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February 03 2010
Use accessibility as a lever to improve
I sometimes come across sites and applications on BT’s intranet which could be more usable. I find it can be easier to pick up with the owner or developer about its accessibility as a lever to improve other areas such as usability. Why you may ask?
Well there are some improvements which are a matter of opinion. What is usable to one person maybe very unusable to another. They are subjective.
But accessibility is NOT subjective. Either a site is accessible or not. Also in most countries there is a legal requirement for web services (this includes intranets) to be accessible. The level required may vary.
Accessibility standards are available to everyone on the internet. So whether a site or application is developed, published or managed inside or outside of your organisation, the information will always be there.
When a site or application’s accessibility is being updated it is a great opportunity to improve the usability and make other changes at the same time.
So ideally you can improve a site or application so it is legal and improved in other ways to give a better overall experience for all users.
Preventing accessibility problems as well as correcting existing problems is very important for your users as well as your organisation’s legal responsibilities.
I’ll post soon about what BT does on web accessibility.
Tagged: accessibility, applications, bt intranet, intranet applications, usability standards
February 02 2010
2010: Year of the Social Intranet
Is your intranet ‘social’? Or is it antiquated?
Social media on the intranet (Intranet 2.0) are present on about half of all intranets (in the Western World). Once a nice-to-have or a future wish, Intranet 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and other vehicles have become mainstream – although not to all employees.
Despite the low cost of entry, most intranet 2.0 tools are merely experiments, pilots or limited to a very small audience. Social media has only been deployed at the enterprise level in about 25% of organizations (see the results of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey Intranet 2.0 becomes mainstream).
Intranet wikis, for example, are increasingly popular: as of last year, employee wikis were present in 45% of all organizations (regardless of size), but only 17% of organizations had deployed them enterprise wide. The results for intranet blogs are similar: only 13% of organizations had deployed them at the enterprise level.
Many of the experiments and pilots, the department and team level tools will be rolled-out to the rest (or most of the rest) of the enterprise in 2010. Still, more organizations that are sleeping through the social media revolution will jump on the bandwagon. 2010 will be the year of the social intranet.
To confirm or disprove this theory, we’re once again conducting the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey 2010 to learn the latest about what social media organizations are using, are not using, and the reasons for their use (or absence on the intranet).
The following survey takes approximately 10 minutes to complete. Respondents who complete the survey will be eligible to win $400 (a random email address will be drawn from all responses to the survey). All respondents will also receive a full copy of the results at no cost. Please provide your contact information in order to receive the survey results and to be entered into the $400 prize draw.
Take the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey 2010.
ADDITIONAL READING:
To download a free, summarized version of the last year’s Intranet 2.0 report please visit:
http://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/download-summary-report-of-intranet-2-0-global-survey
To purchase the full, 44-page Intranet 2.0 report of analysis & recommendations please visit: http://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/purchase-intranet-2-0-global-survey-report
January 29 2010
Mark Morrell meets Oracle: update
I met with Oracle and other Oracle customers earlier this week. This was the first of what Oracle hope will be regular meetings with their major customers in Europe. The main focus was on content and document management product features and roadmaps.
I left with the impression that Oracle seriously wants to continue improving the usability of Universal Content Management by engaging with their customers through webcasts and meetings. The next release of 11G using Fusion promises to move towards what I would like – a simple publishing experience which needs minimal IT involvement.
I would like the following to happen next:
- Oracle should hold frequent webcasts with customers to cover future direction of UCM and other products like E-Business Suite.
- Customer representatives should have more business users attending with their IT partners. I was in a small minority at this week’s meeting.
- Intranet managers who are Oracle customers should make sure they attend these meetings.
- Intranet managers should improve their relationship with their IT partners so they are more involved in decision criteria on products so it covers usability and productivity costs during its lifetime.
- Meetings should focus more on how Oracle products can be used by customers than on the components that make up the technology.
- An agreed set of usability standards underpin the direction of product roadmaps.
We should never forget the goal is to make it easier for people to do their work by using technology that is giving best overall value to the business not to have the latest whizzy feature which doesn’t.
And that applies to any software from any vendor our organisations buys.
Tagged: applications, bt intranet, intranet applications, oracle, usability, user testing
January 25 2010
Benchmark to get the best value
I read with great interest Jane McConnell’s blog post on “Vanity” or “Specific value” benchmarking?’. BT has benchmarked its intranet for the past 4 years with the Intranet Benchmarking Forum (IBF). In fact as I write this two IBF people are doing an expert evaluation of our intranet!
BT’s intranet is benchmarked in four broad areas; strategy and governance; metrics and performance; communications and culture; design and usability.
The main aim is to find out where BT sets global best practice and where it can be improved. To assess whether it is meeting the needs of BT and people who use our intranet. All good stuff but…………
It can sometimes be difficult to find out apart from other IBF members where that best practice is and whether it is transferable to BT’s intranet.
It can also be difficult to use the data to justify further investment in BT’s intranet. The IBF do have a financial value benchmark area but that costs more.
So, I’m trying to address Jane’s three questions.
1. I would like to share my benchmarking data with other intranet managers of global organisations with advanced intranets. Any one interested?
2. Identify more of the full value an intranet provides in a form that can be used and understood by people who make the big financial decisions on future intranet investment. Any ideas?
I’ll share the key findings on BT’s benchmarking when known in April.
Tagged: benchmark, bt intranet, measure, value
Social media resources for intranet & communication professionals (part 2 of 2)
In part 1 of this post, I talked about the need for intranet and communication professionals to take the lead within their organisations and set the example for how to use social media tools to help the business. The following are some useful resources to help you connect with other intranet and communication professionals.
LinkedIn has been described as 'Facebook for adults'. It allows you to post details about your career and connect with over 55 million people (and growing quickly). Once you have joined LinkedIn, you can join up to 50 interest groups. Groups allow you to participate in discussions, read and post relevant news items, look for relevant events and jobs, create voting polls, and generally connect with people who have the same interests as you.
