MangoSpring Enterprise Collaboration Suite review

It’s been almost six months now since I accidentally stumbled upon MangoSpring Collaboration Suite. With our company we are working with Google Enterprise and by browsing through the Google Marketplace I found MangoSpring Collaboration Suite. Our company is specialized in online content and online projectmanagement. We have alot of people working on different locations for customers. With around 30 employees now we have quite alot of knowledge and experience wandering around in our company. I won’t explain the full case, but in short we wanted to connect the employees more, share knowledge and add teamspirit in our company. We already had tried Yammer some years ago, but it died quite quickly. Now we wanted to try MangoSpring, because it also embedded some interesting business tools to do our work, next to chit-chatting.

The product
MangoSpring is a “Complete Real-Time Business Communication & Collaboration Platform” according to their website. You can buy different parts of the suite or the whole suite alltogether:

• MangoTalk: Microblogging, Instant Messaging, Group Discussion
• MangoDocs: Document Management
• MangoProjects: Setup Project environments
• MangoTasks: Task Management
• MangoEvents: Event Calendar
• MangoIdeas: Idea generator

The suite is accessible directly through our Google Apps enterprise environment (browser based), but also by iPad, iPhone, Blackberry and Android. But where MangoSpring really shines is the excellent desktop application, that is freely available. It takes not only microblogging and instant messaging to the desktop, but also polls, tasks management and document management. A very smart move.

Introduction in the company
I started with inviting some of the people from the different departments to explore and experience MangoSpring as a communication tool. I have been actively asking for feedback at the test users and collected all their remarks, bugs and questions about the system. All the feedback was sent to the developers in the USA and we usually got an answer with in a few hours. This made us confident that we were working with a supplier that actually listens to the customer.

After a few months of trying out and increasing amounts of message we decided to try out the MangoTalk and MangoDocs products to keep everyone updated within the company. Our director now spreads newsupdates through a microblog in a group called “Presenter news”. This instantly updates everyone in the organisation and gives public discussion about news updates. Besides that we shared holiday registration in MangoSpring so everyone can see the current amount of days off left instead of mailing the HRM employees time and time again.

Microblogging

Projectmanagement
A great feature of MangoSpring is the projectgroups. You can share microblogs, documents, blogposts and tasks alltogether in a projectgroup. This group can either be open or only accessible for certain individuals, also outside your company. I’m currently working with non-tech savvy people from another company on a project and I am in touch with them all week long, even when I”m not at the office. This makes projectmanagement from different locations easier. We hardly mail anymore in the project, it all goes through Mango. Also Task Management is integrated in projects, making it easy to (re)assign tasks to fellow employees. A great way to keep up with deadlines.

Desktop in the cloud
With Mango you get a great desktop app with great features. Instant Messaging and microblogging is present in most enterprise tools (like Yammer, although Yammer doesn’t have IM yet), but MangoDocs delivers a really nice document management system on the desktop. You can add documents to groups or projects from the desktop and set up access and viewing rights within a click. This means you can upload, download and replace documents in the crowd. Also version history is now present, which means you can get back to previous versions of a certain document.

Administrator rights
What I really like about MangoSpring are the admin reporting tools. You can see the volume and amount of messages, project messages, IM use on a daily base and instantly see which users are the most active and which ones are lacking in use (and you should contact to why they’re not using the tool yet). You can customize the look and feel of the tool, add other administrators, manage users and groups and import and export data. It’s just a great package altogether and easy to use. You can also deploy the suite on your own system and integrate it with Active Directory.

Task Management within projects

Improvements
No tool is perfect ofcourse and Mango can definitely improve in some aspects. Their mobile apps are sometimes a bit flawing and absorp quite some battery energy for Android users. Also the usability aspects can improve a bit on the desktop app as well as the mobile apps. Luckily the crew responds quickly on feedback and it happened multiple times that our requests were added in the next release of MangoSpring. Quite frankly this is a very complete collaboration suite already, but there’s only one feature that would make it totally complete: a wiki-functionality. Also improved tagging, youtube integration and giving names to links (instead of full urls) would be usefull additions. Also improved usability and accessability for new users could be improved, like easier @-reply’s to other users.

