# Digital Workplace and Intranet for 60,000 Employees at BSH Hausgeräte > 60,000 employees, 51 countries, 25 languages – and an intranet where only the editorial team could publish. The new one runs on Confluence and Linchpin and has won two awards. Source: https://www.xalt.de/en/case/bsh-digital-workplace-and-intranet/ 60,000 employees in 51 countries, 25 languages – and an intranet on SharePoint where only the editorial team could publish. The new one runs on Confluence and Linchpin: everyone can write, everyone sees tailored content, and it has won two awards. ## The Company [BSH Hausgeräte GmbH](https://www.bsh-group.com/) is the largest manufacturer of home appliances in Europe and one of the world's leading companies in this industry. Around 40 manufacturing sites and a strong network of about 80 sales, production and service companies in around 50 countries form the foundation of BSH's customer-oriented business model. Being the first choice for consumers worldwide drives the company and its employees. With its exceptional brands, high-quality products and superior solutions, BSH aims to improve people's quality of life. ### The starting situation In today's high-tech culture, information is spread across many places, and most employees have little insight into what their colleagues are currently working on. This makes communication harder and leads to limited collaboration. With Linchpin and Confluence, a technical solution is available that lets departments, teams and employees easily exchange information and stay up to date via an intranet. ### The challenge: replacing the existing SharePoint intranet The goal of the project was to expand the existing top-down intranet communication, giving not only the editorial team but every user the ability to contribute to a transparent, topic-centered intranet. For this, a platform based on Atlassian Confluence was built with the support of the Linchpin software, adapted to BSH's requirements. Linchpin adds the most important features of a modern, social intranet to Confluence's base functionality. Until the new intranet was realized, the company's own intranet was built on Microsoft SharePoint. - only top-down communication was possible - access was only possible internally via the network - there was no mobile access option or solution - content creation was very static and complicated ## BSH German Brand Award for Brand Communication – Intranet and Collaboration [Read the press release](https://www.german-brand-award.com/en/the-winners/gallery/detail/49778-make-it-yours-the-new-bsh-intranet.html) > Our recipe for successful implementation was: to be fast and have a cross-functional team with all the skills needed to achieve something great. That's why we built a team with motivated business stakeholders, IT staff and external partners – like XALT for the technical implementation and init for the concept – that can deliver daily through Agile and DevOps methods. > > — Peter Giglinger, IT Business Consultant, BSH Hausgeräte GmbH ## The Solution Building an intranet based on Confluence and Linchpin, custom-developed Confluence apps and macros, integration into the company's own identity access management system (IAM), corporate branding, technical project coordination and operations concept. ### Products used Atlassian Confluence Data Center, Atlassian Crowd, Custom Developed SSO, [Linchpin Intranet Suite](https://linchpin-intranet.de/), [Advanced Image Gallery](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1220644/advanced-image-gallery-masonry-view), Include+, K15t Translations, New Relic, Elastic Stack, Kibana, AWS, Docker, Kubernetes ## USPs of the New Digital Workplace and Intranet Ahead of the project, BSH had formulated USPs (unique selling points) representing certain expected performance features of the new intranet, to set it apart from other projects and the competition. These unique selling points included: ### 1. Personalized UX ### Personalized User Experience The new intranet lets every user configure and personalize the displayed content and profile entirely to their wishes – for example the description of their job area, adding profile pictures and storing contact details. Technical solutions were also implemented that make it possible to deliver tailored content to each user depending on their department, team or location. ### 2. Social Interaction ### Social Interaction and Engagement Thanks to the newly added social media features, users can comment on, like and share news and posts as usual. All post interactions are also 100% transparent. This gives B/S/H/ an open communication culture and enables direct feedback. News from management and specialist departments are weighted equally in the news stream. This puts all users on the platform on equal footing. ### 3. Collaboration ### Collaboration and Employee Contributions In the new intranet, alongside internal company, management or location news, employees can also independently publish new posts and thereby work together on new ideas or topics. This fosters a steady exchange of knowledge. ### 4. Breaking Down Silos ### Breaking Down Silos Many topics are worked on by several departments at the same time, and the open intranet platform avoids communication hurdles. The new intranet enables teams to collaborate on strategic topics together, driving projects and internal communication forward more efficiently. ## BSH Wins the 2022 Inkometa Award for Best Intranet BSH Hausgeräte won the Inkometa Award for best intranet in the Social Intranet / Collaboration Intranet category. The Inkometa Award is one of the most important awards for internal communication in Germany and is presented by SCM – School for Communication and Management. [Read the press release](https://www.xalt.de/en/blog/bsh-hausgeraete-wins-inkometa-award-for-best-intranet/) ## Further Benefits of the New Intranet The intranet is actively used at a company with more than 60,000 employees and is available in 25 languages and 51 countries. XALT delivered a tailor-made solution specifically for BSH's intranet project. This includes creating a custom theme for the intranet as well as developing several Atlassian apps to BSH's specifications. - visual design of the user interface based on B/S/H's corporate identity - distinguishing individual user groups into readers, editors and admins through updated [user permission management](https://www.xalt.de/en/jira-confluence-permission-management/) (IAM – identity access management) - the intranet as a growing, flexible product – active input from users for continuous improvement through feedback ## The Role of DevOps in the Intranet Project DevOps best practices were used in B/S/H/'s intranet project. By integrating continuous integration and deployment, new features and code updates could be published on a consistent cycle – daily to weekly. Quality control with pull requests and feature-branch test systems ensures all changes work correctly. This makes it possible to publish features without weeks of coordination and keep to the tight schedule. More information about the project can also be found in init's success story: [BSH Hausgeräte Digital Workplace](https://www.init.de/arbeiten/bsh-hausgeraete). ## More Success Stories Energy trading ### [Dynamic Redesign of the EEX Intranet with Refined](https://www.xalt.de/en/case/eex-intranet/) EEX Group needed a new intranet in two and a half weeks – the old one was still running on a different platform. With Confluence and Refined, it became a work platform for around 700 employees: a mega menu instead of searching, its own corporate design, and content maintained by the teams themselves. Read case study → Publishing and book retail ### [Cloud-to-Cloud Webshop Migration with Cloud Native Redesign](https://www.xalt.de/en/case/weltbild-cloud-migration/) Weltbild migrated its own webshop a second time – this time with an infrastructure redesign instead of a plain move. Our DevOps team brought AWS expertise, infrastructure as code and agile methods, and kept the tight deadline. Read case study → Mechanical engineering ### [Atlassian Cloud Migration of Jira, Confluence and Bitbucket](https://www.xalt.de/en/case/fath-atlassian-cloud-migration/) FATH ran Jira, Confluence and Bitbucket itself – and paid for every outage: troubleshooting, recovery, staff time. All three systems moved to the Atlassian Cloud in one go, without disrupting daily work. Downtime fell from twelve hours a year to almost none, and operating costs dropped by 80 percent. Read case study → ## We help your team achieve greatness in every aspect Want more information or a tailor-made solution? 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