For Intranet and Communication Professionals, if you haven't already, I'd sign up ASAP. This is the business you are in - communicating and sharing information. It will be easier to recommend and promote the benefits of interactive communication and social media if you are active practitioner yourself!
Then I'd suggest joining the following groups:
- Worldwide Intranet Challenge- helps organisations build business critical intranets through the sharing of best practice intranet techniques.
- Intranet Professionals- provides a simple way for intranet professionals to network with peers regarding technology, usability, and best practices. Nearly 1500 members.
- Internal Communications- for people who manage company publications, internal announcements, employee communications, or manage the intranet.
- NetJMC & Co- a peer-to-peer network to exchange ideas and information among intranet practitioners. (No vendors, no agencies).
- Knowledge Management Group - for people interested in knowledge management.
- Employee Communications and Engagement - dedicated to the art and practice of employee communications and engagement. Over 3000 members.
- CMS User Group- links up professionals in the CMS Community - a worldwide network of web designers, developers and entrepreneurs, sharing information and empowering each others' success. Over 2000 members.
- Content Management Professionals - a collaborative community of practice advancing the field of content management
- The Content Wrangler Community - content management, content quality, content standards, content reuse, user-generated content, rich media, Web 2.0, social networking, writing, translation and localization. Over 4000 members.
There are thousands of other groups that you may find relevant as well. Just use a keyword to search for the type of group you are looking for.
Twitter allows people to post messages of less than 140 characters (Tweets). Messages can include links to interesting articles or websites. Using Tweetdeck(or a similar tool) and relevant search terms, you are able to easily keep up to date with the latest news in your industry. In just 10 or 15 minutes each day, you can read the latest tweets - it's like having your own personalised newspage. If you haven't already, join Twitter and become an active participant now.
For intranets, I'd suggest at least using the search terms 'intranet', 'intranets', 'portal' - and maybe the software that your intranet uses (eg. SharePoint). It's also worthwhile following key Twitterers. Below is a list of people I follow regularly who talk about intranets.
| rachellai83 collabguy intranet2 Hitwise_US TonyByrne intranet intranetdesign Intranets20 intranet_portal IntranetExperts tobyward |
adenin s2d_jamesr jboye nadine_mcmahon seanrnicholson intranetlife StepTwoDesigns frankx ShvetsovaNata andyjankowski netjmc |
mdoll EphraimJF ChristySeason Peter_Richards markmorrell carolyndouglas IntraTeam Alex_Manchester sammarshall nancyatibforum |
Facebook is the largest social networking site in the world with over 300 million members. Surprisingly to some people, it is possible to not only use Facebook to keep in touch with your family and friends, but to use it in a similar way to LinkedIn (eg. by joining groups that have similar interests). Some groups you may want to consider include:
- Worldwide Intranet Challenge- provides case studies and ideas for how to make your intranet business critical
- Intranet Global Forum- An online community dedicated to intranet best practices, knowledge sharing and collaboration between intranet professionals. Set up by Toby Ward who writes the Intranet Blog. Over 600 members.
- Content Management Professionals - CM Pros is the worldwide organization for people who want to learn more about content management from other professionals
- SharePoint Community Special Interest Group- for anyone with an interest in improving and growing the worldwide SharePoint community.
I have found that some people prefer to keep their professional and personal lives separate, so they will used LinkedIn for business and Facebook for family and friends.
Xing is kind of like the European version of LinkedIn. With over 8 million connections and growing quickly, it is another great resource to connect with intranet professionals. Groups relevant to intranet professionals include:
- Content Management- German and English. Content refers to printed content, media asset, and othe unstructured and stzructured data in intranet, extranets and the internet
- Corporate Communications - German.
- Information and Documument Management - In German, English, Spanish, French - Document, Information, Content, Records, Process & Knowledge Management
- SharePoint 2010- In German and English. Articles about SharePoint.
- Интранет Клуб- Intranet Club for Russia organised by Natalia Shvetsova (WIC Partner)
Other helpful tools
Other tools that I have found useful include Delicious ('the tastiest bookmarks on the Web') and Digg.
Delicous is like having a portable web toolbar. You can save your favourite web pages to Delicious and then access these again from anywhere you have internet access (of course a good intranet that is place-independent will also allow you to do the same thing!). In addition to saving bookmarks, Delicious also allows you to build a network of like minded contacts. You are able to view other people who have bookmarked the same pages as you, and then see what other pages they may have bookmarked. You can also recommend bookmarks to your contacts.
Digg is a way for the most popular content on the web as 'dug' by the end users to be identified. A popular blog post for example, may get submitted to Digg many times which will cause it to climb the ladder of popularity. Read more about Digg.
What social media tools do you use?
In what other ways do you use the above tools? Are there any other social media tools that you have found helpful for your business?
January 21 2010
Mark Morrell meets Oracle
Next week I will go to Oracle’s Customer Advisory Council. This is a meeting between Oracle and as many of their top 10 customers who can attend. BT comes into that category so I’ll meet Oracle.
The aim of the council is to cover the user experience and how future versions of software being released will improve it. It should also cover concerns like I have about the usability of their applications and making things easier to use.
So, this meeting won’t just be about the current or next release of Oracle UCM and how it meets BT’s needs but cover other applications.
I believe I will be shown the next releases to comment upon and suggest how their future plans could improve the user experience. I really would like Oracle to seriously consider working to some agreed usability standards.
So, this is your chance to help me by leaving a comment on this post or email me by next Tuesday 17:00 GMT (meeting is Wednesday and Thursday) on any usability issue you have that I can raise on your behalf.
I expect it to be a valuable and constructive meeting. I hope to update you afterwards with the progress made. I try to be optimistic!