Conclusion
I haven’t mentioned every aspect of MangoSpring Collaboration suite, it has so many possibilities. Things like: cross-search through updates, links, docs and profiles, the excellent profile management, banner options, “mark as read”, “unread messages” lists, hiding feeds, event management, Linkedin-profile importing, document activity tracking, are really neat… Just try it for yourself, you can get a free tour through their website.

Currently we have almost everyone signed up at MangoSpring and the messages and usage is rising on a weekly base. We are expanding activities through the suite and now also work together with a customer in a projectgroup.

Do you want your intranet or enterprise app reviewed? Contact me through Twitter.

Desktop apps for enterprise collaboration become increasingly important

If you ask a random employee at an organisation if he works in the cloud, most of them will respond: “only when I’m in an airplane”. In short: most employees don’t know the difference between a cloud service or a desktop service. And they should not have to know the difference. However, the big difference is that some vital cloud services are not accessible on the desktop, especially the intranet.  I think we will see a shift to a greater use of desktop apps that seamlessly sync with the cloud.

We all know the benefits of cloud computing in terms of accessibility of data. But let’s be honest, how many times did you get phoned by a colleague if you could send document X that was placed on a harddisk at a local network. Or how many times did you have to log-in at someones account, because he had to forget to send this draft document to his home adress. Clearly the step for many users to store their docs in the cloud is too far way. Great desktop apps can lower the barrier to participate in a cloud environment.

Digital workplace
As intranets will shift more towards a “digital workplace” (read this blog by Jane McConnel), the accessability of information will need to move beyond browsers. Ofcourse the most vital information should be available by mobile, but also a desktop app can dramatically increase the use of communicating and sharing information with your colleagues. No wonder that enterprise collaboration tools like Yammer and MangoSpring have invested in a desktop tool.

Users now for example can have a chat with colleagues, share and read documents and discuss topics through these tools. All from their desktop. Everything is happening in the cloud, but the user feels he is just working on his desktop.

MangoSpring desktop app screenshot

Some benefits are:

• trigger to engage in conversation is placed on desktop
• lower barrier for uploading docs in a cloud
• brings instant messaging and communicating to desktop

I’d like to hear from you: What’s your vision on enterprise desktop apps?

Five tips to make your intranet better in 2011

With the rise of enterprise collaboration software and the wave of new innovations for enterprise communication and collaboration, there’s just one conclusion: intranet & enterprise 2.0 is friggin cool. And it can make a hugely positive difference within your organisation.

1. Every employee needs an accessible digital profile
A profile page is the key element to any succesfull (social) intranet. There are just too much benefits of digital profiles to list them all. Many times I see pages with tables featuring contact details for the staff’s department. People come and go, phone numbers change and within no time the page is outdated. Or people searching for someone to answer their question. With profiles and a good profile search, this can save employees masses of time. Groups can be identified and targeted with the right content.

2. Enable instant messaging
Instant messaging is a key element to succesfull short chats between one or more employees on different locations. Use IM if you want to diminish the huge amounts of e-mail conversations and chat in realtime with each other. Try to incorporate IM in your intranet to make the intranet a “total communication platform” without the hassle of people using different IM software.

3. Bring the cloud to the desktop
Many people think about websites when they think about cloud computing. And websites are far away, far from my desk and from my computer. By enabling IM, document sharing and collaboration and update feeds on through a desktop tool, you will serve employees “the cloud experience” without having to visit the intranet all the time.

4. Mobile access will become even more important
Mobile working will become even bigger with the continuous rise of smartphones. How many times did you needed a document, but you couldn’t acces it, because you were not “inside the network”. Then you have to call a colleague to ask if he/she could send it to you. Or you needed a colleague’s phone number, but those details were inside the intranet and you couldn’t access it from the outside. Get your intranet ready for mobile access! Smartphones and tablets are used by alot of your employees, so go service them when they need the data.

