IntranetBlogs

Intranet Case Study: Chr. Hansen A/S

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:57:56 GMT

The Company
Chr. Hansen A/S is a global bioscience company that provides products to the food and health industries. They are headquartered in Denmark and employ about 2’200 people in 31 countries. Every day, half a billion people consume products that contain some of Chr. Hansen’s natural ingredients.

Best Intranet 2010 in Denmark
Chr. Hansen’s intranet won the “IntranetPrisen 2010”, awarded by IntraTeam at the IntraTeam Event 2010 on March 3+4 in Copenhagen.

Some highlights at a glance:
•    The intranet – called C-Net - is aligned to the mantra of the CEO about “taking out complexity”
•    Every employee can put a story of the homepage
•    Satisfaction with intranet search is on a good level
•    The intranet feeds content into the appealing screen saver that every employee has on his/her desktop

The Business Environment of C-Net
The intranet is owned by Corporate Communications. Together with a number of other headquarter functions (HR, CSR, …) they form what is called “Stakeholder Relations” inside the company.
There was a major reorganisation following the acquisition of the company by a capital fund. This also impacted the intranet team as development competence was outsourced. This created a number of problems and led to a failed project in 2006. After that, the decision was made, that a new intranet was needed, including a complete overhaul of strategy, technology, organization and content.

Results had to be delivered in a straightforward amount of time. The intranet team opted for an agile process that was adapted from Scrum to get up to speed fast and to minimize the risks that come with large projects.

The Intranet today

Linking the intranet to business objectives: Lars Frederiksen, President & CEO of Chr. Hansen keeps repeating the statement that the company has to “take out complexity” of everything it does, for both their customers and themselves as an organization.

The intranet strategy has identified a number of fields where C-Net can directly contribute to this, e.g. by reducing the amount of emails, by moving paper based tasks to the intranet or helping create a more transparent organization.

Another manifestation of this approach is that not the full spectrum of identified requirements was implemented with the first launch of the new intranet as the organization and people weren’t ready for all of them. Setting them aside for later incremental roll-outs helped people find their way around the new intranet more easily and thus made their life simpler.

Based on the success they had with this, the intranet team has now launched an internal campaign to make C-Net business critical. The campaign addresses everyone in the organization that is involved in processes or tasks that could be optimized by being transferred to the intranet (e.g. existing paper forms, workflows, document management tasks, etc.).

Good and bad experiences with User-generated Content: Every employee can put a story on the homepage of the intranet. If you think that this is the perfect recipe to wreak havoc and upheaval, here’ what Christian Skjaran’s, Intranet Manager at Chr. Hansen, experiences are: “There have been absolutely no abuses or cases of inappropriate content since the relaunch of our intranet in February 2009. If you’re thinking of opening up your own intranet, I can only encourage you to give it a try!”

Another option for employees to contribute didn’t work out as well: when people could upload their own profile pictures in the employee directory there were quite a number of images of comic figures and pictures in which people’s faces were not discernable. This was not of much help in communicating with people you had never met personally before and thus the process was centralized. This shift was supported by people being offered to have their picture being taking in some of the main locations of the company.

In countries with strict privacy regulations each employee was asked individually whether it would be okay for them to have their picture in the directory. Only a few people objected.

Getting the right mix of Editors on Board: The main portion of the content is managed by 130 editors from across the organization. Great care was taken not to just get “anyone” appointed as editors, but to really getting the right people to contribute. 5 editor personas were created for that purpose (a persona is a fictional character created to represent the different user types within a targeted group): researcher, production worker, sales person, office worker and manager. After that, editors were consciously chosen within the range of the personas to represent the company and its content requirements as best as possible. Currently the majority of the editors are still from the “office workers” persona group, but this is to level out in the future.

I especially like the way they went about to educate editors. Often this is done by just teaching people the tools. At Chr. Hansen great emphasis was put on highlighting existing problems (creating awareness first) and then showing new ways of working that help optimize the situation (offering solutions).

