Customer overview
Endress+Hauser is a global market leader in measurement technology, and a service and solutions provider for industrial process automation. With thousands of employees across numerous units, countries, and business divisions, the company needed a modern digital workplace that supports both communication and collaboration on a global scale.
As Endress+Hauser accelerated its digital workplace strategy, the company looked for a solution that would extend the Microsoft 365 experience while delivering stronger governance, better user experiences, and a scalable intranet framework. The organization was already heavily invested in Microsoft technologies and needed a platform that could enable a modern global intranet setup, unite communication and collaboration, ensure governance and consistency, and stay user-friendly for both editors and employees alike.
The goal wasn’t simply to roll out an intranet, but to build a digital workplace employees would actively use every day.
The starting point
“What is particularly important for us is empowering editors to identify the right audiences and communicate more effectively with them.”
Endress+Hauser Digital Workplace
With thousands of employees across different countries, business units, and functions, getting relevant information to the right people was the biggest challenge. Different audiences needed different content:
- Corporate communications
- HR communications
- Product and sales communications
- Local unit communications
Without the right tools and a governance framework, this created concrete problems: employees received too much irrelevant information, editors lost time identifying audiences, information risked fragmenting across different platforms, and governance and compliance became harder to maintain at scale. For a global organization, these challenges have a direct impact on productivity, employee experience, and communication quality.
Why Powell instead of standard SharePoint?
Endress+Hauser has been deeply rooted in the Microsoft world for years. The decision to go with Powell Intranet came down to the fact that standard SharePoint alone couldn’t fully cover the company’s requirements. Powell offers out-of-the-box features tailored to the company’s needs that standard SharePoint didn’t yet provide: corporate branding with global navigation, plus structured template and architecture management. This combination made it possible to shape the digital workplace around the company’s own operating model, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
“We’re very deeply rooted in the SharePoint world, but Powell gives us the flexibility to build the digital workplace in a way that fits our own operating model.”
— Timo Vomstein, Lead Architect Microsoft 365, Endress+Hauser
The path to the solution
Powell is a core component of Endress+Hauser’s SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365-based digital workplace architecture. The solution extends the standard Microsoft 365 experience in targeted ways and supports the company’s own digital workplace vision.
Advanced personalization Audience-targeted content based on entities, locations, and organizational structures.
Governance & standards Editorial training, standardized templates, defined content structures, and lifecycle management.
Scalable architecture Flexible intranet structure for a globally distributed organization spanning many units and countries.
Powell complements Endress+Hauser’s existing Microsoft 365 environment, adding capabilities that let the company shape its digital workplace around its own operating model. Key strengths:
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- Advanced personalization capabilities
- Modern communication experiences
- Flexible intranet architecture
- Strong governance foundations
- Scalability for a global organization
- Seamless integration with Microsoft 365
🎬 In conversation with Endress+Hauser
Why did Endress+Hauser choose Powell over standard SharePoint at the time? In the interview, Steven Probst, Senior Technology Consultant at Endress+Hauser, explains what tipped the decision and what the partnership with Powell looks like today.
“What is particularly important for us is empowering editors to identify the right audiences and communicate more effectively with them.”
— Steven Probst, Senior Technology Consultant, Endress+Hauser
The results
Powell is now an established, permanent component of Endress+Hauser’s digital workplace, supporting a range of intranet, communication, and governance use cases:
📊 Key figures
10,000+Employees on a shared digital workplace5 monthsFrom kickoff to go-live of the collaboration platformOne platformFor every country, unit, and business division.
In practice, every group benefits: employees find information and applications faster. Editors can target their communications more precisely. Intranet owners can enforce governance and standards. IT teams benefit from scalability and seamless Microsoft 365 integration.
Best practices from Endress+Hauser
Drawing on its own digital workplace experience, Endress+Hauser has distilled five principles that drive an intranet’s long-term success:
- Start with governance: training, templates, standards, and lifecycle management lay the foundation for long-term success.
- Build personalization step by step: don’t personalize everything at once. Start with a few audiences and expand capabilities gradually, based on organizational needs, available data, and user feedback.
- Involve the business: successful intranets aren’t IT projects alone. HR, communications, business units, and editorial teams all play a critical role.
- Focus on value, not features: technology should support business outcomes: employee engagement, productivity, governance, and communication effectiveness.
- Treat the intranet as a product: continuous improvement, measurement, and user feedback are essential for long-term adoption and success.
Conclusion
Endress+Hauser shows how a globally active industrial company can use Powell to build a digital workplace that grows and keeps improving. The key isn’t a one-time rollout. It’s a mindset: treating the intranet as a living product that evolves alongside the company.
✨ The bottom line
- Personalization as an ongoing process: don’t set it up once. Build it out gradually, based on real user data.
- Governance as the foundation: templates, training, and clear processes ensure consistency and quality at scale.
- The intranet as a product: continuous improvement in close collaboration with Powell, rather than a static rollout.
What’s next?
Endress+Hauser continues to work closely with Powell on strategic initiatives:
- Advanced personalization: further development of audience-targeting capabilities, based on entities, locations, and organizational structures.
- Better employee profiles: more complete profiles for richer personalization and more relevant user experiences.
- Smarter communication: better notification strategies and more proactive communication mechanisms.
- Analytics & Guided Tour: actively evaluating these Powell modules to better measure intranet performance and business value.
- AI and future innovation: strategic discussions with Powell around AI, knowledge management, and the continued evolution of digital workplace experiences.
About the partner: innobit ag
innobit ag has specialized in making customers more successful since 1998. As a Microsoft Gold Partner, innobit is a leader in innovative, tailored solutions focused on collaboration and content built on SharePoint, cloud productivity, and data center and cloud technology.
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Yvonne Harris
Brand & Communications Manager
Yvonne Harris is the Brand and Communications Manager at Powell, where she spends her days proving that a corporate intranet doesn’t have to look - or feel - like a relic from 1998. With over seven years of experience scaling B2B SaaS brands across Ireland and France, she specializes in turning "boring" workplace tech into human-centric stories. Based in Paris, Yvonne is a self-appointed detective of "brand crimes" and a firm believer that internal communication is a company’s greatest competitive advantage. When she isn’t leading global campaigns, she’s likely advocating for the "intranet glow-up" your employees actually deserve.