5. Educate, train, support and stimulate your users
People get SAP-training, communication training, manamagement training, but usually the intranet has a couple of helppages and that’s it. Digital skills and knowledge for employees is incredibly important. Not only for the complany, but also for the employees themselves. You are not teaching them a tool, but teaching them digital skills they will need in the future. Try to get a training program up and running in your company for your editors or content managers. Have regular sessions about new developments, ask for intranet input, make polls and questionnaires. Stay in close contact with your users.

Looking forward to an innovative 2011.

Intranet product impression: Interact Intranet

Lately I came across a very interesting link on Twitter referring me to the Interact Intranet website where I could download a free Intranet Report full of interesting info and a guide on how to deploy a succesfull intranet. A very interesting read and afterwars I was contacted by Interact Intranet if I wanted to have a live demo session of the product. The UK company gives livedemo opportunities through the web while talking you through the product.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sample homepage of Interact Intranet solution

Demo
After setting up all the webconference stuff it was time for a one hour product demonstration and I must say that Interact has place some very nifty features in their intranet. Here’s a short summary of the most impressive stuff:

Holidays
Users have an amount of days to spend each year on days off. Through Interact employees can see the amount of days they have left. If they want to take some days off, they can digitally mark which dates they want off through the intranet. Automatically a signal will be sent to the manager. The manager has an overview through Interact of all the holiday request and can simply approve or disapprove requests according to the situation.

Configurable homepages
I liked the fact that Interact can make different homepages for different groups of people (depending on location or group or country). Also the homepages are totally configurable with different widgets.

News widget with “i have read this” tickbox
If you want to spread really important news through the company that requires reading, you can add a tickbox to the news to let users confirm they have read this. Shouldn’t be used often, but can be very interesting to put a little extra pressure on super important info.

Form builder
Excellent form builder that could really help workflows getting organised through the intranet. Easy to create and use forms are quite underestimated in many company’s (usually you have to e-mail a service centre and you always seem to forget some informatie. Or even worse: you have to download a Word-document, fill it in and e-mail it to the service centre)

Intelligent search
You can tag information and the system will suggest which tags fit best to certain information. Besides that it keeps track on which keywords and tags have been searched the most the past period of time. This gives very valuable insight in what kind of information is relevant and most searched by users.

Phased social implementation
Not every organisation is ready to embrace social elements into their intranet. Some are really quick, for others there’s a real cultural challenge. Nice thing about Interact Intranet is that you can introduce social elements gradually. Start maybey with an own profile for employees and gradually add social elements. This will increase adoption rate and gives users the time to slowly learn about the intranet.

No calendar/events
This is a feature I really missed though. I have to be a bit critical as well. I missed the ability to organise events and invite people/groups to join the event. A really interesting feature that could really save time in organising events and making guestlists.

Conclusion
Interact Intranet really looks like a great solution and combines traditional and social elements in a great way. If you are interested in getting a live demo go and visit them. Do you have an intranet product or CMS you wish to see reviewed on my blog? Please contact me through Twitter

Sample page of a people directory

Kill the I-word! Should we ditch the word “intranet”?

What’s the definition of an intranet at the moment?

In the past 15 to 20 years for many organisations the intranet has become a synonym for a bunch of static webpages together. Usually alot of the content is a tad old, unmanaged and unstructured. More and more organisations are now making their intranet startpage ”the single point of entry” in their organisation. With the ongoing rise of tablet-pc’s and smartphones, intranets should be available too through these systems. We see a transition into the fact that flexible handling of data is getting exceptionally important for intranets.

Big pile

Besides that, more and more functionalities are added to the intranet, like event calendars, wiki’s, forums, status updates. An amazing amount of really groovy solutions are added to intranets, wether they are business apps or other killer apps that draw visitors to the intranet on a daily base. The biggest problem however is that many of these apps have been separated from the intranet for years and years. The “intranet” is carved into people’s minds as the synonym I mentioned earlier in the post: “a big pile of webpages”.

