LumApps: Transforming Internal Communication with Social Intranet

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Renaud Perrier, Chief Product Officer

Marissa Mayer, the former president and CEO of Yahoo once said, “To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side.”

These words have never been more relevant. In today’s connected digital workplace, collaboration and communication are the two key strategies driving business performance and productivity. In fact, a recent report from McKinsey and IDC reveals these two processes improve productivity by an average of 30 percent by making it faster and easier to not only find the right people and information but also rapidly share that information to aid decision-making.

While there are a number of solutions and software in the market that enhance workplace engagement, intranet has been leading the digital collaboration space for quite some time now. Interactive intranet not only facilitates strong internal communication among employees but also allows knowledge sharing across an organization. LumApps, an innovative social and collaborative intranet, is one such solution that redefines connectivity in a digital workplace.

In an interview with CIO Applications, Renaud Perrier, chief product officer of LumApps, shares valuable insights on how the company addresses the need for collaboration in workplaces.

Could you describe what spurred the inception of LumApps?

LumApps was born out of a firm known as gPartner in 2012 as a result of a customer’s demand for an intranet. When our second and third customer approached us with the same requirement, we decided to create a solution that would meet their needs. Our solution, LumApps, then slowly became a company. Today, we are a global organization, headquartered in Lyon, France with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, and Tokyo. Most of our clients are Fortune 500 and Forbes Global 2000 companies.

What are some of the major pain points experienced by employees in today’s digital workplace, and how is LumApps addressing them?

One of the biggest challenges is the lack of internal communication. Many companies struggle to recognize its value and the impact it can have on their success, and ultimately the bottom-line. This is where our solution plays a key role. The LumApps intranet creates a holistic workspace, fully integrated and synchronized with an organization’s collaborative suites and business tools. As a one-stop-shop for employees, the platform gathers and presents everything that they need—personalized content, business applications, and social communities—all in one place.

LumApps is the only enterprise portal successfully combining corporate communications and social networks, addressing both company as well as employee needs

LumApps also connects and engages all employees in a central hub and helps them work more efficiently. Furthermore, it eliminates internal barriers and streamlines corporate communication. Hence, through a personalized portal, we foster corporate culture and enhance workplace engagement.

Could you elaborate more on the company’s core offering and some of its unique features and functionalities?

LumApps is a powerful, responsive, and multi-language tool designed to simplify business communication and collaboration. The solution is powered by cloud technology and bolsters all of its security systems as well as carries out security audits that certify the complete confidentiality of the data. The platform is a perfect mix of corporate portal for top-down communication and social network for peer-to-peer discussions. In fact, LumApps is the only enterprise portal successfully combining corporate communications and social networks, addressing both the company and employee needs.

Some of LumApps’ core elements include design and style customization, structured information and profiled content, 360-degree internal communication, and easy integration. The advanced design configuration capabilities of the solution enable users to quickly build a customized intranet, reflecting the look and brand of their companies. On the other hand, 360-degree communication functionality facilitates top-down, bottom-up, transversal, targeted communication among employees and managers. In a nutshell, users have everything they need in an easy-to-use platform: company content, enterprise tools, and social features.

Contrary to other intranets, LumApps provides personalized content, which is relevant and filtered based on user profiles. Employees can also use the platform to share content with their co-workers in other departments.

Today, LumApps is the only digital workplace that integrates easily with two of the leading-edge collaborative suites: Microsoft Office 365 and Google G suite. This easy-to-integrate ability makes the solution highly scalable and flexible.

Please share a case study that highlights LumApps’ prowess in helping its clients overcome their security-related challenges and attain the desired outcomes?

One example includes an American retail chain called Finish Line that sells athletic shoes, apparel, and accessories. The client needed a digital workplace platform to boost productivity, break silos, and improve collaboration and communication between its HQ and stores. To fulfill this need, we teamed up with two other companies and provided Finish Line with a customized and powerful platform that improved the organization’s overall operational efficiency along with collaboration for its 14,000 employees and all communication channels. In just three months, we deployed the platform across all of their 950 branded stores in the U.S. As a result, the client not only had access to a single platform that connected all of their employees and provided them with the right information, at the right time but also experienced high cost savings.

Every client we have worked with has experienced better productivity, communication, employee engagement, and other unforeseen benefits using our services.

What does the future hold for LumApps?

In April, LumApps launched its new solution for employee social advocacy. The solution enables employees to share posts and information outside the organization on social platforms such as Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Furthermore, we will also continue to enhance our platform to make the employee experience better.