How Danish Company Sports shifts from one-way to collaborative communication with 79 sports associations
Communication with and between our 79 sports associations was limited, outdated and one-way via newsletters and a cluttered website. With Colibo, we've made it much more dialog-based.
Lisa Skjold Slothuus, Communication Consultant, Danish Company Sports
Danish Company Sports
Danish Company Sports is a non-profit organization that engages more than half a million people in company sports associations, workplacesm events and activities all over Denmark. Danish Company Sports has existed for more than 75 years and has wellbeing and movement on the agenda - also politically. Danish Company Sports has 69 local company sports associations and 10 national associations, such as the correctional service sports association (Krimialforsorgens idrætsforbund), the supermarket chain Coop, and a railroad sports association (Jernbanefritid).
The challenge
Danish Company Sports had one-way communication with their 79 sports associations through their newsletter, emails and a cluttered website. This made it difficult for the sports associations to find the necessary information as they had to look in several places. At the same time, it was challenging for the sports associations to communicate with each other.
Danish Company Sports only communicated with the main person responsible for each organization and wanted to involve others such as volunteers and facilitate knowledge sharing between them. They wanted to offer the associations a shared space for communication.
In addition, they wanted to segment their content to avoid mass broadcasting information that would only be relevant to some.
All in all, their goal was to provide better communication options.
In the search for flexibility and design, Danish Company Sports teams up with Colibo
Danish Company Sports collaborated with an agency to investigate intranet platform options. However, the agency concluded that Danish Company Sports needed to build their own solution. Lisa explains that this was not an option due to the complexity of the task. Fortunately, they had heard of Colibo and decided to look into the platform.
Colibo's platform seemed the most flexible. The other vendors didn't have enough experience. We needed something solid and peace of mind that it would just work.
Lisa Skjold Slothuus, Communication Consultant, Danish Company Sports
Lisa elaborates
Colibo is simple. It's easy to understand and work in the platform from both the user and administrator side. The flexibility of the platform is sublime. We can customize it as we want; add and remove things - and build the front page as we want.
When choosing a platform, Danish Company Sports prioritizes features that suit their needs, such as being able to segment content effectively and a user-friendly design. Lisa elaborates:
Groups was also one of the reasons for choosing Colibo. The fact that we can segment content is very important. Not all suppliers could do it in a way that we wanted. The design was also crucial. Colibo is user-friendly and intuitive - an important factor for our elderly users.
The solution
Danish Company Sports launches their internal communication platform, Hjemmebanen, based on Colibo, to create a digital community where everything is together. They use targeted groups for employees, the board, local city groups, groups depending on sports - eg. for soccer coaches.
Here are a few examples of how groups can be used in Colibo within the sports world:
- Local groups
- Youth teams
- Stakeholders
- Sports genres (padel, football etc.)
- Economy and IT
Colibo brings everyone together. The right people in the right places. You're not just in a big network; you're in your own department and the groups that matter most to you. It's about professional community and getting the relevant content.
Lisa Skjold Slothuus, Communication Consultant, Danish Company Sports
Is there anything Danish Company Sports can do now that they couldn't do before Colibo?
With Colibo, we can build networks around different groups. Our board, for example, now has their own exclusive space for file sharing and seamless communication. They had to use email and Sharepoint before, but it's neither intuitive nor collaborative like Colibo. Colibo's platform centralizes everything and we lacked that before.
Intranet replaces newsletter and website section
Danish Company Sports replaces their newsletter and a section on their website with the internal communication platform called "Hjemmebanen" and they put all relevant information for their users here. News comes out in the news feed and this makes it easier to search for older news. Lisa continues:
It's cool that you can push out notifications with the push function. And you can easily search and find old news. It's so much easier in Colibo compared to email.
Colibo is worth the investment. It is the future of internal communication.