Entities

You can notice this in daily conversations. Often we hear: “we added a calender to our intranet” or “we added status-updates as a possibility to our intranet”. This still feels like these applications and the intranet are seperate entities. Like they had to be integrated into an intranet, instead of being part of an intranet.

Due to the stormy developments within the intranet industry, maybey the word “intranet” does not justify the possibilities of internal online communication and collaboration anymore. Are we shifting more thowards a “digital workplace”, “intraplatform” or “digital work environment”?

J Boye conference Aarhus 2010 highlights

Early november I visited the J Boye conference in Aarhus (Denmark) for the first time to talk about educating and stimulating users to use the intranet. The conference is one of the yearly gatherings organized by the J Boye group. A three day conference for webprofessionals that connected webprofessionals from all over the world to share their latest insights. Next to keynote speakers like Eric Karjaluoto (10 dollars to earn for him/her who can pronounce his last name flawlessly) and Bebo White.  The first day (Tuesday) was a day full of workshops, that I unfortunately couldn’t attend, because I was still in the plane. Next to the three conference days that thook place at Frud there were also great “social events” in the evening. These were excellent networking opportunities and were excellent to connect with fellow J Boye visitors.

Highlights
I saw alot of very interesting presentations during the days I attend. Some of the highlights were:

• Neil Morgan from WWF explaining how they used Google Apps to connect all their different intranets around the globe. It was great to see how you can use free apps to take a step into online collaboration. All mail, calendars, document sharing/creating and wiki/project info is all based into Google Apps. Fascinating.
• Jane McConnell kicked off the intranet track with her presentation about the latest Global Intranet Trends 2011 report. It was very interesting to see how organisations worldwide use their intranets and what trends are visible. In short there are 5 megatrends visible in the report: Read about them here.
• Another highlight was the nice and down-to-earth presentation from Eric Branckaert from the World Food Programme (WFP). The people from WFP often work in very harsh surroundings without any internet connection at all or sometimes not even a computer. So how can they access the information? A great solution was provided with an intranet that was accessible through a USB stick and would update automatically when there was a connection possible. I loved this, because it wasn’t about the latest & greatest tool, innovation, social or all those trends. It was an actual solution to a problem and it was genius in all of it’s simplicity.
• Just before I had to present, Jerzy Kuba Karpel, who is responsible  for the deployment of the Mars intranet (and it’s participation strategy) held a great talk about how they educated their employees. I loved the video that explained employees how to use e-mail (and how not to use it). Nice one!
• Also the Web Idol contest was great fun and provided some CMS vendors to showcase their products. They had a couple of minutes to show how they could place a pressrelease on a website using their CMS, under the eyes of the audience and a strict jury. Gentics won with their nifty Aloha Editor, which you can try out online for a little bit.

There were many more and nice inspiring sessions from guys like Frank Wolff (online collaboration T-Systems), Martin Risgaard Rasmussen (intranet Arla Foods) and Ernst Decsey (intranet UNHCR). Unfortunately I missed the presentation in the “projectmanagement” track by Gerrit Berkouwer about Rijksoverheid.nl, luckily you can see the slides online.

If you were a conference attendee and would like to see the slides of my presentation “How the FIFA worldcup can promote your intranet” about educating and activating users to go to an intranet, you can get them at the J Boye site.

Conclusion
The J. Boye conference is a very nice and intimate event where you can exchange ideas with some smart people. The social events are really nice and well-organized and might catapult you into Aarhus nightlife afterwards with a good bunch of people (ending in a pizza meeting in the middle of the night). I hoped the intranet track would have attracted a bigger audience (how can we get the subject “intranet” a little bit more attractive for audiences?), but the amount of ideas and inspiration I got during the sessions was definetely worth it and made the trip worthwhile for sure! A big thanks to J Boye and his team that delivered a flawless event. Dates for 2011 are currently pinned, so be sure to attend if you got the chance.