Groundwork for Intranet Search: “Before the new intranet we had a really crappy search engine in place. Now people are quite satisfied with search results, even though we use nothing more fancy than the standard search engine built into SharePoint 2007”, says Christian Skjaeran. This might come as a surprise to those familiar with that search engine, as it hasn’t got a reputation of being world-class. Beside the low expectation people had based on their experience with the old intranet, there is a number of things that were done in order to improve search quality by improving content quality:
•    Reducing the quantity of information
•    Having a librarian to go once over every piece of content that remained and tag it
•    Use of “Best Bets” based on zero-hits search words
•    Having a “Masterdata Team” in the organization that decides on global terminology use

Incited by the noteworthy outcomes of this project, they are looking into having a dedicated Search Manager role as soon as resources allow.

The benefit you gain from intranet standards

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 15:45:03 GMT

I was asked at the recent IntraTeam event (most excellent! ) to explain in more detail about BT’s intranet standards for publishers. I have posted before about 5 ‘must have’ standards and about accessibility and usability.

I thought it would help to say first why I think standards are important and the benefits for everyone in BT.

Intranet publishing standards need to have compelling reasons for being used. For BT’s intranet these can include:

Legal: web accessibility, copyright and image rights
Regulatory: BT’s undertakings with OFCOM
Business: content up to date and reviewed and branding
Users: print, PDA features and global navigation bar

The main thing is, whatever the reason, is that it:

Improves the overall user experience
Making users more satisfied
Increases productivity
Saves costs and
Benefits the business

You must also make it as easy as possible for publishers to comply with these standards. The higher you make this barrier the more difficult it will be to achieve and the more time and effort needed to do this.

So template features for content management that build in standards like owner, review date, copyright, PDA versions of the information mean publishers have no choice and find it much easier to comply.

I’ll cover our standards in more detail in the next few weeks. Please let me know which ones you want me to cover first.

Tagged: accessibility, bt intranet, content, governance, publishing, social media, standards, usability standards, value

Intranet 2.0 case study: Oce

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 11:26:00 GMT

Oce has 21,500 employees worldwide in 90 countries with annual revenue of 2.6 billion Euros. Oce’s business is document printing, production printing, wide format printing systems and business services (in short, they’re in the printing business).

Crisis

Oce faced a severe decline in sales, starting in the USA from September 2008; the first layoffs hit in Q1 2008. Oce lost more than 500 million in revenue since the start of the recession / financial crisis. Subsequently, the intranet budget declined from 350,000 Euros to only 5,000.

Challenge

How to reach everyone in all the countries (in light of the decline and the lack of budget)?

Solution

The intranet is primarily built on a shoestring budget and powered on the old Microsoft CMS product. Rather than build a new intranet, the Oce team of Jan van Veen, Manager Internal Communications, and Samuel Driessen, the intranet’s Information Architect, rolled-out social media tools, and an enhanced corporate news service on the existing home page.

Highlights:

Open source – no budget, use free / open-source software solutions
Improved news service – from 1-2 stories a day to 10 or more
Rumorbuster – common Q&As posted to the intranet
Wikis – one platform on for R&D; one focused on corporate information
Blogging – 30–40 blogs (very few personal blogs; most are shared/dept. blogs)
Idea Management – blog soliciting ideas for saving the company money
Microblogging – using Yammer; use growing dramatically
Social bookmarking – employees are learning to share bookmarks instead of circulating emails with links
Oce TV – spent the budget on a camera and editing software & started making short films

Money Making

A blog called Money Making solicits employee ideas and recommendations for cost savings / saving money at Oce. The blog has thus far generated 60+ ideas; one idea was implemented and saved around 400,000 Euros. Sadly though, Oce doesn’t continue to promote use or encourage ideas and the blog has since fallen into decline (no change management = no use).

Wikis

“Wikis are here to stay,” says Driessen, Oce’s Information Architect. “What we’re finding out is that wikis are great for process information (e.g. business processes and working methods; typical encyclopaedic knowledge). Wikis are being used to collect information, refine processes, and re-engineer our work (processes).”

Lessons learned

Money is not the issue (all tools built on open source)
Organization is the issue!
You can start bottom-up
Consumerization of IT
Cross-functional approach (Communications & IM)
Where do I share and store my info?
Information Architecture
Did we teach people to be a knowledge worker?
Culture > Ask questions
Social Media Guidelines
Security
Social media lab

Also of note

Language: Does Oce have any language barriers in a global organization? “No we don’t,” says van Veen, who leads Internal Communications, mostly executed in US English (though some Spanish and Italian groups have their own communities).