Tagged: applications, bt intranet, intranet applications, oracle, usability, user testing
January 20 2010
Communication & intranet professionals should set the social media example (Part 1 of 2)
I conducted a workshop recently consisting of 17 communication, intranet and IT knowledge workers. The age range was late 20s to late 30s. All were well qualified and educated professionals located in Australia. At the beginning of the workshop I asked the following questions:
- How many of them had a Facebook account - 8 people, Who has heard of Facebook - everyone
- How many had a MySpace account - 0, Who has heard of it - everyone
- Who uses instant messaging (including work) - 12
- Who has a LinkedIn profile - 2, Who has heard of LinkedIn - 5 (including the 2 who had profiles)
- Who is actively using Twitter - 2 (though 4 others had set up an account but were not using it)
- Who wrote a blog regularly (including work blogs) - 1 (me)
- Who has posted a question or responded to a question in an online discussion group within the last 3 months (including any work discussions) - 2
- Who has viewed a video on Youtube - everyone, who has added a video to Youtube - 1
- Who has ever posted a comment about a news story or a blog - 4
- Who has used Wikipedia at some stage - everyone, Who has ever contributed to Wikipedia - no-one
- Who considers email as their main way of electronically communicating with work colleagues - everyone!
While the above is far from scientific, I must admit I was not surprised at the relatively low level of content contribution to social media from a seemingly ideal demographic. My experience is that while people are happy to consume content there is a lot less enthusiasm towards contributing content. Even from my own circle of friends & family, most from an older demographic I must admit (lets just call them gen x!), there is only one other person who has a blog and uses Twitter regularly. A few of them have Facebook accounts which they use mainly to stalk their kids!
Use of social media within an enterprise
While I think that many people are aware of the popular social media tools and are consumers of content (ie. viewers of Youtube and readers of blogs), I think using these tools to contribute content as a normal part of business is an exception (Facebook appears to be widely used, but not for business - Note: I see Facebook recently passed Google over Christmas as the most popular internet destination).
Data from the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) supports this idea (Note: The WIC provides intranet feebdack from nearly 11,000 intranet end users from 30 organisations in 12 countries) . The chart below shows the average response to the question, How often do you use the intranet to discuss work topics (eg. using discussion forums or blogs).
As can be seen 29 of the 30 organisations (listed on the left of the chart using 8 digit codes) to participate in the WIC all rank less than 'Infrequently'.
It's a similar result for the question, 'How often do you use the intranet to publish content?'.
How highly do employees value social media and interactivity?
The chart below shows the correlation between how valuable employees think an intranet is and the various qualities of the intranet.
Web 2.0 type tasks such as being able to discuss work topics, provide feedback or comments and collaborate online are at the lower end of the scale.
Another question asking how important various characteristics were in contributing to a valuable intranet showed a similar trend, with staff being able to contribute and interact rated the second least important quality (out of seven).
While I believe that social media tools are widely available in the workplace, the adoption and use of these tools into business as usual is taking a little longer.
So what is the point of this bad news!?
This purpose of this post is to paint a realistic picture of how social media tools are being used within organisations in order to highlight the fact that more work is needed before active use of social media tools becomes mainstream. Social media tools that encourage interactivity and collaboration between employees have real potential to add significant value to organisations, to enhance knowledge workers productivity & efficiency and to improve employee engagement.
Anyone that has posted a question to a LinkedIn discussion forum, discovered a relevant news story through Twitter, or viewed a video on YouTube will understand the value of social media.
To accelerate the adoption of social media in the workplace, there is an opportunity for intranet and communication professionals to take the lead within their organisations and set the example for how to use these tools to benefit the business.
Part 2 of this post will explain some practical ways for people to use social media to enhance their productivity at work.
Corporations can learn from government websites
In convening focus groups for a government health portal we (Prescient Digital Media) we built (and would eventually win a Webby Award for) I discovered a few universal truths about websites, one of which we all have to keep learning again and again: people hate advertising.
The focus groups with different consumer segments and demographics kept revealing the same results: not only are web users naturally untrusting of the content they read on the Internet (unless it’s a well known, well-used website), they’re particularly untrusting of websites with advertising. This concern and distrust is enhanced several fold in the case of consumer health information and informatics. In fact, what consumers told us is that not only do they hate ads but they hate anything that resembles an ad – even if it’s a simple promotional box that promotes another piece of free content on the website.
There is one Golden Rule about the web above all others: make it easy as possible to let your users find what they’re looking for (and stay out of their way, or they’ll stay away from you). Governments have little to advertise, they’re not-for-profit. The highly politicized bureaucracies of some (sadly, Canada has become one of those) do impede users with an over abundance of political messages, but more and more are getting the drift and focus on the Golden Rule.
A perfect example of this is the government website for the State of Texas (www.TexasOnline.com); smartly laid out, lots of contextual links for the most popular content, and aside from a small message from the governor, it is advertising free. It’s a superb site that a lot of corporate websites could learn from.
In contrast, the once superb Government of Canada website has been overcome with political messages and press releases – the type of partisan crap that the 99% of web users abhor.
Other very strong government websites:
· USA.gov
· Government of France (I have a love / hate relationship with this site)
While government websites still have a lot to learn from the corporate sector (particularly around the latest technology and social media), there’s a lot the corporate sector can learn from government websites.
Speaking
of learning from government websites, tune into to
Julian Mills and Prescient Digital Media’s webinar on Government websites: Best Practices for Managing a Government Website Redevelopment Thursday, January 28 (12pm EDT). This is for both government and corporate intranet managers and consultants with a focus on the
process and requirements for undertaking a redesign or new website (or
technology platforms). This webinar includes a co-presenter and an in-depth
case study from the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade (MEDT).
January 19 2010
Intranet Konferenzen 2010
Martin White hat eine Übersicht der dieses Jahr im Themenumfeld “Intranets” stattfindenden Konferenzen zusammen gestellt: Intranet Conferences 2010
Ich selber werde im 1. Halbjahr 2010 vor allem auf diesen Veranstaltungen mit dabei sein:
- International Conference about Intranets and Enterprise 2.0. March 2-4, Copenhagen. Intrateam
(halte dort einen Vortrag gemeinsam mit Andrew Wright über die Worldwide Intranet Challenge: “Building the Best Practise Intranet“) - ECM forum, Zürich, 29. April
- Intranet Summit, Frankfurt, 19.-20. Mai
- und am ersten Dienstag jeden Monats bei Intranets Live
January 18 2010
Worldwide Intranet Challenge - Conference Presentation in Denmark
I have been asked a few times why I decided to set up the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC). The seed was sewn when I attended an intranet session a few years back called 'Best practice intranets'. At this session, intranet managers from 3 or 4 different organisations presented case studies about their intranets.
