Client / Program
Boehringer Ingelheim / NetVision
Boehringer Ingelheim / NetVision
Global Intranet Transformation
A global intranet transformation focused on improving access to knowledge, communication, and shared digital experience across a complex pharmaceutical enterprise.
Role
Global UCD Director
Product
Enterprise Intranet Platform
Industry
Enterprise / Healthcare / Life Sciences
Scale
~100 cross-disciplinary staff globally
Overview
A multi-year global intranet transformation project for Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals serving tens of thousands of employees across Americas, EMEA, and APAC regions.
As Global UCD Lead, Jorge directed user-centered design strategy for a follow-the-sun production model team of approximately 100 cross-disciplinary staff, helping transform a fragmented HTML-based intranet ecosystem into a unified, role-aware platform.
The initiative established scalable information architecture frameworks, governance models balancing global consistency with regional flexibility, and design systems that reduced publishing friction while improving collaboration, communication effectiveness, and content findability across the global pharmaceutical organization.
The real problem
Boehringer Ingelheim's legacy intranet ecosystem had evolved organically over many years, resulting in fragmented HTML sites owned by individual departments, inconsistent navigation and terminology, limited personalization, high publishing friction, and minimal support for collaboration.
From a business perspective, the intranet was mission-critical but no longer aligned with how a global pharmaceutical organization operated, particularly in areas such as compliance, internal communications, research, and cross-regional collaboration.
The core challenge was designing a scalable, user-centered intranet framework supporting global and local content needs, multiple business units and job roles, secure compliant information sharing, and long-term growth and governance.
Design vision
Transform the intranet from a static information repository into a living internal platform supporting daily work, communication, and engagement.
Create a role-aware, modular experience that surfaces relevant news, tools, alerts, and KPIs while enabling consistent layouts across departments and clear governance separating global standards from local customization.
Role and leadership
As Global UCD Lead for the NetVision program, Jorge directed user-centered design strategy across a colocated team of approximately 100 cross-disciplinary staff worldwide operating in a follow-the-sun production model.
He served as strategic partner to Public Affairs and Communications leadership, orchestrating handoffs between work zones to support continuous production.
His responsibilities included business analysis, information architecture, solution definition, stakeholder alignment, and liaison work between global business stakeholders, regional teams, and IT delivery.
Collaboration included Public Affairs, Communications, HR, R&D, Finance, and IT stakeholders across Americas, EMEA, and APAC regions.
Methodology
The work followed a research-led, structure-first design process with continuous validation. The approach emphasized research over opinion, structure before surface, and continuous usability validation.
Frame - Align and define
Discover - Research and empathize
Structure - Information architecture
Ideate - Explore concepts
Interact - Optimize flows
Design - Visual and systems
Validate - Test and reduce risk
Launch - Build and QA
Improve - Measure and learn
Key deliverables
- Role-aware homepage design surfacing news, tools, alerts, and KPIs
- Modular content blocks enabling consistent layouts across departments
- Standardized page templates for news, announcements, and department pages
- My Job and role-specific dashboard concepts
- Training and education resource frameworks
- Library and information services templates
- Global governance model separating global standards from local customization
- Comprehensive IA and navigation framework
- Low-fidelity wireframe library for stakeholder alignment
Design process
Research and discovery
Conducted comprehensive stakeholder and business analysis in partnership with Public Affairs, Communications, HR, R&D, Finance, and IT to clarify global versus local ownership models and define success metrics tied to communication effectiveness and usability.
Identified core employee personas, including corporate, research, field, manufacturing, and leadership audiences, and mapped role-based needs for news, tools, applications, and collaboration to inform personalization and homepage logic.
Information architecture
Designed a global navigation framework balancing consistency and flexibility. Established content taxonomies, metadata, and tagging models to support findability and governance.
Defined page templates and modular components for reuse across departments, and created role-aware information architecture enabling personalized experiences while maintaining organizational coherence.
Prototyping and testing
Produced detailed low-fidelity wireframes to align stakeholders early and establish shared vision across regions. Validated layout, hierarchy, and interaction patterns through iterative stakeholder reviews and usability feedback sessions.
Wireframes served as critical artifacts for governance discussions and phased rollout planning.
Iterations and refinements
Key iterations focused on balancing global standardization with local flexibility requirements. Early feedback from regional stakeholders shaped personalization logic and content governance models.
Testing revealed the need for stronger emergency alert visibility and clearer pathways to compliance information, leading to architectural adjustments that prioritized critical communications while preserving departmental autonomy.
Technologies and methods
Challenges
- Balancing global consistency with strong local and regional autonomy requirements
- Navigating complex stakeholder landscapes across business units and geographies
- Managing follow-the-sun coordination across approximately 100 distributed team members
- Addressing varied regulatory and compliance requirements across regions
- Socializing user-centered design practices in a traditionally IT-driven enterprise culture
Outcomes
The initiative established a global intranet foundation enabling faster publishing, clearer content ownership, and reduced duplication of design effort.
The program created scalable information architecture and design systems supporting future enhancements while improving findability and consistency of internal communications.
It also helped socialize user-centered design practices within a traditionally IT-driven enterprise environment, demonstrating the value of information architecture, UX, and early stakeholder alignment at scale.
- Unified intranet ecosystem serving tens of thousands of employees globally
- Improved findability and consistency of internal communications across regions
- Reduced content and design duplication through modular component systems
- Enabled faster publishing and clearer content ownership through governance frameworks
- Created scalable IA foundation supporting a multi-year roadmap and future enhancements
- Socialized UCD practices in a traditionally IT-driven enterprise culture
- Established a follow-the-sun production model enabling continuous global delivery
Reflection
What worked well
- Low-fidelity wireframes enabled rapid stakeholder alignment across time zones.
- The follow-the-sun production model increased velocity while distributing work globally.
- Role-based persona mapping created a foundation for meaningful personalization.
- Modular component strategy balanced consistency with departmental flexibility.
- Early governance frameworks helped prevent scope creep and political gridlock.
Areas for improvement
- Earlier investment in measurement frameworks would have enabled stronger quantitative impact validation.
- More formal change management support could have accelerated organizational adoption of UCD practices.
- Additional user testing with actual employees, beyond stakeholder validation, would have surfaced usability issues earlier.
Key takeaways
- Success in enterprise UX depends less on individual screens and more on governance, information structure, and shared understanding across global organizations.
- Systems thinking is critical when designing for scale and complexity; frameworks matter more than features.
- Follow-the-sun models require explicit handoff protocols and documentation standards to maintain design coherence.
- Early stakeholder alignment through low-fidelity wireframes reduces downstream friction and accelerates consensus.
- Global/local balance requires explicit governance frameworks: autonomy within structure.
Why this matters
Enterprise UX at this scale is about governance, information architecture, alignment, and sustainable systems - not only screens. The value comes from making complexity legible enough for global teams to act consistently while preserving the flexibility local organizations need.