An international pharmaceutical group present in 27 countries has been running its global intranet with intranet.ai for years — growing one department at a time through a continuous partnership that is now tackling its most ambitious step: consolidating 27 separate country sites into a single, native multilingual intranet infrastructure.
3 key figures
- 27 country sites managed separately due to the limitations of the legacy SharePoint infrastructure, now being consolidated
- 2 years of data on page views and unique users analyzed as the foundation for the redesign project
- 4 or more live events per year supported in production, both remote and in-person, for the R&D department alone
Context: a relationship that grows alongside the platform
Some projects are easy to describe because they have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Others are different — they last for years, evolve continuously, and never truly finish, because the platform grows together with the organization that uses it.
That is the case for an international group active in the pharmaceutical and diagnostic imaging sector. A long-standing intranet.ai customer, this organization now manages — through intranet.ai components — an intranet spanning 27 countries. The story began well before the current generation of SharePoint tools was available, and with the progressive adoption of intranet.ai starting in 2020, a transformation began that continues today.
Not an isolated project with a delivery date, but a journey of continuous evolution: department by department, country by country, until reaching today’s most ambitious infrastructure intervention.
The problem: 27 separate sites born from a technical constraint
When SharePoint did not yet natively support multilingual content, the only way to serve content in different languages was to create separate sites, each with its own default language. For a group present in dozens of countries, this meant one site per country.
The consequence: updating even a single link requires manually editing each of the 27 existing sites, publishing the same content twenty-seven times over. An operation that today’s technology — through native language selectors or SharePoint translation — would handle in a few clicks.
Time has not simplified things. On the contrary, it has made consolidation more delicate: each country continued producing content within its own structure, accumulating years of material that now needs to be mapped, evaluated, and partially migrated into the new architecture. Some country sites have historically been managed in English only; others have built entire archives in the local language. Determining which countries can continue operating in English and which genuinely require multilingual management has become an integral part of the project itself.
Adding to the complexity: the internal communications team that directly manages the platform consists of two people for a very large organization. Every intervention requires continuous prioritization — onboarding new departments, making full use of available components, keeping the infrastructure current — all advancing one step at a time.
The solution: growing one department at a time, with data as the guide
The approach adopted over these years has never aimed for a single, definitive transformation, but for constant evolution built together with the client, one piece at a time.
The first department digitized with intranet.ai components was Research & Development, which remains one of the most active areas on the platform today. From there the work continued with Legal & Compliance, then Marketing — both completed and live — and currently Corporate Quality Management, now in development. Each departmental site is organized with dedicated thematic areas and sections that allow each team to manage its own content independently.
Data analysis before every decision
Before tackling the most ambitious intervention — the multilingual infrastructure — the intranet.ai team conducted a thorough analysis: mapping page views and unique users over a two-year period using the platform’s built-in analytics. A solid base of evidence for redesign decisions, rather than acting on intuition alone.
This analysis has already surfaced actionable insights. The contacts page receives an exceptionally high number of daily views, which prompted the team to use that space for strategically relevant banners and links. The people directory and the intelligent search are among the most frequently accessed entry points, confirming the everyday value of these components.
Live event support: four times a year, every year
A significant share of the team’s effort goes to supporting live corporate events. For the R&D department, events are organized four times a year. Each one receives a dedicated page with agenda, countdown, calls to action, and coordinated visuals, plus an interactive real-time quiz with a winner celebrated in a news post published on the intranet and reshared on the company’s internal social feed.
When events include an in-person component, support extends to managing the livestream and connecting remote participants. The team also handles video production: from recording brief year-end messages from department heads, to supporting broader campaigns involving external professionals, with subsequent editing handled in-house.
A level of collaboration that goes well beyond basic document management for the platform — and one that has deepened over the years precisely because the relationship with the client never stopped at the moment of releasing a single project.
Results: five years of partnership and a steadily maturing platform
The value of this relationship is measured in its duration and adaptability, more than in any single metric.
- The R&D department site remains one of the most visited by its target audience
- The Legal & Compliance and Marketing departmental sites have been completed and launched successfully
- The two-year usage data analysis now provides a solid, concrete foundation for all decisions in the upcoming infrastructure redesign
- Live event support has proven to be a high-value service, transforming every Town Hall into a well-coordinated communication moment without adding burden to the lean internal communications team
What comes next
The most significant upcoming project is moving beyond the 27-site structure: consolidating multilingual management into a modern, native infrastructure that will dramatically reduce the effort required to update shared content across countries. The intervention is planned to be completed during 2026, paired with a careful migration of historical content.
In parallel, a brand book update is in the works — new colors and, for the first time, custom font support on the platform, a capability recently made available by SharePoint. The team is also exploring gamification components for the R&D department ahead of an important anniversary: interactive quizzes to measure departmental knowledge among colleagues, and a digital board to collect and celebrate personal moments from each team member.
When a platform grows alongside an organization for years, the real value lies not in any single release, but in the ability to keep evolving it without ever losing what was built before.
Do you manage a global intranet, present across multiple countries and languages, and want to explore how to modernize it without losing years of content? Book a demo and discover how intranet.ai can guide your platform’s evolution.