While some of the characteristics of these intranets were impressive and the case studies were interesting & valuable, I couldn't help but think, 'Why are these intranets best practice? Who has decided that they are the best? What evidence is there to support this claim?'. I discovered that there was no evidence, that the term 'best practice' was not being used in the literal sense, and that a session title simply called "Intranet case studies' would have been more accurate (though perhaps not as compelling).
How are intranets currently evaluated?
I did some more research on how the most effective intranets could be identified and discovered that there were organisations that did in fact rate intranets and identified those that were the 'best'. These organisations provide expert evaluations of intranets - in other words, highly experienced intranet practitioners evaluate an intranet based on well defined criteria about what comprises a good intranet and then rank each intranet against this criteria.
If intranets were movies, then these rating systems would be like the various award ceremonies such as the Cannes International Film Festival or the Academy Awards. These Intranet awards are a very valuable source of information and can be a great source of inspiration for other intranet managers.
What about the intranet end user?
After reviewing these approaches to identifying best practice intranets, I felt that a mechanism that allowed intranet end users to also give their opinion about their intranet could be valuable to intranet managers. Kind of like asking someone who has been to a movie, what they think thought about it (ie this would be the equivalent of the box office).
For those new to this blog, the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) allows intranet end users to evaluate and comment on their own intranet and then for these responses to be compared against other participating organisations. This makes it possible to identify those organisations that are the 'best' in each question as determined by their own end users.
How many people have participated in the WIC?
Since April 2009, nearly 11,000 intranet end users from 30 organisations in 12 countries have participated in the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC). We will be presenting these findings at the IntraTeam Event 2010(International Conference about Intranet and Enterprise 2.0).
The 'Best Practice' intanet presentation
With enough data now to identify those intranets that are perceived by the end users to be the best, we think it is the right time to share these findings with other interested people. We will be delivering two two 'Best Practice' intranet sessions at the 2010 Intrateam Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark - March 2 -4. Details of the sessions are below:
- A workshop on Tuesday 2nd March, 11.30am - 1pm about Building the Best Practice Intranet. The Workshop will look at some of the survey questions such as those related to the home page, finding information, and overall satisfaction and why some organisations have rated highly in these questions and others haven't
- On Wednesday 3rd March, 11 am - 11.50 we will be presenting the topic Building the Best Practice Intranet. During the presentation we will talking about what the WIC measures, why these are important, what have been the results so far, what are the qualities of the most effective intranets, and what qualities do end users think are important.
Other speakers at this international intranet conference include:
- Stephan Schillerwein (co-presenting the Worldwide Intranet Challenge findings)
- Jane McConnell (Future Intranet for New Ways of Working)
- James Robertson (What will a working day look like in 2015?)
- Mark Morrell (What’s the Full Value of Your Intranet?)
- Michael Sampson (Frameworks for Evaluating Collaboration Tools)
I would recommend that you consider attending this conference if you are interested in finding ways that your intranet can add even more value to your organisation.
January 15 2010
Intranet predictions for 2010
1- SharePoint will continue to dominate
All hail the king, SharePoint. SharePoint has become the single biggest, most pervasive intranet platform of all time (present in 50 – 60% of all medium to large-size organizations). While SharePoint is still minimally used for department and team level document sharing and collaboration, more organizations are looking to use it as the enterprise intranet platform.
SharePoint 2010, due to market in late spring, is vastly improved over the former version, MOSS 2007. Many, many organizations will be upgrading to 2010, and begin to use the new platform as the enterprise intranet platform. What’s more, the cost of entry for taking on SharePoint has never been lower as Microsoft SharePoint “in the cloud” with SharePoint Online. SharePoint online already boasts more than 1,000,000 users, and unlike the previous SharePoint Online the 2010 version of SharePoint Online promises to “near feature parity” (with only small exceptions) to the install version.
SharePoint’s market share will soar with SharePoint 2010.
2- IBM will finally become more aggressive with WebSphere Portal
As dominate and pervasive as SharePoint has become, the market leader is WebSphere Portal (measured in license revenue. Although the implementation and services revenue is undoubtedly much higher than what the anemic Microsoft Consulting Services group can conjure). However, unless you follow the portal market, you would think that SharePoint is not just the leader, but a market killer.
Regardless, of how you measure success, SharePoint is a massive success, and so to is WebSphere Portal, but you would never know it by wading through the surface of most technology news and blogosphere punditry. WebSphere Portal however is arguably a more sophisticated, certainly more mature, product than SharePoint. And while IBM is happy with the WebSphere’s success, there undoubtedly more than just a few ruffled feathers by all the hype and attention SharePoint gets. Never a company to sit idly by, and as innovative as ever (IBM received 4,914 U.S. patents in 2009, the highest for the 17th consecutive year), the IBM marketing machine is not as aggressive as Microsoft’s. Nonetheless, WebSphere is due for a marketing makeover and may get more attention and marketing dollars in 2010.
3- Social media will become mainstream at the enterprise level
Social media on the intranet – collectively referred to as Intranet 2.0 – is now present on about half of all intranets (in the Western World). Once a nice-to-have or a future wish, Intranet 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and other vehicles have become mainstream.
Despite the low cost of entry, most intranet 2.0 tools are merely experiments, pilots or limited to a very small audience. Social media has only been deployed at the enterprise level in about 25% of organizations (see the results of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey Intranet 2.0 becomes mainstream).