Guidelines: policies for internal and external social media guidelines. In short they say, “Be smart,” says Driessen. “In other words, we trust you... until we can’t trust you anymore (then you’re out).” Our main goal, says van Veen: “Is not to police them (employees), but to protect them.”

Blogs: Oce blogs are product focused, and largely for silo-based communications (internal department communications).

Microblogging: Yammer is used principally for cross-departmental sharing: ideas, projects, feedback, etc.

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More ways to make your intranet legal

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:15:38 GMT

When I asked a few weeks ago is your intranet breaking the law Janus Boye wanted me to cover other legal responsibilities we have. After a quick panic attack I recovered what poise I have and realised there are other areas where intranet managers, publishers and designers need to make sure their intranet is legal.

So here are key points you need to consider. I suggest you go to the Outlaw site for more details on legal information.

1. Information retention

We need to make sure we only retain the information needed by law and for the sound running of our organisation. But you need to consider whether you retain old copies of content. I know of someone who needed to show a copy of a web page as it was at the time of the incident to prove what guidance was actually being given to people.

2. Legal and regulatory frameworks

Like BT’s undertakings with Ofcom, you may need to meet regulatory requirements. This means there is often a need for some ‘knowledge firewalls’ to safeguard insider information in all sorts of industries such as the pharmaceutical, legal and banking industries. Incidentally the term ‘chinese wall’ is to be avoided according to Wikipedia.

3. Confidentiality

This isn’t just personal. It could be commercial confidentiality too. If someone creates a page about issues with a piece of software how would they be affected?

4. Freedom of information (FoI)

This can be a big concern with intranet content. Anything published on your intranet may be subject to a FoI challenge. It could makes you less likely to share some details. This is probably likely to affect public service intranets most.

5. Data protection

Data Protection, particularly Personal Data and European Union rules for its use and storage, may affect your intranet systems, particularly HR systems.

6. Copyright

Copying any content, especially an image, photo or multi-media file, from another website to insert on an intranet site is an infringement of copyright, unless you have permission from the copyright owner. To avoid any copyright problems restrict your uploading to content which you have created; colleagues, friends or relatives have created and given you permission to use; is provided by an official agency.

Tagged: accessibility, applications, governance, publishing, standards, users

In from the wilderness

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:56:49 GMT

Well not really.

My wife and I have been busy with the arrival of Baby Knowledgethoughts in early December which has pushed everything to the back-burner, including my online Twittering & Blogging. My absence on both platforms is likely to continue for some time.

In a bit of a switch, I’ve left purist KM and joined Avanade, a Technology Consulting company where I’ll be focused on SharePoint implementations. In actual fact, it’s not much of a change from what I’ve been doing since leaving Linklaters but my focus will be much more of a technical one.

I haven’t decided yet what that means for this blog. I suspect though that I will stop writing about KM purely in the interest of balancing the needs of my newly expanded family with my new role. Between the two, KM is simply going to have to take a back seat for a good long while.

Have no fear however, I am not leaving the field a disgruntled nonbeliever. My time away from pure techdom (where i started) has been extremely valuable and informative. In fact, Avanade execute KM amazingly well. Traditional KM folk would be truly jealous.

So for now, back to my regularly scheduled absence.

Employee intranet blogs wanted

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:57:07 GMT

If a tree falls in the forest will anyone blog about it? Do blogs beget blog postings?

As too many organizations are discovering the hard way, employees don’t want to blog. Approximately 1-2% of employees are interested in blogging (today), but most don’t have any desire to pick up the proverbial pen.

Despite its massive size and extremely technology and web savvy population IBM has found the same problem. About 5% of the employee population blogs on the corporate intranet, but a far greater percentage wants to read employee blogs. In fact, although there are more than 16,000 blogs at IBM, fewer than 900 people (less than one-quarter of one percent of all IBM employees, or 0.25%) have blogged in the past 3 months, according to an internal IBM survey of employees.

Despite the lack of blogging, IBM knows there are many benefits to employee blogs. “Employee blogging has benefits both for individuals and the organization,” say Werner Geyer and Casey Dugan of IBM’s T.J. Watson Research. “In order to inspire the creation of blog posts, we developed a novel topic suggestion system that connects blog readers with blog writers through sharing topics of interest.”

