Fortune Brands: Connecting Teams With Smartphones and Smartsheet

by Renee Hunter on May 8, 2018
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Fortune Brands Home & Security is the parent company for a number of leading brands — such as Master Lock, Moen, and Therma-Tru Doors — and employs over 23,000 workers who produce and distribute cabinetry, premium doors, plumbing, and security solutions to consumers all over the world.
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“A lot of our people on the front lines work in manufacturing facilities across the United States,” says Erin Libardoni, who manages corporate communications for Fortune. “With that comes challenges in communicating — and one of those was being able to reach people on our shop floors.”

Libardoni saw this challenge as an opportunity to enhance her company’s communications strategy, adopting a custom mobile app for internal communications, and using Smartsheet to help manage a growing number of work processes related to content creation.
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Fortune Brands’ Connect app — available to employees on iOS, Android, and Windows devices — is a one-stop shop for important news and information, about such things as health benefits, professional development opportunities, updates on product launches, cybersecurity, and the company’s community relation efforts. Once in the app, employees can also view and download important documents.

The content that fuels Connect is created in a variety of places across the organization. “We have writers at different locations that are able to put out localized content,” Libardoni says. “That was definitely a big reason why we moved to a mobile solution versus building out or upgrading an internal intranet.”
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Through Connect, Libardoni’s team uses a content calendar that lets them input and update the information that drives conversations across the business every day.

Backend Communication With Smartsheet

While Connect broadcasts and organizes corporate messages for employees, Libardoni wanted an easy-to-install and user-friendly SaaS solution to help her team manage their editorial content calendar and other communication they were having on the backend.

“When I came to Fortune Brands and we were looking to stand up this internal communication app, we needed a way to manage our content,” Libardoni says. “We needed a way to centralize that process, and I thought Smartsheet would be a great way for us to organize our corporate communication.”
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In addition, the content calendar they created greatly improves collaboration with remote writers and other content experts in various departments. For example, using filters in the content calendar, her team can share content plans with IT and marketing stakeholders, so they know what content to expect and when it will go live.
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Smartsheet lets Libardoni and her team assess, at a glance, the task owner’s progress and the volume they plan to publish per content category. Team members can easily follow a content piece from idea through its drafting stages, then flag posts that are approved for publishing or those that require additional attention. Work is organized in a sheet with color-coded cells and drop-down selectors.

With Smartsheet, it’s easier for Libardon’s team members to take ownership and collaborate across internal and external boundaries. By using both Smartsheet and their Connect app,  they've raised the bar on communications across the business — and took complete control of their content, so ideas move quickly to create impact.

Source: Smartsheet Blog

Do you want to check out more great Smartsheet customer stories? Visit this page or watch the video below focusing on how Colliers International | Wisconsin uses Smartsheet to enhance real-time communication.
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