Many of the experiments and pilots, the department and team level tools will be rolled-out to the rest (or most of the rest) of the enterprise in 2010. Still, more organizations that are sleeping through the social media revolution will jump on the bandwagon. Look for an explosion of user-generated content on the corporate intranet.
4- KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid
The “kitchen sink” design approach to the intranet home page is standard, but it’s stupid. The more you throw on a page, the more you confuse and distract users. It might work for Amazon.com, which relies on brand and SEO, at the expense of user-friendly design.
People like Google for a reason – it’s dead simple. I’ve had the pleasure to test dozens of intranet home page designs, in many dozens of focus groups. The highest rated and appreciated home pages, are the simple ones. The least popular designs are the busier designs that are best exemplified by IBM and Cisco (very good, and popular intranets, but for highly web-savvy audiences).
I’ve seen a trend towards simpler intranet home pages, just as we’ve seen on the Internet, and the trend will really start to proliferate in 2010.
5- Outsourcing the intranet to the cloud
Although it is only the beginning, some companies will finally begin to realize that professional hosts (ASPs) are better at hosting and security than their IT department.
The “cloud” refers to cloud computing that, at the risk of over-simplifying, is simply hosting – computer, server, software, and other hardware and infrastructure hosting. You’re already a cloud customer, probably many times over (someone is hosting your email, website, blog, etc. In fact, 56% of internet users use webmail services such as Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo! Mail – hosted email in the cloud).
Microsoft is aggressively pushing its cloud services. MS already hosts the gigantic 200,000 user SharePoint intranet for GlaxoSmithKiline (and it estimates that the hosted solution has delivered big ROI and reduced “IT operational costs by roughly 30% “).
Very few organizations have their intranet hosted in the cloud today, but perhaps as many as 5% of medium to large organizations will look to outsource their intranet to the cloud over the next year or so.
6- Death to the portal
Microsoft stopped calling SharePoint a portal solution sometime ago. To Microsoft, and most of the rest of the technology world, SharePoint is a web development platform.
Oracle killed all of its portal solutions. Now there’s just simply “WebCenter Suite.” Ditto with eXo which is no longer eXo Portal, it’s now eXo Platform.
Now the word portal hasn’t disappeared from the marketing literature or the feature sets: all of these platforms and suites still have portal functionality and features. Compared to five years ago, however, there are very few companies left selling portal products. They’ve been gobbled up by other products, other companies, or swallowed by the platform.
The only big name left with a standalone portal product is IBM, with WebSphere Portal. Per my second prediction above, look for IBM to give WebSphere Portal a marketing makeover that might include the dropping of the ‘portal’ name from the product label.
ADDITONAL READING:
Intranet 2.0 becomes mainstream
January 13 2010
Meeting mobile intranet users’ needs
Last Friday I was interviewed by the Intranet Benchmarking Forum about how BT was meeting our intranet users’ needs who use a mobile device. I also came across a great blog post and an internet report on mobility (over 40mb!).
So, I thought I would share what BT has done and what I would like to do in this post as it is becoming a hotter topic.
I posted about BT Intranet mobile users in June 2009 which links to examples. I feel progress in 2010 will move in different ways for content than for applications.
Content
Now: BT’s intranet standards make sure a PDA heading is on the templates used by our content management system for publishing information. It means mobile users can click on this to see a text version of the same content. Changes made to the main version automatically update the PDA version so people can rely on the content being the same.
Future: With the increased capability of mobile devices used by people in BT I want to make sure the coding (CSS) used for the content is capable of sizing up or down for any device and enable images to also adjust their size. This means we only need one version that is usable and accessible to any device (mobile, laptop, desktop PC, etc) saving on costs and giving users a better experience.
Applications
Many of my regular readers will know my views about the poor usability of applications for intranet users and my concerns with Oracle’s applications on BT’s intranet.
For applications two versions are needed. The full, standard, functionality is available for people to use but for mobile devices only the cut down, key functionality is available.
For example with BT’s Directory I can check a person’s contact details, manager, organisation chart, whereabouts, team members and their whereabouts. For mobile devices only the contact details for the person found are available as that is the main reason why people use it.
The difficulty for me is persuading software vendors used by BT for intranet applications to understand why this is important and what is needed. It should keep me busy during 2010!
Tagged: accessibility, applications, bt intranet, content, directory, intranet applications, oracle, people finder, publishing, standards, usability, users
January 11 2010
2010 Intranet Resolutions
Just before Christmas I posted the following discussion topic on the LinkedIn Group, Intranet Professionals (btw, if you are not already a member of this group, I'd strongly recommend that you join):
"What is the one thing you would like to improve most about your intranet in 2010?"
I provided a link to an online survey and people also responded in the actual discussion. The results of the online survey were:
It seems the two popular picks are improving search and making the intranet a more interactive experience. These conclusions are also supported by the comments made on the actual discussion site.
Over twenty intranet owners/advisers responded to the question and there were some common themes among the comments which I have summarised below.
Finding information
Of the 21 responses, 10 mentioned that they would like either an improved search or a better Information Architecture (which makes it easier to find information) as one of their goals for 2010. This was the category that received the most responses. It seems that the issue of finding information is still a major challenge for many intranet professionals.
This is supported by feedback from the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) - intranet end user survey - which shows that ease of finding information is considered to be the most important quality of an effective intranet and yet is also the area that needs the most improvement (see What makes an intranet valuable - Part 1).
News/content
There were also 10 comments about news and content. Interestingly a couple of comments related to cleaning up content on the intranet - which would help make it easier to find information. Katri Pyykkö, Kela, makes the good point that "The intranet is not an archive" and wants to start cleaning up the intranet. Mike Chapman (Cancer Research, UK) also makes the good point that he would like to "close the gap between what content producers think they should provide and what the users really want." I think it's called vanity publishing and I agree that too much irrelevant information can dilute the value of the useful information (this is often called the signal to noise ratio). Sean Zintl, Sky, wants to "Make content more relevant to specific target audiences "
Personalization
Five people commented on the desire to introduce personalisation to the intranet. While personalisation has been a popular goal for intranets for a few years now, feedback from the WIC shows that there is not a strong correlation between having the ability to personalise and the overall value of the intranet. The correlation between personalisation and overall intranet value is less the 0.1 - one of the lowest of all the WIC questions. For more information, see What makes an intranet valuable Part 3.