IBM’s Blog Muse is a new employee social media tool that connects blog readers and blog writers by allowing readers to make blog topic suggestions and requests of employee subject matter experts who blog at IBM. Employees can “Ask for a blog post” online and Blog Muse will automatically route the topic to those bloggers that are most likely to write about it. If a blog post on the requested topic gets posted then the requester is automatically notified by Blog Muse.

Blog Muse also encourages employees to take up blogging via a prominent tab called “Get inspired to write” which recommends topics to readers and potential bloggers. Employees can also search out content by topic and vote on blog posts.

The preliminary results (300+ respondents) and data of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey 2010 reveal that 55% of organizations have employee or executive blogs on their corporate intranet. However, the challenge for these organizations and the owners of the blogging platforms is no different from IBM: you can lead an employee to a blog, but you can’t make him or her write.

Ensure you get a free copy of the Intranet 2.0 Global Study Report and analysis by spending 5 – 10 minutes taking the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey 2010.

Intranet Insider World Tour 2010 in New York – so wird “Enterprise 2.0” Realität

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:35:29 GMT

Es ist mir eine besondere Freude, heute einen Gastbeitrag von Reto Stuber hier publizieren zu können. Er ist Geschäftsführer von Schreibenslust.com und als Online Media Consultant & Writer in New York für internationale Firmen im Einsatz.

Wenn es um das Thema Intranet geht, schlägt mein Herz höher. Die Begeisterung liegt in meiner Vergangenheit begründet. Ich hatte das Vergnügen, bei einem großen Schweizer Telekommunikationskonzern aktiv diese Ecke des Unternehmens mitzugestalten.

Die Worldwide Intranet Challenge – jetzt kostenlos mitmachen

In der Zwischenzeit hat sich mein Fokus von der internen Sicht her erweitert und ich beschäftige mich intensiv mit Projekten im Bereich Social Media und Online Marketing.

Als ich dann letztes Jahr einen Anruf von Andrew aus Australien erhielt, schloss sich der Kreis: Die Promotion seiner Worldwide Intranet Challenge WIC verbindet alle diese Disziplinen. Ich empfehle jedem Intranet Manager, dieses kostenlose Angebot unter die Lupe und dann in Anspruch zu nehmen.

Das Dilemma der Intranet Manager: Sie wissen, was das Beste wäre. Aber der Benutzer nicht.

Aber darum geht es heute nicht, vielmehr möchte ich auf die Intranet Insider World Tour aufmerksam machen, die diese Woche in New York stattfindet.

Das Intranet wird viel zu oft noch stiefmütterlich als reiner Informationskanal verwendet. Dabei sind die Möglichkeiten weit vielfältiger: Was standortübergreifende Kollaborationstools, Wissensdatenbanken, Cockpits und Social Media Ansätze für Vorteile bringen, wissen die Intranet Manager längst.

Doch die schönsten Tools nützen nichts, wenn der durchschnittliche Anwender den Use Case dahinter nicht sieht - oder die Verantwortlichen daran scheitern, diesen zu kommunizieren.

Intranet Insider World Tour – so bringen Sie das Unternehmen 2.0 zum funktionieren

Die Intranet Insider World Tour will hier in die Bresche springen. Sie zeigt auf, wie Intranet Manager Ihr Intranet auf die nächste Stufe heben können. Dabei werden folgende Fragen adressiert:

Was sollte Ihr Intranet im Bereich Twitter, Social Networks, Podcasting, RSS, Tagging, Online Video, Wikis und Blogs für Möglichkeiten bieten?
Enterprise Collaboration: Wie sieht das aus? Was benötigt es dazu?
Wie können Sie mehr Stakeholder und das Management involvieren, um wirkliche Fortschritte zu machen?
Wie können Sie Ihr Intranet energetisieren, um es kollaborativer, Mitarbeitergetrieben und „Realtime“-fähig zu machen?
Wie könne Sie große Patzer und Fehler im Intranet Design, Usability, Auffindbarkeit, Governance, Policies und Messbarkeit vermeiden?
Was sind die besten Strategien und Techniken in der Wirtschaftskrise?
Wie sieht das Intranet der Zukunft aus?

Ich werde live von der Konferenz berichten. Wenn Sie dabei sein wollen, einfach anmelden und mit dem nächsten Flieger in den Big Apple jetten! Wir sehen uns :-).

A great IntraTeam event!

