A solution to connect volunteers, partners and associations across France
Created in 2003, France Bénévolat is a national network dedicated to connecting volunteers and associations across France.
In 2010, France Bénévolat was recognised as a public utility and since then has been dedicated to the development of voluntary associative work.
Challenge
Information silos and lack of communication
France Bénévolat already had a simple space for sharing documents and information. It essentially enabled France Bénévolat to make information from common sources available to local France Bénévolat centres and partner associations.
France Bénévolat is organised on the basis of a double network: a loan network of 7000 member associations and a territorial network based on independent associations.
In order to develop its digital transformation project, the project team identified four major objectives:
Pool information and resources and ensure a high cohesion around the organisational project.
Facilitate multiple communications towards the territorial network but also towards the information coming from the centres.
Ensure better cross-functionality.
Work more effectively together to boost innovation
The implementation of a collaborative solution has been identified as an essential means of support to achieve these ambitions.
Why eXo?
An out-of-the-box collaborative portal
Following a series of product demonstrations and constant interactions between the project team and eXo sales and solutions experts, France Bénévolat decided to shortlist the eXo Platform along with other collaborative solutions.
A Proof of Concept (POC) was later developed taking into consideration all of the project requirements. The POC was launched earlier this year, targeting a group of key decision makers.
The initial feedback from early adopters has been positive, with the majority referring to the platform as Intuitive, simple and easy to use. Additionally, the platform has been successful in covering most users’ needs in relation to real-time communications, collaboration, document & knowledge management and more.
The impact
The collaborative portal has been deployed in several phases in a logic of co-creation. The ambition of "Faire réseau" implies organising a shared animation of the platform based on involved and trained animators.
After a first phase of needs definition, the second phase consisted of opening the platform to a hundred or so users.
The platform has been organised in different spaces: a space for institutional communication and access to the document library, structural spaces to support the operational activity of teams and projects, and a thematic community space. The third phase is now under way to deploy the platform locally and support the activity of all the centres of the territorial network.
Remarkably, all of eXo's functionalities have been integrated into the following different uses:
Collaborative spaces that encompass a host of built-in collaborative features such as an activity stream, a document library, a task management functionality, an enterprise wiki and more.
News allowing users to create, post, share and organise news, keeping members informed about the latest activities of the different associations.
Instant messaging, giving members from geographically distributed areas a medium through which they can communicate in real time.
A co-editing functionality, allowing users to co-edit documents in real time, track changes and compare different versions, and reduce duplicated knowledge and keep teams on the same track.
Find all our documents and reports on digital collaboration by visiting our resource center
