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How Excellvet Boosted Communication Across Its Veterinary Network with Talkspirit
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Without the right tools, communication and collaboration on projects can be a real challenge in the healthcare sector. To energise and streamline communication across its network of veterinary clinics, Excellvet decided to deploy an innovative enterprise social network. Their solution of choice? Talkspirit 🚀
Excellvet is a network of independent veterinary clinics that brings together practices sharing a common vision of the veterinary profession. Among them are G2E and Qualys, two companies that together offer about a dozen services to member clinics and partners — covering areas such as medication purchasing, recruitment, accounting, quality management, training, and more.
Key figures:
- 18 veterinary clinics and 3 member service companies
- 200 employees
- 145 users on Talkspirit
Nicolas Le Cleac'h, Head of Communications at Groupe Excellvet and veterinarian at VetAlouettes clinic (part of the group), shares his experience deploying Talkspirit and the day-to-day benefits it brings.
An Initial Need Focused on Internal Communication
"Internal communication has always been central to Excellvet's strategy. Initially, it relied on an internal newsletter — called "Excellnews" — sent out every quarter to keep employees informed about network news and projects.
Over time, the Excellnews faded away, partly due to lack of time and lack of people to manage it. It briefly evolved into a blog, but employees never really engaged with it.
That's when we identified the need for an enterprise social network. Our primary goal was to improve communication within each clinic and across the network, as clinics regularly need to exchange information with one another.
Beyond communication, it was also important to have a modern solution to facilitate project collaboration, store documents, and foster connections among network members," explains Nicolas Le Cleac'h. These were precisely the needs Talkspirit was designed to meet.
Read also: Collaboration in the Healthcare Sector: A Vital Challenge
Supported Every Step of the Way
"During the Talkspirit rollout, we worked closely with our account manager, who gave us a great deal of advice and practical tips to drive adoption of the tool. Together we launched regular webinars to show members how to make the most of Talkspirit and what it could bring to their daily work. These sessions were quite successful — today, far fewer people come to me with questions about the platform.
Read also: Webinar recap: "6 Key Steps to Drive Adoption of Your Collaborative Tools"
We sent mass invitations to all network members, inviting them to join our Talkspirit platform. In parallel, there was also a fair amount of in-person communication. In the early days of the rollout, I would often approach colleagues and ask whether they'd seen the latest updates posted on Talkspirit," recalls the Head of Communications. This both encouraged them to log in and showed them that the platform genuinely had value for them.
Gradually, the user count grew to reach 145 members today.
Groups: The Key Feature for Smoother Communication
Three types of groups were created on Talkspirit to facilitate communication and collaboration within and across clinics:
- Permanent working groups for exchanges within each department — the board of directors, executive committee, HR, communications, etc.
- Temporary groups for projects (e.g. organisational developments, new service rollouts), where all related information and documents are stored.
- Technical groups open to all members, where people can ask questions on topics such as pain management, animal welfare, phytotherapy, or herd monitoring.
The most active groups are those tied to projects and departments. "We post updates, send chat messages, and run polls, for example to decide on the date of the next meeting," adds Nicolas Le Cleac'h.
"On certain topics, this has allowed us to reduce the use of WhatsApp — and in some cases eliminate it entirely, as happened with the HR group."
Collaborating with External Partners
Beyond facilitating exchanges between veterinary clinics, Talkspirit enables seamless collaboration with both internal and external stakeholders.
Nicolas Le Cleac'h notes that he "regularly invites laboratories into project groups to exchange on specific topics. For instance, we recently added a laboratory that markets equine products to our hair-range working group."
Document Storage
Groups, the news feed, and chat are not the only features used by Excellvet. The Head of Communications also notes that some employees use the drive to store cold files.
"This can include board meeting minutes, communications materials, and all documents that will be shared in Talkspirit groups." Thanks to the search function, everyone can easily find the information or documents they need.
Better Access to Information
Talkspirit delivers many benefits for the veterinary clinics in the network. First and foremost, "it makes it much easier to find and access information. And it's far more practical than email for real-time discussions, collective thinking, or running polls."
Read also: Streamlining Information Sharing with Talkspirit: SantéCité's Story
Instead of sending endless emails to coordinate a meeting, all it takes is a post or a chat message. This allows you to save time, and to reduce information overload caused by endless email threads.
Moreover, "using an internal communication tool helps strengthen the sense of belonging to the network, makes it easier to onboard new employees, and projects a modern image of the group."
Talkspirit's Take on Excellvet
Excellvet is a pioneer in its sector — one of the first veterinary clinic networks to adopt an enterprise social network. This type of tool remains relatively uncommon in the healthcare sector, particularly in veterinary medicine, which speaks to the group's forward-thinking approach.
While Talkspirit is now used by the majority of network members, the challenge going forward is to bring greater consistency to usage, which still varies quite a bit from person to person. "Personally, I no longer use any messaging tool other than Talkspirit to communicate within the network. And I know others — including our HR manager — are big fans and post everything there. But that's not yet the case for everyone," says Nicolas Le Cleac'h.
In the long run, the goal is to bring all employees onto the platform and ensure that all professional communications go through Talkspirit.
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Looking to set up an enterprise social network across your organisation? Want to streamline communication and collaboration among your teams? Or simply explore the Talkspirit platform in more detail? Reach out to one of our experts or schedule a personalised demo 👇
