Fresh has grown its partner network by teaming up with IT services and consultancy Advania Finland. With both businesses being part of the Advania Group parent company, Advania Finland and Fresh share the same objectives of empowering clients to do their best work by delivering sustainable value with the clever use of technology.
Advania Finland aims to be a ‘one stop shop for everything Microsoft 365’ and Fresh fits into this end-to-end partnership approach perfectly.
“We at the Fresh team are delighted to partner with Advania Finland. The team in Finland has tons of experience in implementing Microsoft 365 intranets and digital workplace solutions for their clients. With this partnership we’ll be able to deliver first class intranet experiences to our common clients in the Nordics.” Jarmo Kuusinen, Head of Partnerships, Fresh Intranet
We caught up with the Advania Finland’s Tytti Hallavo to discuss why they chose to partner with Fresh and its advantages over out-of-the-box SharePoint. Here’s what she had to say.
What have your clients’ responses to Fresh been like?
Tytti Hallavo: Our clients have been interested in Fresh and excited by the product. They appreciate the number of features it has and the quality of the user experience.
Another important aspect of Fresh is that clients value the fact that it has robust support and any problems that appear will be quickly resolved due to its development resources.
And what do you like about Fresh?
TH: From a partner perspective, the fact that Advania UK has made a firm decision to invest in Fresh is appealing to us because it gives us certainty.
If you think back over the last 10 years, with intranet products, there’s been a lot of consolidation. There were lots of mergers and acquisitions, which is natural but also brings uncertainty.
Advania UK’s continued development of Fresh is good for us because it brings value to our clients. It is also a mature, reliable product.
What would you say to clients who want to save money by using native SharePoint as opposed to an intranet product like Fresh?
TH: In our experience, customers that have high goals for their internal communications are seldom satisfied with pure out of the box SharePoint. So, if you take into account the custom development during the project set up, then the maintenance costs once the intranet is up and running, the product-based solution, like Fresh, is a more cost-effective solution in the long run.
What are the most common customisations requested by your clients?
TH: Navigation and search are the top two, followed by the visibility and displaying of news articles. Other features that come up are people directories and targeting information such as news or profile information via metadata. Of course, these are all features that Fresh delivers.
What other advantages does Fresh have over an out-of-the-box SharePoint intranet?
TH: SharePoint out of the box has developed and refined its intranet features over the years. Say four or five years ago, it was pretty lacking in areas like news display and navigation.
That’s not the case so much now, but what really sets Fresh apart is its rich integration into other aspects of the Microsoft 365 Cloud. Fresh’s dashboard and how it displays personal information, such as new Teams messages or emails you have received, those types of things.
These interesting, deeper, more coherent and rich integrations into other aspects of the M365 Cloud, are a good selling point. And then there are the new FreshMind AI features that are coming, they’re very interesting as well.
So, as well as being Fresh partners, you also use the product as your company intranet. What’s your favourite aspect of the product?
TH: My favourite thing about Fresh is that it is fast (compared to our previous 3rd party intranet product based on M365). Another thing that I find so useful when I land on my homepage is that I can instantly see what’s new, so I don’t have to scan the whole platform. It may seem like a small thing, but it just eases my day. The user experience, the integrated features, they really help me navigate my workday.
How does Fresh fit into your wider service offering?
TH: Fresh fits our strategy perfectly because we aim to be a comprehensive partner, a one stop shop for everything Microsoft 365. We want to take an advisory position with our clients. We want to optimise the value they get from their investment in Microsoft 365 licences, from governance, to change management, to development of the platforms and the development of the services that are built on those platforms. We want to be the end-to-end partner for our clients.
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