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:25:33 GMT

I’ve just got my breath back from speaking and attending one of the best intranet conferences I have been to for some time. I was spoilt by the hospitality of the organisers; the quality of the speakers; the quantity of new ideas and themes and the enthusiasm of everyone interested in intranets.

So what did I take away from IntraTeam 2010?

There was so much good stuff especially from Jane McConnell, Martin White, Eric Reiss, James Robertson and Michael Sampson that I have linked to their blogs if you want to find out more. But there are 2 main areas I will be working on straight away.

1. Stakeholder governance

Develop our governance model more towards even closer, more formal (steering group?), involvement in 2010. These points (thanks to Jane McConnell) will help me:

Intranets need to implement cross-organisational ownership
Identify the big intranet decisions and who should make them
Work with business and functional intranet stakeholders and involve users balancing needs
Governance is a form of negotiation: you need control, politics, flexibility and common sense (and a sense of humour I say!)
Involve the “next to the top” and “operational” level of people
Don’t treat “social media” like something different from the real intranet

2. People come first with intranets

BT’s intranet has always been based on this principle. It must meet business and user needs. These points (thanks to James Robertson) will help me with some key intranet decisions about to be taken:

Put people at the centre of intranets
Provide universal access to your intranet
Intranets need to act proactively, not just reactively to users needs
Intranets should drive the engine for change
Create a seamless enterprise experience
Deliver end-to-end solutions
Cross boundaries so intranets, internets, integrate with different content and applications
Intranets must make the organisation work better
Intranets must help people do their jobs (better)
Intranet managers need to create their own designs and future scenarios
Design great (but small) solutions
Simplify – join the dots and blur the lines

I hope the tweets helped although Twitter can’t properly capture Kurt’s 5 minute warning signal!

Tagged: benchmark, benefit, best practice, blog, bt intranet, content, governance, research, usability, users, value

Intranet Insider World Tour 2010 New York – how “Enterprise 2.0” will become reality!

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:39:53 GMT

This is a guest post from Reto Stuber. He is the owner of Schreibenslust.com and an Online Media Writer & Consultant. Reto lives in New York and works with international companies. He is also a partner of the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC).

The topic Intranet makes my heart beating faster. The reason for my excitement is based in my past, when I had the pleasure to work with at a large Swiss Telecommunications Company. I contributed my share in the concept of employee focused Intranet.

Over the last 5 years I extended my view from the internal world towards Social Media and Online Marketing projects.

The dilemma of Intranet Manager: They know the best, but so not the user.
But my passion for the intranet never stopped. I am happy to attend the Intranet World Tour, which will be held next week in New York.

The intranet is often only used as an information channel. But it is more than about pure information. You as an Intranet Manager know, that it is also about location spanning collaboration tools, knowledge data bases, cockpits, and social media approaches.

But what is the advantage of a tool, when the average user can’t see the use case behind it? Or if the people in charge don’t communicate the extensive possibilities of use?

Intranet Insider World Tour - this is how you make your Company 2.0 work!
These are the things intranets are still struggling with. The Intranet Insider World Tour wants to step into the breach! Intranet Manager will learn how to bring their intranet to the next level. The following questions are forming the main focus:

What should your intranet be doing with Twitter, social networks, podcasting, RSS, tagging, online video, wikis, podcasts and blogs?
Enterprise collaboration: What does it look like? What does it take?
How can you get more stakeholders and senior management involved to drive real progress?
How can you energize your intranet to make it more collaborative, employee-driven and real-time?
How can you avoid major flaws and failures in intranet design, usability, findability, governance, policies and measurement?
In this difficult economy, what are the best strategies and techniques to help?
What does the future of intranets look and feel like?

I will definitely report my thoughts from the conference. You want to join in? Then simply register, and take the next flight to Big Apple! I see you there.

Try a self-managed intranet

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:58:36 GMT

In BT I lead a small central team. I’m responsible for the strategy, governance and standards and how they are applied to content published on BT’s intranet using a menu of templates that I manage.

So who is responsible for publishing, reviewing, updating and removing content?

“You!” is the answer to any publisher in BT. There is NO central publishing team to do this on behalf of anyone.

Publishers are responsible for any content they own meeting our standards based on business, legal, regulatory and users’ needs.

They are trained on awareness of publishing standards and how they apply before they publish choosing from a menu of templates that already meet standards.

