a mobile device. So everything's happening right there where they need it, where they're getting their information in their flow of work. And that is the difference, again, between an intranet and an employee hub. And a really powerful example from one of our customers is really, coming from our partnership with, John Lewis. John Lewis operating many department stores and supermarkets within, The UK. They employ about almost 70,000 workers and have a pretty big annual revenue across their entire operations. Their internal communications teams, they've actually developed over 30, micro apps. I think that number continues to grow, it seems, month to month. But these micro apps that they've developed really help cover everything from event registrations to training that they have for stores, to be able to do things like restocking requests, warehouse delivery tracking, and if they have at their corporate offices, visitor parking badges that they can assign, all being done through these micro apps experiences. So they've gotten also really great, performance out of this with, helping them deliver about 40 above their forecast for the year because they were able to make efficiencies due to this. Alright. So the second pillar is really now focusing on frontline communications. Historically, we think about corporate communication strategies being designed almost exclusively for those desk based employees who are sitting behind a desk. They've got a laptop. They've got a desktop computer. They have a company email. So you think about their experience. They're getting communications day in and day out. You might even also be adding on top of that more real time applications like, Slack or Teams. But if you think about the experience for a frontline employee, frontline heavy industries, these desk work deskless workers, they're almost operating kind of in the dark ages when it comes to communication. There's are, of course, a lot more manual, whether that's face to face of syncs or a bulletin board with information. So as you can imagine, information can get very stale for them. And we see that, you know, land across the audience, in different ways. So before we go on, I've got another poll for us to ask a question. Thirty seconds. What is the single biggest hurdle for your organization if you're a frontline organization, when it comes to connecting with your frontline or distributed teams? So are you looking to ensure that critical updates reach your desk list, your field workers without delays? Are you thinking about maybe the the implications of not having secure channels? We all hear about the employees who are communicating over WhatsApp. So that might be like shadow IT. Or are you looking at, the biggest challenge for you being a lack of visibility into the performance of the information, the engagement, or who's reading it, who's completing the tasks that they need to do. Or lastly, you know, do you really just not have as many digital tools for those workers? So the systems, again, that are built for those desk based workers, we don't have a mobile version of those. Alright. So polls coming in. Yep. Being able to reach everyone at the same time. So one broadcast that reaches everyone from desk based to to frontline, and then, of course, IT always asking if the tools that we're providing our employees are secure. So a little bit of change there. Alright. Let's go ahead and end the poll and move on. Awesome. So how we're seeing things, really from our customer base, we're we're hearing these things kinda daily. Our customers, whether they're in manufacturing, retail, hospitality, they all seem to kind of have a common set of challenges, again, with reaching their employees, who are not sitting behind a desk. And, you know, luckily, we do have some solutions that can help support them. So, again, moving away from kind of paper and manual based, communications, being able to provide access through all methods of distributions, really like an employee app, mobile app experience, that then can give frontline workers the ability to do some of their tasks, their checklists that they might be doing every single day right in that app that is alongside with any PDFs for SOPs, all their company updates in a nice clear feed or chat group that is for their department or their team or their shift. They can actually get those communication streams real time. And then that also offers management and internal comms professionals with the visibility that they need to to say, is our communication strategy actually working? We can see things like shifts, and the information that's being, communicated through the through those shifts. We can make sure that the messages are being received. And then, of course, kind of, bringing kind of this work hub experience to life. That could even include things like training all in one place. So, that just then provides better performance, better execution. Because what again, how we see things is that frontline communications improves when the messages that we're sending, the information, the knowledge is connected to that operations and the execution. So just a really quick, call out to some use cases that we have customers, using for frontline specifically around communications is also about getting work done. So we have use cases around things like onboarding, and the tasks that they need to do, to get themselves up to speed and starting work right away. Maybe it's also communications around shift handovers. We have some customers who are using, communications for frontline for town hall events, being able to broadcast those in a digital format, company news, events, feeds, and then, of course, like we said, the continuous improvement and feedback loops. So we're able to listen to all the voices across the workplace and then connecting that to improve the employee experience that we have. We also have a couple of examples. Like I said, we have great customers who are actually using a lot of this frontline communication strategy designed into how they have their employees work. So what I like about these cases that that it's that it not just says, hey. We're using it in this way, but they're actually getting some real tangible business value. So for example, at Heathrow, they are really all about operational speed. So replacing things like their paper based scheduling, they've got a lot of real time coordination. It's not just done day to day, maybe stale outdated, shift scheduling and shift planning. It's gotten a lot better from one week to one day. They can quickly turn those around. At Evolta, another, transportation, you might see these, locations like the due Dufres, duty free stores in airports. Their forecast has really been about scaling because not only do they operate in The UK, but they operate across 73 companies in over 5,000 airport locations. So for them, again, getting that, information out to each worker is really important, and they've launched kind of mobile access, helping them reduce paper by about 80%. And at Leonardo Hotels, another one of our clients, frontline knowledge is really now kind of more about business value. So they love to share business practice posts with each other across, different hotels. So if they've got a really great idea at one location, they're able to share that best practice, with other hotels, and it's really been a really great, sharing mechanism for them. So, really, again, it's not just about, the the communication, but bridging that frontline disconnect, helping them create really meaningful ROI because they're able to execute faster, because they've got better coordination across the information that they're sharing. It's less paper. They're getting stronger adoption and more consistent results with their execution. And, you know, again, this is all can be, manifested through an internal communications platform, beyond just a typical intranet. Alright. So