How KLM made me feel like a popstar (social media case)

Two weeks ago I had to fly to Aarhus, Denmark for the excellent J Boye conference. This being a business trip ,I had to fly a little bit low budget with Cimber Sterling. I announced through my @klmfan Twitter that I would be on Schiphol airport on Tuesday morning 2nd of November. Suddenly I got a reply from a new KLM account named @KLMsurprise to ask me if we could meet up somewhere on Schiphol that morning. Uuh, sure why not? I was pretty curious what would be happening. I never heard from this account, nor did I know the people behind the account.

Surprise!
When I arrived that morning at Schiphol airport to catch my flight to Copenhagen, i first had to check in at Cimber Sterling, who just started as a new airline on Schiphol. This turned out to be the most chaotic, uncontrolled, no-boarding-pass-printing check-in ever. My mood was below zero, but after all the check-in and passport checks I had around 45 minutes before my plane would depart. I tweeted @KLMsurprise that I was ready for a meetup, unaware of the intentions. We set a place and a time through Twitter and when I arrived there I saw two guys with a big piece of paper with my name on it. This was pretty cool. In some way, people standing with a paper with your name on it makes you feel very important (popstar-like). Or maybey that’s just me. These guys handed me a present: a great aviation watch (limited edition) of KLM’s 90th anniversary and hope that I would remember them next time I would fly. Suddenly I was in a very good mood again. They took a pic, said goodbye and there I was, with a brandnew watch and a smile on my face.

Story
This is ofcourse a genius form of marketing. When I arrived at the conference I have told this story over twenty times to different people and also when I returned I talked about this alot. Not only I was surprised by KLM. Alot of other customers have been surprised by KLM, just check out their Facebook page with every story about surprised passengers. They have been actively scanning social media platforms to try and set up meetings with passengers. When a meeting was set, they tried to grab pieces of info from that person and surprise them during the meeting with a present that fits them.

Brilliant
The hype about this @KLMsurprise has been pretty big and there’s quite some buzz around the social media channel. It’s ofcourse a brilliant form of marketing and being a “victim” myself I loved it alot. The only thing the guys forgot to tell me was that they would post a picture of me receiving the present on Facebook. I found myself back on their Facebook page, but wasn’t aware the picture would be on there. I don’t find this a problem, but I can imagine some people might be “surprised” in the wrong way when are not informed right.

Economy Comfort Zone – the new seat choice for KLM passengers

As you might have noticed, KLM has announced a new zone for it’s passengers a few months ago: Economy Comfort. And from december 2009, the new seats will be available in the entire KLM intercontinental fleet. KLM just officially announced the official start of “Economy Comfort”. I was invited to check the Economy Comfort Zone and test some of the seats. So what to expect?

 

Economy Comfort

Economy Comfort zone in 777

 

Why Economy Comfort?

KLM has started the Economy Comfort zone like a cross-over between Economy Class and Business Class (but based in the Economy Class section of the plane). Depending on the type of aircraft, there will be 34 to 40 seats to choose from. Economy Class passengers can book an Economy Comfort seat for an additional fee between 80-150 euro (depending on the length of the flight).  Due to the economic climate many people and companies have less money to spend on flying. The Dutch airline hopes that the Economy Comfort will serve some of these passengers a better balance of cost and comfort.

What’s different at the seats in Economy Comfort?
KLM explains: “Economy Comfort features seats with up to 89cm (35 inches) of legroom – over 12% (10 cm/4 inches) more than standard Economy Class seats.  You can look forward to even more relaxation, as the seats in Economy Comfort also recline up to twice as far. In addition to this extra space, Economy Comfort passengers enjoy faster disembarkation.”

In short: you got quite alot more space which can make a significant difference for passengers on long flights, especially when you’re quite tall (like the Dutch people haha). It also makes sleeping alot more comfortable. KLM invited me to check the seats in Economy Comfort Zone  in the KLM hangars. They were just building this in a 747, so this was an excellent opportunity to check out the newly build seats. When I sat down I could stretch my legs and the recline made it quite nice and easy to lie back. It was amazing to see the technical crew (re)building the inside of this airplane so quickly. Within 48 hours the new zone was build into the plane.

