An international company specialising in wellness built a multi-country intranet from a shared corporate architecture, digitalised its HR processes, and turned a playful Easter treasure hunt into a gamification tool now offered to all intranet.ai clients.
3 key project results
- 4 countries managed on a single shared platform
- 2,000+ weekly page views on the Italian home page alone
- 1 idea originally built for this client, now part of the intranet.ai product catalogue
The challenge: manual processes and countries running at different speeds
Before digitalisation, many internal processes ran through fragmented, hard-to-track channels. A straightforward request such as paternity leave required downloading a form, filling it in by hand, re-uploading it somewhere and hoping it reached the right person in HR without getting lost. Document sharing with suppliers around the world — covering raw materials, finished products, and packaging — relied on shared folders scattered across personal accounts, with all the risks that entails.
There was also a natural imbalance between countries. Italy, where the head office is based, had developed a content-rich intranet visited daily by a large user base, while the other countries — with smaller teams and fewer people to engage — covered only the essentials. One part of the platform stayed far more active and current than the others, simply because the local structures operated at a different scale. Not a lack of interest, but a lack of critical mass.
The solution: digitalise everything, and play when it makes sense
The first area of work was digitalising document-based processes. Company forms — from leave requests to internal procedures — were converted into fillable templates accessible directly on the intranet. The system automatically recognises which department the request is coming from and routes it to the correct HR contact, complete with legally recognised digital signature. No more paper forms, no more manual handoffs, no more ambiguity about who is responsible for the next step.
A similar approach was scaled up with a dedicated supplier portal, separate from the intranet but built on the same logic: cross-cutting content valid for all managed countries, alongside dedicated spaces where each supplier can independently upload their own information. Document management became structured and traceable, both internally and externally.
The most original element of the project, however, came about almost by accident. A few years into the partnership, the company asked for a tool to invite colleagues to explore the intranet in a playful way. The result was a digital Easter treasure hunt. The mechanism is as simple as it is effective: a news post announces the start of the game, and clicking on an egg-shaped icon opens a clue written in rhyme, leading the user to guess which page of the intranet to visit next. Once they find the right page, another icon hides the next clue — and so on until the final stop, which closes with a congratulations message. Each participant’s time is tracked, making it easy to reward those who complete the route fastest. The first edition’s top three winners each received a giant Easter egg, announced in a follow-up news post.
What began as a bespoke initiative for this one client worked so well that it became a ready-to-use tool, now offered to any client who wants to bring a little play into their intranet — with different icons depending on the chosen theme, from a treasure chest to other seasonal variations. Experience has shown that around ten clues is the ideal number: enough to make the game engaging without exhausting participants.
What you learn from what doesn’t work
Not every initiative that was developed together had a long life, and there are lessons in that too. A digital idea board for collecting improvement suggestions generated proposals that were genuinely acted upon — including an on-site nursery and a monthly pet therapy day that allowed employees to bring their pets to the office. Once the strongest ideas had been collected and implemented, however, the flow of new contributions slowed, and the client chose to suspend the tool temporarily rather than leave it running with no new content. A sound decision: an empty tool can do more damage to engagement than no tool at all.
On another occasion, a component displaying colleagues’ company anniversaries was removed entirely after one employee raised privacy concerns directly with the trade union — without first discussing the issue internally. Even when a voluntary opt-in mechanism was proposed, the client preferred to remove the feature for everyone, at a time when the company was also working on several employee wellbeing certifications. Sometimes caution outweighs completeness, and that is a legitimate choice.
Results: a highly active Italy, and significant potential yet to be unlocked elsewhere
The data clearly illustrates the gap between countries. In the most recent week observed, the Italian home page alone exceeded 2,000 page views from approximately 638 unique users, while the French site in the same period saw only a handful of visits from just five unique users. Across all countries combined, total visits for the week were around 1,920 — the vast majority concentrated in Italy. Intranet analytics make it possible to monitor these differences with precision and plan targeted interventions country by country.
Beyond the numbers, the most encouraging signal remains the client’s openness to experimentation. The treasure hunt, born out of a specific need for this company, has become a product that now enriches the offering for all other clients — a concrete example of how a bespoke idea can become shared value. The supplier portal and the digitalised forms have also replaced manual processes with traceable, faster workflows, giving the client reason to continue requesting consultancy and support over the years.
What comes next?
The most pressing issue remains a visual redesign of the Italian platform, which still bears the hallmarks of a dated SharePoint aesthetic compared with what is now achievable. An ongoing conversation is underway to persuade the client to update even elements that appear minor — such as the custom icons created by the internal design team, which, not being indexed correctly, penalise content discoverability through search.
Work is also planned to simplify the document structure, currently divided by individual group company, leveraging more modern SharePoint features now available. The countries outside Italy remain an open chapter with significant growth potential — a large pool of users who are currently engaged at only a fraction of the platform’s capacity.
An idea built to solve one client’s specific problem can, over time, become a tool that benefits many others. This project’s treasure hunt is the most tangible proof of that.
Would you like to bring some play and digitalisation into your multi-country intranet? Book a demo and discover how intranet.ai can accompany you in every country where you operate.