“We have standardized the many design questions, saving a lot of time.” Speaking are the designers of GGZ Friesland in The Netherlands. Inge Postma and Marco Kuipers automated the communication processes with the Prindustry Brand Portal. Over 160 employees of 11 GGZ Friesland sub-brands log in daily to customize printed materials themselves and order them immediately.
Client
GGZ Friesland
Year
2021
Techniques
Brand Portal, editor CHILI publisher
Care of the psychiatric help
GGZ Friesland offers professional help to people with serious psychiatric problems. They do so with 1,800 employees working across dozens of locations in the Dutch province of Friesland. GGZ Friesland consists of different types of care, subdivided with their own brand names. For example, Kinnik is there for child and youth mental health care and Van Andel for elderly psychiatry.
In total, there are 11 sub-brands. All these institutions need to communicate. Internally with employees and externally with patients, relatives and referrers.
This is done with the help of Inge and Marco, both of whom have been working as designers at GGZ Friesland for more than 10 years. “We work on a variety of communication activities. From flyers and staff magazines to online media and exhibition stands. That makes our work a nice challenge!”
Mini in-house communications agency
Inge and Marco are part of the GGZ Friesland communications team, which they describe as “a mini in-house communications agency.” “We do all communication ourselves. The team consists of 11 employees who can create everything. The photos, design, events, printing. We make several campaigns for all GGZ Friesland brands. Much of the printed matter we can produce at our internal repro. The great thing is that this repro department is ‘run’ by clients, under the guidance of a work supervisor. Clients from the day care who print, cut, fold. It completes the in-house communication circle.”
Creative Frisian campaigns
Zooming in on one of the communication campaigns, the labor market campaign immediately comes to mind for Inge. “A club of colleagues is going to a psychiatry congress in Veldhoven soon. Here we want to recruit new colleagues. We then have the freedom to shape the campaign ourselves. The corporate identity is of course the leading principle, but we can put our creative touch on that. Of course we want Friesland to stand out then, because the congress is taking place in another region. We designed a sailboat for in the exhibition stand where visitors can hoist the sails.”
Flooded with communication questions
The communications team is able to answer communication questions more quickly these days by standardizing printed materials in its own web shop. Inge clarifies, “As a communications department, we were always bombarded with questions from all locations. For example, everyone constantly needed new business cards. Every time they came to us for that. That took a lot of time. So we gradually started looking at how we could standardize such communication questions. We wanted one solution for all GGZ Friesland brands. An internal ordering portal for printed matter including the assurance of a consistent corporate identity.”
Standardizing with the Brand Portal
“That’s how we landed at Prindustry for a Brand Portal,” continues colleague Marco. “We use this Brand Portal as an ordering portal for all printing, by different users, and with corporate identity templates per product and brand. When you log into the Brand Portal, there are ready-made products available for ordering per brand. This means that each employee does not have to select all the printing options themselves first, but choices such as the right paper type or format are preselected. This way, there is always consistency. For some products, location information is entered automatically, such as for stationery. For other products, templates are ready in which some variables can be adjusted, as with the business cards. The standard orders go through to our own repro or externally to a printing company. The orders for our repro go through automatically, but the orders to external suppliers we have set to manual processing, so we can check the files first.”
The Brand Portal in action
The Brand Portal is used by about 160 users. “In theory, every employee can now order print materials themselves. In practice, however, this must be done with a manager’s permission. Especially many of the management assistants use the portal. They are the ones who are assigned with ordering new stationery, envelopes, leaflets or business cards.”
Inge adds: “In the beginning there were some questions about the Brand Portal, but everyone is now fairly familiar with it. They are very satisfied with it. It also looks good. It’s very nice to be able to control everything from one platform. Are people missing something? Then we’ll add it! We update the portal regularly, for example with new flyers or adapted leaflets.”
“The Brand Portal saves us a lot of time and work,” Marco continues. “We don’t have to do everything manually now. The templates are ideal for employees to make their own adjustments without losing the corporate identity.”
Christmas cards also in online process
Some seasonal activities have also been organized in the Brand Portal. Like the arrangement of Christmas cards in the busy month of December. Inge: “Previously, we were asked separately by each department if we could design, write and send cards. Now we have set this up from the webshop environment. Employees can use templates to choose designs and adjust texts. The cards go into production at our own repro and are sent out immediately.”
New plans with flyer templates
The duo is far from finished with new communication plans. “In the Brand Portal, we want to expand the template options in the future. That means we will have several flyer designs ready for use, in the corporate style of each brand. We then want to let people create products like flyers themselves using these set templates. There are already a few designs ready, but we want many more before we take this live in action.”
There is also a plan to give the repro its own web shop for printing when they start working with more external customers. “Then we will also start working commercially with an ordering portal. A great new step for and with the repro team!”
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