Below you can check some pictures of the Economy Comfort zone in a Boeing 747:

Economy Comfort Zone

Economy Comfort Zone

For who?
The Economy Comfort Zone is for everybody, but customers with Flying Blue Platinum Status can use these seats free of charge. KLM also states: “Passengers who have purchased a fully flexible Economy Class fare (X, S or B booking class) may also reserve a seat in Economy Comfort for free.” You can book through KLM.com or through the usual ticket agents or the reservation phonenumber.

Conclusion
So will the new Economy Comfort seats be a succes? I can imagine that passengers that fly for business will be happy to see a cheaper alternative for the business class and will use “Comfort Zone”quite frequently. It’s great and comfortable enough for longer flights without being overly luxury. I’m not sure if many leisure passengers will use this ”Comfort Zone” instantly, as for alot of people the price is one of the most important factors in chosing a seat, but we will see how the seats are divided within a few months. Still, it’s very cool to see KLM has made this step and build this new seat option in the fleet in such a short time. Looking forward to hear your experiences in the Economy Comfort Zone, please tell them to me on Twitter through my @klmfan account.

For more info: http://www.klm.com

Extra
By walking through the KLM hangars I had the chance to shoot some nice pictures and vids with my iPhone, see the result below. Check out the beautiful 777 in the Skyteam colours and the beautiful sights of the hangars.

KLM plane

Plane Skyteam colours

Hangars KLM

Thanx Elleke Berkhof and the rest of the crew @KLM for having me over.

Exclusive report: KLM operated first ever passenger flight powered by sustainable biokerosene

Monday the 23th of November I was invited by KLM to attend the special event regarding the first partly “bio-fueled” flight with passengers on board. The flight would take off on Schiphol, Amsterdam Airport and fly around the Netherlands for approximately one hour. It’s a demonstration flight with one engine running on a mixture of 50% traditional kerosene and 50% biofuel. The biofuel is not yet certified, but this might be an important step towards a “greener” aviation future. The biofuel is made from Camelina, for more info about this plant click here. The flight would be attended by VIP’s like Peter Hartman (CEO of KLM), Maria van der Hoeven (Minister of Economic Affairs) and many others. In total around 40 people would attend the flight. Armed with just my iPhone I covered the event through my KLM Fan Twitter account, but below here you can read my experiences in sentences longer than 140 characters..

The plane from a distance

Bad weather

Before I would attend the “biofuel event” I first had a little trip around Schiphol East in some hangars. I will write down my experiences later on this blog, but it was really fun to check out the amazing hangars at Schiphol. More of that later. The weather was pretty much horrible: rain, some wind and not a single bit of sunshine made this quite a grey day. But that’s typically the autumn weather you can expect in The Netherlands. Due to my early arrival at Schiphol I was also very early in the KLM Jet Centre, where the press that would attend the event was welcomed.

The Boeing 747 close-up.

Jet Centre

I was there too early and saw the flight crew get their briefing for the flight. After a bit of walking around and the usual “where should I register and get my press pass”-hassle I found the area where the press could eat and drink. After a nice bit of small talk with some “colleagues” (and an interview) we saw some familiar faces like Peter Hartman, Maria van der Hoeven, but also Wim Kuijken (Secretary-General of Public Works and Water Management) and André Kuijpers (Dutch astronaut). I also spoke with a woman from Honeywell, the company that made the biofuel that was used for the flight.

After refusing at least 10 glasses of juice/wine/water and 20 slices of bread (catering was great), it was time for some speeching. Peter Hartman officially welcomed Maria van der Hoeven and talked about the importance of this flight and the future of aviation. Next we (the press that did not attend the flight itself) was directed to a bus that took us to the plane to make some pics and cover the boarding process.

