A new business, and a new place to find everything
How TalkTalk Business replaced a handful of standalone SharePoint sites with The Hive: one branded intranet, with Viva Engage and Viva Amplify alongside it, and a launch campaign to match.
A new business needed a digital home of its own
TalkTalk Business separated from TalkTalk Group and now runs independently, with around 180 colleagues across Salford and Gateshead.
Separation also meant moving off the Group's intranet and its shared systems. As new ways of working developed, teams created SharePoint spaces to meet their immediate needs. The next step was bringing those useful resources together into one connected colleague experience.
Updates travelled by email and Teams chat. Separate SharePoint sites had grown up over time, each built well for its own purpose. Together they meant there was no single place to look, and no obvious version of a document to trust.
One hub, on the new brand
Build one branded SharePoint Online site to act as the source of truth for the whole business, from company news and people information to department resources and the documents colleagues need day to day.
Stand up Viva Engage alongside it so conversation has somewhere to go, and Viva Amplify so the People Team can publish and measure its own comms.
Reflect the refreshed TalkTalk Business brand and the company's values throughout, and leave behind page templates the team can keep building with. Then launch it properly, with a name, a logo and a campaign.
A plan, a working group, and one batch at a time
Set the project up properly
A launch session fixed the scope, the site map, the roles and the ways of working. A written project report every Friday, a fifteen minute check-in every Monday and every task tracked and owned in one place, so nobody had to guess where things stood.
Agreed the site map first
A full site map, from the top level areas down to the individual pages beneath them, agreed and signed off before a single page was built.
Named it and branded it
The intranet became The Hive, with its own logo and identity, designed to sit comfortably alongside the refreshed TalkTalk Business brand.
Designed the templates
Eight page templates plus the homepage, covering news, information and policy pages, department pages and document libraries, all built from standard SharePoint web parts so the team can keep reusing them.
Gave every page an owner
Page owners and backup owners across every business area, each with a OneDrive area to load their content into and a clear window to review and sign off their own pages.
Built it in batches
Three content batches, each with its own build, review and sign off dates, so the site came together section by section rather than everything landing at once.
Set up Engage and Amplify
Viva Engage for conversation and Viva Amplify for distributing news, with permission groups so the right people can edit the right things, and short how-to videos so editors can keep their own pages up to date.
Launched it like a campaign
Awareness first, then why we are changing, then a logo reveal, a countdown timer on the homepage, page owner training, a launch video on go-live day and a feedback loop in the weeks after.
A new modern SharePoint site with audience targeted campaigns built right in
What it took
What TalkTalk Business said
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