Automated tools will check content weekly and remind the publishers who own it if it doesn’t meet our standards what needs to be done. If no action is taken it is escalated to the publisher’s line manager and if action is still not taken, it will be removed from use and deleted. This avoids users making decisions on out of date content or because it is too difficult to use.

So, the content is owned and managed by every publisher with templates, training and automated tools to make it as easy as possible to meet the standards all users expect so they have a great overall experience.

My team can concentrate on what we can add most value to for BT and our intranet.

Tagged: bt intranet, content, governance, homepage, plan, standards, value

Executives should blog, not employees

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 14:28:34 GMT

Employees don't want to blog, but they do want to read blogs (and most all content) from the executive suite (see my last column Do employees want to blog?).

In fact, undertake an employee communications audit in 100 organizations, pick any 100, and I can guarantee you you'll find 99 employee populations that want more and/or better communications from senior management. To this end, a blog can be a powerful solution (not the only solution, but one in the arsenal). Of course, its easy to implement an executive blog, but ensuring its successful and well-read is quite another challenge.

A successful executive blog requires careful planning, solid writing, and an engaged employee population, which requires change management (supporting communications and education). Learn more...

Implementing An Executive Blog Slideshare

View more presentations from Toby Ward.

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Do employees want to blog?

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:57:00 GMT

If you build it, will they blog?

For the most part, it is a moot point: employees don’t want to blog. There are always keeners and exceptions to the rule, but employees have no interest in blogging. Even at IBM, one of the most technology and social media savvy employee populations on the planet, with more than 350,000 employees, there exists about 15,000 employee blogs (less than 5% of the population).

Employee blogs using Lotus Conections. Source: Social Collaboration @ IBM, A.P. Radder

However, more and more organizations are rolling out internal blogs. Preliminary results from the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey 2010 reveal that nearly 60% of organizations have blogs on the intranet. Why is that?

I’ll reveal the full details in my keynote at the Cogress Intranet 2010 (the biggest intranet event in Europe, perhaps the world, with 500 or more delegates expected. Register now), but for starters, most employees have better things to do. However, employees do want to read the thoughts and plans of executives. An executive blog, even if it’s shared by several or all executives, is something that many employees will read (if executed properly).

Intranet blog deployment: blue bands represent % deployed (22% enterprise-wide deployment)

Source: Intranet 2.0 Global Survey 2010 (preliminary results)

A survey of more than 500 employees with one client of Prescient Digital Media reveals that 80% of employees read blogs, but less than 10% write on blogs on a regular basis (both findings are higher than the average organization). So while employees want more information, and want to read blogs, they don’t necessarily want to blog themselves.

What should you do for your employees? Well, ask them what they want. Undertake an employee intranet survey, sprinkle in a few focus groups, and unless you’re methodology is off, you’ll have your answer. Note: if you simply ask employees if they want corporate blogs, many will say ‘no’. However, most have never seen a corporate blog, and can’t envision it. The knee-jerk reaction is to say no. If you paint the picture for them, and tell them what to expect from a good corporate or executive blog, and show them an example or two, they will often say yes.

Come and check out some of the examples and intranet case studies at Cogress Intranet 2010.

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What’s the full value of your intranet?

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 09:37:18 GMT

I’m off on holiday next week to recharge my batteries ready for fresh challenges with BT’s intranet in March and to present at the IntraTeam conference in Copenhagen on 4 March. I recommend you attend if you can – not because I’m there – as there are many excellent speakers that I’m really keen to hear and meet.

I will be speaking about how BT measures the full value its intranet gives. It is something I have posted about before. I’ll cover:

Make money from advertising

Measure user satisfaction

Improve productivity

Value of exploited and unexploited less tangible benefits

Selling the technology that we use

If you can’t make the conference, here is my presentation.

Before that I’m off to a lovely quiet place called Solva in Pembrokeshire. Can’t wait…..!

Tagged: benchmark, benefit, bt intranet, research, value

Change management for intranet 2.0

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:46:47 GMT

Social media tools (web / intranet 2.0) are so simple and inexpensive to deploy that it’s incredibly easy to be lulled into complacency until your initiative begins to fail.

Often, failure is simply a lack of use or adoption by users, sometimes its misuse of the tools – particularly blogs, discussion forums, and user comments.