Peter Hartman & Maria van der Hoeven are preparing for boarding the flight

For a cool explanation about KLM and biofuel, check this awesome and informative video about everything regarding KLM and biofuel.

Boarding

Luckily it was all dry now, so we could take some excellent pics of the Boeing 747 that would be used for the flight. The Boeing had a special livery with some “eco” messages on it and ofcourse thanks from the WWF (which were also involved in the process). We could walk all around the plane and enjoy the overwhelming sight of the blue & white plane, while the attendees boarded the flight. The plane left to take-off and the press was taken back to the Jet Center.

In-flight

After arriving most of the press left, however there was still the opportunity to cover a flight moment and the arrival of the 747. I decided to stay and we were taken next to a runway were the plane would do a so called “lowpass”. The airplane would pass the runway on a low altitude to make a nice shot. Unfortunately the rain really started to pour at that moment, which made it a true “survival adventure” outside. Luckily after twenty minutes the plane flew really close over our heads, which was just an amazing experience.

Arrival

We hopped back in the bus and drove through the rain back to the place where the passengers would leave. The airplane landed safely and everybody seemed to have enjoyed the flight. Despite the heavy rain and the fierce winds while leaving the plane, most of the VIP’s haircuts remained in good condition. The event would continue in a hangar nearby, but I decided to go home (as my iPhone was empty as well due to all the live covering). So back to the Jet Centre to take the bus to Schiphol Plaza.

The rain poured from the sky when the plane landed

And now?

The event and the flight were both very succesfull and it was great to see the big Boeing take off, knowing that one engine was running on biofuel. Let’s hope this idea is developed further and that we might see more of these flights in the near future. It was great that KLM launched this initiative and that in the future we can look back at this day and state it was the start of a global change in aviation.

For the full press release from KLM, click here.

Thanks to the KLM Crew for making this report possible. If you want to keep up to date about KLM on Twitter, follow my Twitter account KLMfan

A biofueled smile

A Guided Tour by KLM through Schiphol: Hangar 14 and Schiphol Centre

777 Black & White

Written by: Tim van Waard
Pictures by: Esther van der Holst
You can request high-res pictures by contacting me.

There are days that you will not easily forget in your life. The 24th of september was such a day, because that was the day we (yours truly and my girlfriend Esther) were invited for a guided tour by the KLM. The KLM is one of the most famous airline companies in the world. KLM was founded on 7 October1919 making it the oldest carrier in the world still operating under its original name. At the time I’m writing this, KLM is almost 90 years old. KLM’s main hub is Schiphol, usually named Amsterdam Airport Schiphol. Schiphol is one of the largest and most important airports in Europe (and the world).  We would first get a tour through Schiphol-Oost (in English: Schiphol-East) for a tour through Hangar 14, the biggest maintenance area at Schiphol. The second part of the tour took place inside Schiphol Centre, probably known well as every passenger departs or arrives there.

Sideview 777

Arrival at Schiphol Oost

Departing early as we had to make our way through the usual Dutch traffic jams, we just made it in time at 9.45 at the main gate to enter Schiphol East. This area has strict security measures, so at the gate we had to meet up with our guide, mister Van Aken. After a truly warm welcome and a little meeting with some of the KLM-staff, it was time for us to head to the first part of the tour: Hangar 14.  With our visitors badge firmly attached to our clothes, we were ready to explore the exceptionally big maintenance area.

Hangar 14

When you enter Hangar 14, you are immediatly impressed of the sheer size of this building. There are three “bays” in the hangar, each bay is used for maintenance of aircrafts. Both KLM aircrafts as well as aircrafts from other companies are being sent to these bays to get their check-up after a specific amount of “flight hours”. Maintance work goes on for 24 hours a day, both in daytime and nighttime. KLM is known for it’s excellent expertise regarding maintenance of aircrafts. The quality and speed of these check-ups is of a supreme level. We found ourselves impressed walking through the corridors heading for the three bays.