Training
Five people also mentioned intranet training as a goal for 2010. While the correlation value between intranet training and intranet value is relatively weak (1.70), the number one ranked WIC organisation - Wyeth/Pfizer (MENA) - rates the highest in the question about intranet training. This may indicate that there is a relationship between intranet training and the perceived value of the intranet by end users at some organisations. ie. when training is provided, intranet end users think the intranet is more valuable.
Providing intranet training is one of the lower rated WIC questions. The chart below shows that, on average, none of the end users from the 30 organisations who have participated in the WIC so far agree that they have received training on using the intranet. To me, this is an area that can be quickly and easily addressed without a significant financial outlay. At the least, the cost of providing online training is minimal - an intranet video can easily be created in less than a day. Check out the Youtube video showing the SharePoint Intranet Launch at Hudson for an example.
Measurement
Measuring the success of the intranet is another popular topic with six people saying it is something they would look at this year (feel free to register for WIC participation - it's free :-). Better reporting tools, measuring usage, and developing a better feedback system were all mentioned as goals for 2010.
Collaboration and social media
There were seven comments around social media - most along the lines of providing the tools rather than defining a strategy or a process about how they would be used. The online survey (53 votes) indicated that making the intranet more interactive was the number one priority for 30.2% of respondents - the second highest percentage (behind finding information %34).
Software
Four of the 21 responses are planning an upgrade the SharePoint 2010 and one person is looking forward to his Thoughtfarmer upgrade ;-) As I mentioned early, other people are looking at introducing social media functionality this year as well.
Other topics
Other popular goals for 2010 include better intranet governance (5 comments), re-designing the intranet (2), faster access (2) and online forms (2).
An interesting observation made by Martin White, Intranet Focus Ltd, was how little reference there was to ensuring that the intranet could be accessed over mobile devices. In fact, only Christy Season, SCANA Corp, mentioned that she was planning on reasearching mobile access (by the way, SCANA Corp were listed as one of Jakob Nielsen's best intranets of 2010 (shouldn't it be 2009??...anyway, too late to change now I guess).
A possible explanation for this may be that, according to WIC research to-date, the correlation between accessing the intranet uisng a mobile device and intranet value is relatively low (0.87) (refer to What makes an intranet valuable (part 2) for more information). So it may be that it is just not seen as a priority at the moment, given that most employees probably access the intranet only when they are at work at the moment.
However, I agree with Martin's analysis and think that the place-independent intranet (refer to Jane McConnell's Intranet Trends Report) is one of the future intranet trends. I also remember reading somewhere recently that there are currently 1.3 billion mobile devices in the world and only 1 billion computers (don't quote me on this and I would appreciate if anyone can find the reference - I did look for 20 minutes). Anyway, there are a lot of mobile devices out there and growing all the time... no doubt about that and I believe intranet owners should certainly be considering this in their strategy planning.
Complete discussion
If you would like to read the full discussion you will need to join LinkedIn and then join the Intranet Professionals Group. I'd strongly recommend you join this group to expand your intranet network, keep up-to-date with the latest trends, and to discuss intranet related topics.
Finally...
...I have made a resolution myself this year and that is to publish a new blog post each Monday... starting today ;-) So check here each Monday to keep up-to-date with the latest updates from the Worldwide Intranet Challenge, Intranets and the Workplace Web.
cheers
January 06 2010
Technology, the intranet, and employee productivity
Employees shouldn’t waste too much time on the intranet; social media wastes time; the Internet is a productivity drain. These are common refrains and concerns expressed by many executives, albeit the less educated ones, generally of an older generation, nearing or past retirement.
The exact
same concerns were made about employee bathroom breaks, mealtimes, telephone
use, etc. General Motors, that great stalwart of financial prudence, used to
hire people to time employees when they used the bathroom (source: Negotiate
This, Herb Cohen, CD Audiobook - Barnes & Noble).
"When speaking to clients the issue of productivity is often a concern,” says Jonas Lood, senior consultant with Prescient Digital Media (intranet consultants / specialists). “I frequently get asked "how do we leverage our intranet to improve information sharing, protect intellectual property while at the same time reducing the cost per employee?"
Every organization wants to maximize profit (cash flow) and ultimately, productivity drives profit; and so does innovation.
“When productivity rates leap, so do enterprise profits. In the past century, we have automated blue-collar work, wringing more products out of every worker hour,” says Susan Feldman, IDC analyst and author of the report, Hidden Costs of Information Work: A Progress Report. “But in an economy that is now more information based than industrial, increasing the productivity of the information worker has become imperative.”
Concerns about productivity, therefore, are real and valid. Although often these concerns are misplaced: if employee compensation and rewards models are all that they should be, and employees are accountable for objectives and goals, then concerns over productivity drain from activities such as using the Internet, or intranet, should abate (if the intranet is in fact a sound system, and not the dog’s breakfast that many still are). In short, the corporate intranet (and use of the Internet for activities such as research) can be a tremendous productivity gain, not a drain.
“As organizations downsize in this year's financial crisis, they will need to streamline and automate information tasks and processes if they are to survive with fewer workers,” adds Feldman (keep in mind, real estate may be rebounding, and the stock markets may be unusually high, but there is still a massive credit crunch, and there are many industries still in recession). “They will need to ferret out instances of duplicated effort, and they will need to invest in software that can speed up processes like ediscovery, categorization, call center support, publishing, and collaboration while reducing manual labor.”
IDC conducted a survey of 706 knowledge workers. IDC asked respondents about:
- various information tasks performed by knowledge workers; and
- repetitive tasks that might be prime targets for automation or improvement.