Last year’s Intranet 2.0 Global Survey revealed low satisfaction levels with social media on the intranet (Take the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey 2010 to get the free report of this year’s results):

Only 29% of organizations rate the tool functionality as good or very good; 24% rate them as poor or very poor
Satisfaction rates with executives is dangerously low: only 23% of executives rate the 2.0 tools as good or very good; 38% rate them as poor or very poor

There are two primary reasons for the low satisfaction levels:

1- Vanilla or free / open source solutions with poor functionality (e.g. MOSS 2007 or MediaWiki)

2- Little or no change management / communications planning

Ironically, the success of intranet 2.0 has more to do with the latter, change management (not technology). If you build it they will not come… necessarily. Most employees haven’t heard of a wiki so why would they use one? Employees need to be educated, sold, and cajoled to use these tools initially until they become a repetitive action that is part of the culture.

Here are 5 steps for intranet 2.0 change management planning:

1- Intranet governance model (if you don’t have an explicit, documented governance model for the overall intranet, you’re going nowhere fast).

2- Social media policy (who can do what, when, how, and the rules for doing so).

3- Executive sponsorship (ensure you have a senior executive in your corner to help promote your new tools).

4- Communications plan (promote these tools by email, newsletter, the intranet home page, and buzz marketing activities).

5- Active conversations (lead and promote the conversation with topical posts (e.g. new blog post or wiki) that are well targeted and promoted to potential subject matter experts and keeners).

Intranet 2.0 tools require careful thought and planning; yes they’re easy to deploy, but they’re not easily adopted without the requisite change management.

Take the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey 2010 to get the free report of this year’s results.

To purchase last year’s full, 44-page Intranet 2.0 report of analysis & recommendations please visit: http://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/purchase-intranet-2-0-global-survey-report

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Do intranet banners work or are they just litter?

Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:25:28 GMT

1. The myth

If I scatter web banners across the intranet to publicise my campaign, it will have a big impact and raise awareness among people.

2. The reality

No it won’t! Web banners can become a check list item for every kind of initiative. Site owners can get several requests each week to publish banners on their sites. As they only have a limited number of slots for banners on their pages and they give priority to those relevant to their local audiences, most banners never see the light of day despite the time and effort put into creating them.

… and few people look at them.

3. The evidence

Selective attention is a widely recognised behaviour on the web backed up by reams of usability evidence. Selective attention is what web users quickly develop from browsing around web pages – it basically means that they learn to ignore adverts and content that looks like adverts.

Take a look at these diagrams which are heat maps created from eye tracking software following what a sample group of users looked at on web pages. The red colour is where the users looked most … the grey is what they ignored. The adverts on these pages have been highlighted with green boxes … as you can see, users instinctively ignore them!

Usability research about adverts on web pages is quite revealing – the below is typical:

I enjoy looking at them – 7%
They’re OK if not too intrusive – 24%
They’re OK if related to the site I’m on – 24%
I find them annoying – 45%

So, the lesson seems to be: unobtrusive and relevant adverts are OK … hold that thought.

I know what you’re thinking … this research is about adverts on the internet – not about banners in the intranet. Well, the evidence on the effectiveness of banners on local sites shows:

on average, a banner will get few hits per day
this means that a very small % of visitors will click on a banner
the banners which get the fewest hits are those relating to company-wide campaigns and initiatives
the banners which get the most hits are those referring to activity specific to that site

4. The solution

So what can be done? How about:

reducing the number of banners and only use them for key campaigns – it is the sheer quantity that can make them intranet litter
better planning – agree and prioritise before distributing for publication
better targeting – make banners relevant to local audiences – these are the ones that get the best response
avoid publishing content on web pages that looks like it is a banner (i.e. both in terms of location on the page and design/presentation)
aiming to have a maximum of three banners on a web page – more than three is litter!

Tagged: best practice, bt intranet, content, intranet, research, usability

The best 2.0 technology for your intranet

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:52:00 GMT

I bet you thought I was going to tell you what technology to buy (or download for free) to power your intranet 2.0? Ha! You know me too well….

There are now thousands of social media technology solutions in the market; a few hundred credible solutions; dozens of strong emerging vendors of note (social media leaders). There is no answer to the question, “What are the best 2.0 technologies or technology platform?” Does a tree fall in the forest?