Cockpit 777

We could only take pictures of the KLM objects, as security measures are very strict nowadays in the aviation industry, for obvious reasons. While entering the middle bay we found an aircraft of the Saudi Arabian cargo arrier Midex. It was great to check the aircraft while the crew was working on the nose of this airplane. On average 100 people work on an airplane to get the things fixed, with every crewmember having an expertise.

In the next bay we found a Boeing 777 from KLM in the beautiful blue and white coating. A great sight and we were invited by our guide to enter the aircraft. He showed us the cockpit (which was heavily under maintenance) and the rest of the airplane. Also we found ourselves checking out the rooms where the cabin crew sleeps during a flight. Big respect to this crew to sleep in such tiny spaces and still be happy to serve your drinks with a smile .

Cabin Crew sleeping place

New livery

When we visited the third bay we saw the fantastic sight of an airplane being painted in a new livery. It’s amazing to see such a gigantic aircraft in a way, you never really see them. We could not take pictures ofcourse, due to the security. After some final walking around through the hangar we encountered a General Electric engine on the floor. KLM uses General Electric engines for all their aircrafts. This engine is huge and has an unimaginable amount of parts.

777 Engine close-up

Our guide

I really have to make a special mention for our guide, mr van Aken, in this blog. He works now more than 30 years for KLM, as a purser, but also in different other roles. His knowledge about aviation and especially KLM seemed to be endless. Not only did we hear loads of great little facts about KLM and Schiphol, but also he was willing to answer every question we asked him. Next to that we had some good conversation about the rising amount of agression of passengers that cabin crew have to handle correctly and about the stricter security levels since 9/11. KLM makes no concessions on security and safety is one of the most important things for KLM. The devotion to this security and life of the passengers is great to see for an outsider. The level of thoughtfullness in every aspect of aviation (environment, materials, laws) amazed us.

Inside the 777

Schiphol centre

We made our way to Schiphol centre and parked our car at a very cheap parking garage (3,5 hours parking, 16 euro’s, ouch) to get ready for the second part, the guide through Schiphol Centre. After meeting up again with our guide mr van Aken, he showed us the KLM Crown lounge. This is a brandnew lounge for World Business Class passengers or Premium Members. Here we were offered some nice sandwiches and some fresh juice. They also offer exclusive wines and champagne, but we decided to stay sober

Need we say more?

Walking through Schiphol

We then were guided through Schiphol, checking out some beautiful decorations on some walls. Decorations you usually walk by in a hurry. But when you take the time to wander around Schiphol, you just see so much more things you would not have noticed. We also made a quick visit to the KLM “unaccompanied minor service” area. Children under the age of 12 sometimes travel alone by plane. KLM supports these young kids and looks after them. They have a special area where the kids can play and have fun. KLM staff watches them and makes sure they are delivered on the flight safe and sound.  We also came across the annex of the Dutch Rijksmuseum, where highly acclaimed art can be viewed by visitors of Schiphol for free. Every few months, the paintings get substituted for new ones. It was fun to see that our guide, mr van Aken, was helping people along the way that came to him with questions about where to go. You’re a purser 24 hours a day

Schiphol wall decoration

The crew area at Schiphol

Then we entered the so called  “crew center”, where all the cabin crew and airline pilots gather to meet-up, relax and prepare for their flights. Blue uniforms everywhere ofcourse. We went into a briefing room, pretending to be cabin crew. We watched a fun DVD which explained the cultural do’s and don’ts while serving Japanese people. KLM has many DVD’s for cabin crew to understand the cultural differences between people from different country’s. We found it very entertaining and usefull. We now know that we should never point a finger at someone who is Japanese . After this, our guide mr van Aken had to leave us to do other work, but he by then invested more than 4 hours time in guiding us, which was truly remarkable!

Seat adjustment business class

After a long day we went home, amazed by everything we had seen and heard. We would like to thank mr van Aken, mr van Kanten and the other KLM staff we met that day. We could have written up ten times more about everything we learned that day, but this a good overview of the tour. It was a wonderfull experience!