HIKMA: Developing an intranet strategy and improving content governance

HIKMA is a multinational pharmaceutical company that develops, manufactures and markets a broad range of branded and non-branded generic medicines. Headquartered in the UK, the company has employees working in multiple different regions including North America, the Middle East and North Africa.

The company’s intranet HIKMA Connect supports the company’s 9,000-strong global workforce, delivering important internal communications and helping with critical daily work that ultimately enables people around the world to be within reach of better health.

Making the intranet work harder

Wishing to increase intranet adoption and value across HIKMA’s highly diverse workforce, the global communications team felt that their existing SharePoint intranet could be refreshed. A global user survey was launched to better understand how the intranet could be improved.

The global comms teams felt they needed external expert input to fully interpret the data from the survey, understand options for the intranet, and to achieve consensus on next steps from a group of internal stakeholders who have differing perspectives and needs.

Spark Trajectory was engaged to crunch the numbers, analyse the data and define a headline Intranet strategy and roadmap. Following interviews with key stakeholders, we analysed and codified the survey data to come up with a recommended strategy and roadmap, detailing different options.

We documented the outline strategy and roadmap and presented it back in a virtual workshop involving a diverse stakeholder group to get feedback. Taking in a range of opinions from the workshop, we finalised a preferred route for the new intranet that had the backing of different stakeholders, providing potential foundations for the next phase of the HIKMA’s intranet.

Improving content governance

In parallel, the global comms team were also keen to improve content on the current intranet so it was more accurate, valuable, engaging and findable. Spark Trajectory was engaged to co-create a content governance framework and related assets to make it operational.

We deployed our Intranet Governance Accelerator to design a content governance framework for the intranet. Meeting weekly with the global comms team, we discussed aspects of governance, helping to define the detail across several different aspects of content management.

We then drafted a series of one-pager guides to provide clarity for regional internal communicators and content contributors across the globe, helping to ensure intranet content is successful, sustainable and compliant in a heavily regulated industry.

Armed with a more robust approach to governance and a series of invaluable assets, the project has put the global comms team in a position of strength to significantly improve intranet content for the current and future HIKMA intranet.