Flexible portal for internal comms

The Felss Group GmbH is a solution provider in the cold forming of tubes and solid materials for the mobility sector and industry. With over 900 employees worldwide and represented in five countries, the machine builder and process developer convinces with holistic and customized solutions.

The corona crisis called for rapid communication.

Due to the Corona crisis, the need for internal communication increased rapidly at the machine builder. But the group's broad portfolio and many business areas make for a very complex internal structure. The communications department has to cater to four different languages at their global locations and consider cultural differences. Employees who work in production, logistics, or the lab should be reached just as well as those with their computer workstations. But that was easier said than done. The team comms was stuck wondering: How to provide the entire workforce with relevant and personalized communications?

From blog to a flexible portal for internal comms

Because of the need for quick communication, the Felss marketing team and I decided on a multistep approach to development. First, we designed and deployed a blog to provide employees globally with essential information about the ongoing crisis within weeks. Later, the blog was expanded into an information portal with mobile apps and used to provide internal news and relevant documents and moderate the ongoing transformation process.

Technology architecture

Since I knew right from the beginning that there were more features on the roadmap than just the blogging functionality, we decided to use a Headless CMS to manage the content. This allowed us to develop different user interfaces and use the CMS as a single content source.

Mobile-first web portal

The first functionality was a blogging functionality to provide relevant information about the measures against the Corona crisis. This soon got extended with a download area and other relevant internal categories. The user interfaces were designed and developed according to the Felss design system.

The web portal was built with React, and Next.js as frameworks, and styled-components were used as styling layers.

Mobile apps with push notifications

In a later step, the web portal was transformed to Mobile Apps for iOS and Android with the possibility to send push notifications. In this way, the comms team could send messages to their colleagues and increase engagement on the portal.

The mobile apps were built with React Native and Expo and the Expo push notifications API.

"We can now reach all of our colleagues"

my.Felss: the mobile-first intranet that connects everyone. The cutting-edge portal is now the daily entry point for all Felss employees. The key to success: In addition to the desktop application, the intranet is also available as a mobile app that all employees can install on their smartphones.