On average, IDC estimates the average information worker salary of $75,000 per year. They then took the data that we had gathered on the average number of hours spent on each task and discovered the following about the average information worker respondent:
- 13 hours per week spent on email (cost: $21,000 per year)
- 9 hours per week spent searching for information (cost: $14,000 per year)
- 8 hours per week analyzing information (cost: $13,000 per year)
- 6.5 hours per week communicating / collaborating with team members (cost: $10,000 per year)
- 6 hours per week creating content (cost: $10,000 per year)
- Nearly 4 hours per week publishing information (cost: $6,000 per year)
The survey and the data are imperfect, but the general picture is well painted and the conclusion very clear: information workers spend a lot of time finding and processing information, at a very high cost. If we can make it easier to find information, employee productivity will rise, and profits will soar.
Fortunately, technology is a productivity driver. And the technology platform that powers this productivity is the corporate intranet.
“Even well tuned intranets can suffer from information fatigue,” says Prescient’s Lood. “A well planned intranet, with a strategy in place that supports the business requirements will take you well on your way in identifying the optimum information and communications channels for your organization."
Moreover, IDC finds that new Intranet 2.0 tools are also a preferred, and powerful technology of choice for driving productivity.
“With Web 2.0 applications creeping into the enterprise — with or without IT approval — it's obvious that ingenious information workers will find tools to help them accomplish their work no matter where those tools come from,” says IDC. “This year's survey on the use and preferences for information worker productivity tools shows that newer tools, particularly instant messaging (but also social networking and blogs), were preferred over more traditional ones like email or team workspaces.”
The most preferred / valued tool according to respondents is instant messaging; followed by the phone, desktop authoring tools (e.g. MS-Word), email, web conferencing, social networking, and blogs. In fact, email is rated only a shade higher than social networking. Many, myself included, often look at email as a frequent productivity drain.
“Information work is costly, but it's also valuable, as long as the time spent working is productive,” says IDC. “Any dent that an organization can make in the hours information workers toil unproductively will have an immediate payoff.”
If your organization is not embracing and investing in technology such as the intranet and the new 2.0 tools then it in fact is threatened by productivity drains (as compared to the competition). The classic concern about productivity drains is well-founded, but misunderstood to the extent that technology is often a gain, not a drain.
ADDITIONAL READING:
Intranet redesign: building a business case
The future for BT’s intranet?
At the end of 2009 I posted about BT’s intranet being 15 years old and the progress made in that time.
BT’s intranet has constantly evolved to meet the changing needs of the business and how it best helps people to be able to do their work as effectively as possible.
BT’s intranet has always aimed to be simple and easy to use. People use it to complete an activity such as a room booking, check the latest news and more recently, publish and use opinions and views with people that have the same interests across BT.
So what’s my view on its future for 2010? It’s likely to see BT’s intranet:
- become even easier to use, wherever you are – at home, coffee shop or BT building – whenever you want to and with any device – your PC, BT’s computing kit or mobile – and the real difference will be the experience will be the same.
- ease of use will also mean you won’t need to keep authenticating to use applications and content protected behind passwords. Just login once and then loading up your browser will give you faster access to what you need.
- people will find it as easy to publish content they want to share or own as sending an email and be able to search for all the different types of information on BT’s intranet from one search page that gives you what you need.
Maybe these are not earth shattering aims? But I know if I can help achieve any of these people in BT will benefit more from using our intranet.
And that’s what my role as BT Intranet manager is. 
December 21 2009
BT Homepage: agreed by users
After testing with users on the changes to BT Homepage I have been able to launch it with the changes to some sections of the top page and site.
While some users when asked for their views wondered what all the fuss was about for the small changes proposed, most appreciated being given the chance to give their views and liked the changes.
I have greater confidence that I’ve made changes which users want and need to give them an even easier way to find what they need for their work.
A lesson I have learned is to try to make changes small rather than keep them back until a major change is needed. It avoids users being disorientated with all the changes. Of course keeping the number of times changes are needed to a minimum helps too.
Testing with users involves them more and suggestions made will help me make further small changes in 2010.
Here is the final version in normal colours and in Team BT/2012 Challenge colours when quarterly updates publicising progress and how people get involved are made.
Tagged: 2012 Challenge, beta testing, bt intranet, homepage, user testing
December 15 2009
Over 10,000 intranet user responses to the Worldwide Intranet Challenge - 2009 in review
Since the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) was launched in April this year, we've had over 10,000 intranet end user responses from 30 organisations. Based on an average of 5 minutes to complete the survey, that is over 800 hours of intranet feedback to analyse!
And it really has become a Worldwide challenge with participating organisations based in 12 different countries (Australia, UK, USA, Russia, Estonia, Germany, Canada, Austria, UAE, France, South Africa and Switzerland).
Top 3 intranets for 2009
From the 30 organisations that have participated so far, the top 3 intranets, as decided by the end users, are:
Will someone take over the top mantle from Wyeth MENA next year?
Other 2009 Highlights
Other highlights of the year include:
- Translation of the WIC survey into 8 languages (English, Spanish, French, French Canadian, German, Russian, Danish, Estonian)
- Partners available in Zurich (Switzerland), Moscow (Russia), New York (USA) and Lima (Peru) to help and support local organisations participate in the WIC
- Presentations of the WIC findings in Melbourne (Australia), Zurich (Switzerland) and Moscow (Russia)
- Launch of the WIC Members site providing WIC participants with access to a benchmark of WIC responses
- A LinkedIn group created to discuss WIC findings
- A WIC Facebook group created to publish WIC case studies and articles
- A Twitter account for people to follow WIC progress
WIC Blog highlights
Many of the findings from the Worldwide Intranet Challenge have been posted on this blog site, along with other relevant intranet articles. Some of the more popular posts include:
- 8 good business reasons for having an intranet (tips for writing an intranet business case) - explains how an intranet can add real value to an organisation by improving processes, continuous improvement, change management, knowledge management, collaboration, access to data and applications, and the environment
- Building a task based intranet using SharePoint (AGL case study) - guidelines about how Australia's leading energy company developed a task based intranet
- What makes an intranet valuable (Part 1) - how end users currently perceive intranets and what they think makes them valuable
- What makes an intranet valuable (Part 2) - lists responses to questions about finding information, intranet look & feel, intranet maintenance and performance of the intranet
- What makes an intranet valuable (Part 3) - shows correlations between the survey questions and intranet value.
