Intranet Case Study

ATS Euromaster Ltd is part of the Euromaster Group. Established in Great Britain in 1965, ATS Euromaster has 2,250 employees, more than 330 centres (a mixture of retail, comprehensive and truck locations) and over 800 vehicles to provide coverage nationwide. It is the largest comprehensive tyre distributor, supplying tyres for everything from cars and vans, to trucks, coaches, forklifts, agricultural machinery and construction plants.

Find out more about ATS Euromaster

The challenge

To deliver an intranet which would improve employee engagement and provide a platform for delivering news stories and articles. ATS were looking to boost employee moral by promoting reward and recognition across the business and to bring all documentation together in one easily accessible location. In addition, they wanted to improve communication across the organisation and provide greater visibility to business processes, procedures and create a current and up to date telephone and service centre directory.

The solution

The journey with Sorce started with the launch of a simple but highly effective intranet in 2008. The responsibility of the site lay with a small internal communications team, the members of which had little IT knowledge. The same team are still managing the site today.

The communications team wanted employees to feel involved with the new site from the beginning so the team decided to run a competition for employees to come up with a name for the new intranet. ‘Connect’ was chosen, a memorable name which captured the essence of a site which was developed to connect people together and link processes.

Connect immediately improved communication, news and updates were given a standard look and feel. Documents were also now in one central location and a telephone directory was in place, saving lots of time across the business. Connect evolved organically over the next 10 years following feedback from employees and as processes within the business changed.

After years of growth Connect was in need of a refresh to ensure it was still meeting the original business objectives and to enable it to meet new ones. Following a thorough content audit and document review, Connect was relaunched in 2015 using the latest Engage user interface.

Connect is a dynamic site that is kept up to date and relevant. The contact directory is key to all employees at ATS Euromaster. There are 250 people based at the head office and another 2,000 spread across 330 service centres throughout the UK making it important that contact details could be found easily. A service centre search on Connect will provide you not just with the contact details of the manager at that centre, but with their manager’s details, the centre number, the address, telephone number and more.

All documents including policies and procedures are stored centrally on Connect for everyone to quickly find. They are saved in department folders so it’s easy to find what you are looking for. This has especially helped people at the service centres, who can now find documents from head office and also access key information quickly whilst on the telephone or speaking with customers.

From the Connect homepage, there are useful ‘Quicklinks’ to lots of external sites and other business systems, making Connect the go-to-place for everyone’s business needs, providing access to HR systems, Sales systems, Account Payable, Finance, Accident Reporting and more.

“The number of documents on the site had grown and grown. A thorough review of the documents was required to establish what was still applicable and what was out of date. The latest Engage technology appeared to be far more user friendly and easier to administer, update and maintain so we made the decision to launch a fresh new site.Connect is now slicker, more modern and up to date. It looks much nicer to the user and is easier to maintain.

We asked people what they’d like to see in advance and tried to incorporate everyone’s views. Feedback following launch was extremely positive, people were quite excited by the new site and could see we were investing to ensure our objective of keeping everyone connected was achieved.

We have seen a 40% increase in daily users proving what a success the site is in terms of user acceptance.”

Jane Linnell
Group Head of Internal Communications

All news and updates for the whole of ATS Euromaster is managed by the internal communications team and distributed via Connect (their intranet) to the organisation. The communications are varied, they could be anything from quizzes, competitions, updates from service centres, charity activity to corporate news or health and safety announcements. Links to short films and video clips are highly effective and a popular way of communicating with all employees.

The ATS Euromaster employee Reward and Recognition scheme is a great way of encouraging engagement, it’s simple but very effective. Employees can recognise their colleagues for their effort, work ethic, attitude etc. Anyone who is nominated is entered into a monthly prize draw. Connect has made the process of nominating someone much easier. Previously employees had to send a hand-written nomination through post which was a time consuming process.

Organisation charts are a useful addition to Connect. Being part of a large group it’s helpful for employees to have visibility of the structure of the organisation as a whole.

Employee benefits (of which there are many) are also now all in one central location. Employees can browse the information available at a time convenient to them. Previously they would have to telephone the HR department and ask specific questions or read about the benefits in the company magazine which was only produced and distributed twice a year.

The result

Connect has been built using Sorce’s latest Engage intranet technology. It is a powerful business critical tool that brings all employees together in one central location.

Employee engagement has been greatly improved with employees who are spread across the UK, all feeling part of the wider organisation.

News and updates, which are much easier to produce and keep up to date, reach people at head office at the same time as those based at service centres. Morale has certainly been boosted.

The upkeep of Connect is managed by a small internal communications team, who ensure the content is regularly updated and is fit for purpose. The team, who are non-technical, are able to maintain the site easily without in-house IT resource. The success of Connect is largely attributed to this team.

“We’re really pleased with our intranet. It’s a key resource for our employees so it’s important that the system is easy to use and navigate. Our Engage intranet is just that and from an administrator point of view, it’s easy to edit and maintain which makes our lives much easier. The support we receive from Sorce is always helpful and very timely.”

Jane Linnell
Group Head of Internal Communications

Download the full ATS Euromaster case study