last, pillar that we'll be talking about today is really, the role of AI in all of this and the relevancy that we have for internal communications. Before we get started, on this section, we have our last final poll for the day, and that is around what is your team's top priority for leveraging AI. I mean, I I can't imagine that there is a company out there that is not thinking about AI as a strategy. So for internal communications in your organization, how are you guys thinking about this? Is it around content creation? Is it around personalization, making sure that, the the information is going to the right people? Is it that search being able to surface the information that they need across company documents? Maybe it's q and a. Is it being able to use AI for measurement, to see some trends and maybe provide, solutions or suggestions on how to improve that? Maybe your priorities for AI is really all of the above, or maybe you're just in an organization that hasn't really kind of tapped into AI yet. You're not using AI collectively. You're still kind of stuck knowing where to move next. Content creation. Yeah. Pretty typical gen Gen AI, mechanisms. Alright. Let's go ahead and close the poll, and we'll move on. Alright. So let's talk about AI then. Well, we know, of course, AI can certainly help us with our first, first response around drafting content faster. We know that the power of AI really is a lot broader and can actually not just help us as internal communicators communicate more better, but actually helping the end user, the employees find the answers that they need. And maybe even, like, complete the tasks that they have to do a lot more seamlessly in the flow of work. So that's why it's not just AI alone. It's also about those human communicators to create those, journeys, the architect of the journeys, that really helps kind of remove that operational tax. So transforming corporate announcements into a more, you know, plain language, role specific guidance. The employee can actually translate that in a way that is meaningful for them. So, AI can really help kind of, bridge that gap of understanding what they're actually looking for to what you actually posted. It doesn't have to be like a one for one, search. It is also about communicating, sorry, connecting the employee to the right form, the right approval workflow. Maybe it's the service request. So that findability of the information that they need is really big. And then it's not just acting as, like, a very static chatbot. AI, again, very dynamic, can help, create kind of a a seamless connection between the communications that knowledge and the operational execution. So the activation of all of these things in one single place, it just makes the Workhub even more powerful beyond just an intranet. So, you know, for clarity's sake, we're going from just having AI for the sake of AI, but really making it practical and useful for the end user. It's not just generating more noise or another tool that they have to learn because AI can be very, very simple in that plain language, sort of way, it will actually help reduce it. So the employee can ask a question. They get their answer. They, can go ahead and take the action, and this eliminates a back and forth between, let's say, HR or IT or, you know, searching for, an article or an update or a post within their Intranet. It can go ahead and get the work done really quickly. And so when we design our, employee hub, it then transforms that static Internet or content repository because it helps them kinda create a destination, a place where they can go to that one single experience. It then can also create, those connections to the things that they need to be able to take action, whether that's an agent or specific form or workflow. And then it also helps to ensure that it's being designed for for every employee experience, whether that's a manager or a frontline, for example. They all get an experience that works for them that isn't just one standard that, everyone kind of has to fit the mold to. And then, of course, the ability to take measurement, to actually see trends, to actually improve from those is also a great benefit of launching AI within your Internet. So to recap, you know, we wanna make the Internet, the center of work, or rather, let's say that we're gonna rebrand it into a new employee work hub that helps reduce fragmentation, provides that access to the entire workforce because it's helping to solve, their their challenges, right where they need it. It brings the information, right into their flow of work. It helps solve that for the frontline experience as well. And now we're using AI to be able to do work easier. So if you're gonna be looking for a brand new, solution, maybe you're looking for another Intranet here shortly or, looking for a work hub solution in the next year to help you achieve your goals maybe in 2027. What we definitely suggest at LumApps is that you're not just looking for another channel vendor or another Internet vendor, but you really want that orchestration partner. So, again, bringing that frontline sorry, front door experience to help you connect not just communications, but HR, IT, and ops. You get a much stronger value proposition that helps the business drive value. So like I said, I'll end with this. LumApps is we are what we call an AI employee hub, not just an intranet that helps work come together. So whether we're bringing together the tools, the people, the agents, the knowledge, the communications layer into one single employee experience, The way we look at it is that experience is really across these four tenants. So whether that's company communications, in the very different, channels and mechanisms to get that information out. We also have microlearning and support for HR processes, bringing together tools, again, like Workday, SAP, or UKG, right where they're getting their their communications. We also offer a place for team productivity. So we've got task workflows, forms embedded right into those systems, and micro apps as well. And then we've got, on top of that, the AI layer that really helps power and level up the experience for the employee. So helping them find answers a lot faster. They're not having to switch systems. And more importantly, they can actually go ahead and take that action right away. So we, you know, really couldn't think about this holistically. It's not just the Internet being a a content repository or where information goes and, you know, is, sitting kind of on a shelf. And lastly, just so you know, we are also a partner with companies all over the world. We've got a lot of really great, customers who are doing just what we've talked about today, and that's bringing the, the Internet kind of into a new area era of, a place where they can actually get work done. A place where they're reducing friction, you know, really becoming that true center of work, and it doesn't feel like a burden for them to access. So as an employee, it's actually a joyous experience to be able to go into a tool like this rather than a burden. So thank you again for all of your time, and we are certainly happy happy to open this up to any questions. But if we don't have any questions, we can go ahead and also give you some time back. And, of course, like I mentioned, we will also be sending out the recording for this presentation and any follow-up information. And, again, just wanna give a big shout out and thanks to our partners at, the Institute of Internal Communications for giving us this opportunity to speak to you all. Alright. Of course, if you have any questions, please also feel free to reach out, afterwards. We are more than happy to answer any questions. And if you'd like to see the LumApps platform, we'd be more than happy to show you as well. Okay. Thank you. Thanks, everyone. I hope you have a great rest of your day and great rest of your week.