2010 Plans
2009 has seen the launch of the WIC and the collection of some valuable intranet feedback. In 2010 we plan to continue collecting this data but also to begin spreading the word about why some intranets are rated more highly by their end users than others. We believe this will provide valuable insights for all intanet owners about how they can make their intranets business critical to their organisations.
The major activities planned for 2010 include:
- Presention of WIC findings
Stephan Schillerwein (WIC partner in Europe) and myself will be presenting at the IntraTeam event 2010 from March 2-4, at Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference covers intranets and Enterprise 2.0. The topic we will be presenting is Building the Best Practice Intranet which looks at what end users think are the most important requirements of an effective intranet and what organisations are doing to address these requirements. The findings are based on WIC feedback. - Building the intranet best practice database
TThis database will be available to WIC Members and will contain case studies from organisations who have ranked highly in each of the WIC questions. The case studies will explain the process the organisation went through to receive a positive response from the end users - Additional WIC partners
We will be including additional partners to assist local organisations participate in the WIC for countries such as Brazil, Italy, France, Spain, Malaysia, Greece, Denmark, Japan & Turkey.
Thanks
People who blog regularly know the important role other bloggers play in spreading the word. The following blogs are a valuable resource for anyone interested in intranets:
WIC Partners
Stephan Schillerwein (IntranetMatters)
Natalia Shvetsov (Intranet Blog)
Other intranet bloggers
James Robertson (StepTwo)
Jane McConnell (NetJMC)
Toby Ward (Prescient Digital Media)
Peter Richards (Tabcorp)
Mark Morrell (BT)
Carolyn Douglas (Intranet Connections)
Shopping Suggestions
If you are looking for a last minute gift for that intranet obsessed colleague during the holiday season, I'd recommend the following:
Intranet Trends Report 2010 - The Global Intranet Strategies Survey is an annual worldwide survey about intranet strategies and practices. Read how the workplace has become more virtual, more global, more decentralized and more collaborative.
Intranet Innovation Awards - The Intranet Innovation Awards celebrate new ideas and innovative approaches to the enhancement and delivery of intranets. The awards are about improving all intranets, by sharing great ideas and increasing the pace of innovation across the whole of the intranet community.
Intranet 2.0 Global Survey Report - 561 organizations of all sizes from across the planet participated in the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey and the results reveal rapid adoption of social media on the corporate intranet in the past year or two.
BT’s intranet is 15 (yes, 15) years old
Just before Christmas 15 years ago a few grey pages appeared and flickered away on a computer screen in BT for the first time.
What began as a small pilot project to look at the problem of “information overload” has led to being one of the best intranets globally with everyone in BT using it.
It’s now such an intrinsic part of the way that the company does its business that it is hard to imagine business life without it. A BT person now uses the information network for a variety of tasks at work and also works with processes and systems which are intranet based.
These include ‘killer applications’ at the start of our intranet that I have posted about before – BT Homepage, Directory, BT Today and more recently social media tools like Blog Central, BTpedia and Podcast Central.
Information and activities supported by the intranet include sales and marketing data, fault resolution, service planning and provision, facilities management, human resources support, senior executives’ sites and business intelligence.
All our key BT-wide applications most people need to use are online – whether booking a room, claiming expenses, ordering a PC, performance marking or training – saving time, paper, effort and transforming costs.
So what about the future? I can’t predict for the next 15 years but I’ll post about the next 15 months soon.
Tagged: blog, bt intranet, BT today, directory, homepage, intranet applications, social media, wiki
December 07 2009
Global Intranet Trends for 2010
The Global Intranet Trends for 2010 report, the annual report from Jane McConnell, NetStrategy/JMC, has been released and is fittingly subtitled ‘Towards the workplace web’.
"Towards the workplace web reflects what is happening today in intranets around the world as organizations are positioning the intranet as the entry point into the organization’s ensemble of information, applications, collaboration and communication tools," says Jane, reflecting on the state of intranets amongst the 300 participating organizations.
Of particular note in this year's report, social media and social networking on the intranet is on the rise. This finding is echoed by, and well-documented in the Intranet 2.0 Global Study (download the free version of the Intranet 2.0 Global Study findings report). Additionally, senior management is becoming more engaged and involved in the management of the intranet -- finally! Slowly, my mantra, and that of Jane and many others, is slowly permeating the corporate structure: the best intranets are actively supported by senior management. And guess what? Great intranets deliver superb value including increased sales, revenue, cost savings, employee productivity, employee engagement, etc.
Key Findings in the 2010 Global Intranet Trends report:
- Joint intranet ownership model is more prevalent: only 40% of participants have a single owner model
- Senior management is more involved: 60% of intranet Steering Committees have a senior management presence (up from 35% in 2007)
- Social networking on the rise: 30% of the participants are currently testing or “using in some parts” social networking tools
- Social media delivers value: 25-30% of organizations with some form of social media have experienced 3 general benefits: increased employee engagement, more effective knowledge sharing, and better-informed employees
- Social media concerns shifting: doubts are considerably lower about the relevance of social media to business needs
- Intranets being extended to where people are: the workplace is being extended to where the people are with home intranet access
- Mobile intranet access: a few intranets have services for smart phones today; another 25% are planning to extend mobile access
ABOUT THE SURVEY
This is the 4th annual Intranet Trends Report, and the survey population has grown from 100 to 300 organizations since 2006. The organizations range in size from under 1,000 employees to over 100,000 employees and are headquartered primarily in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Topics explored in the survey include positioning of the intranet, strategy and management, business objectives, features of the intranet, social media and measurement.
Read more about the Global Intranet Trends for 2010
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