Intranet 2.0 solution leaders by market share (Intranet 2.0 Global Survey)

The best intranet 2.0 technology to invest in is the best technology that fits your particular requirements – business, technical, functional and cultural requirements. Choosing Microsoft SharePoint (MOSS) would be a safe bet – if you can afford it, don’t mind its technical and functional limitations, already have invested in a Microsoft technology stack, and aren’t looking for a ‘wow’ from your social media efforts. But what if you want something more functional without the massive sticker price?

My colleague Carm Porco is going to walk you through the steps and process of choosing the right social media / intranet 2.0 technologies in his free upcoming webinar Social media tools: the best for your intranet 2.0 strategy.

What you will learn in this webinar:

The steps for developing an intranet 2.0 strategy (where to start)
The correct methodology for choosing the right intranet 2.0 tool
The social media tools best suited for your organization
How to maintain an effective intranet 2.0 environment
Different 2.0 technology solutions (vendor examples)

Unless you’ve already chosen a solution that will last for years, you need to be on this webinar. If you thought the content management (CMS) market was complex, the social media / intranet 2.0 market is moving at five times the speed.

For the record, last year’s Intranet 2.0 Global Survey found that there is only one clear Intranet 2.0 technology leader: Microsoft SharePoint. After MOSS, and factoring out free or open source solutions, the market is extremely fractured:

47% of organizations with 2.0 tools are using Microsoft SharePoint (MOSS 2007)
Facebook is being used by employees (employee groups) in 20% of organizations
Seven have market share of more than 4% led by MediaWiki (17%) and WordPress (16%)
Vendors (“others”) that have less than 4% market share are present in 38% of organizations

http://www.prescientdigital.com/events/upcoming-events/social-media-tools-the-best-for-your-intranet-2-0-strategy-1

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Is your intranet breaking the law?

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:42:31 GMT

My intranet could be breaking the law! Why? What? How?

Well if you have information or applications that is not accessible to everyone then you could be. Everyone, whether they have any impairment or not, need to have the same experience when using any intranet information or applications.

Legislation and codes of practice based on the WCAG web accessibility guidelines apply in most countries. US Section 508 and UK DDA 1995 being two of many examples I know of.

In BT we aim to achieve WCAG 2.0 standard. This is above the likely legal requirement for UK DDA 1995 and, more importantly, sets best practice for all users of BT’s intranet so they have a good experience whatever they use, whether they are impaired or not.

How are we doing this? Well, apart from my last post on how to use it as a lever for wider improvements, BT:

Prevents web accessibility errors by training, clauses in contracts to buy web services, standards embedded in content templates
Identifies and corrects web accessibility errors using an automated checker tool
Guides users on how to use your browser, computer more accessibly.

Follow the right approach and you won’t get a nasty surprise. It only takes one discriminated user and you could have a really big problem to solve.

Prevention is much, much, cheaper and better than curing a problem like this.

Tagged: accessibility, applications, best practice, bt intranet, content, publishing, standards, value

Use accessibility as a lever to improve

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:45:41 GMT

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

2010: Year of the Social Intranet

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:29:00 GMT

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

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Mark Morrell meets Oracle: update

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 09:08:04 GMT

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

Recipe for Failure… the Senior Management Blog on the Intranet

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 07:22:11 GMT

I was just reading a not publicly available case study on how not to do it when it comes to internal CEO (or CxO) blogs. The case study is about a big company (that shall remain unnamed*) that failed in an effort to establish blogging for their senior management on the intranet. The goal: to promote open exchange in the organization.
Here’s the approach they took – I urge you not to try this out in your own organization:

Assume it will just work (after all, this is Web 2.0 stuff…)
Provide one blog for all the senior managers to use together (to ensure hampering of personal identification)
Allow anonymous commenting in an environment with negative and unconstructive potential
Don’t address the issues raised in critical comments (to ensure them reappearing again and again)
Don’t brief your senior managers on how to make use of this instrument
Tell them that it is okay for the communications department to write the postings in their stead (to ensure loss of spontaneity and authenticity)
Don’t change the programme if you see that it doesn’t work, but rather leave it on its own to die in silence (to ensure a good starting position if you ever think of giving it another try)

I think that the value that can be derived from bad practise in the field of Intranet 2.0 approaches is quite substantial. As obviously defective the points listed above might seem, they keep coming up in projects again and again. In a way they (or at least some of them) seem to reflect a kind of “natural behaviour” in organisations today. So, having examples that prove that it is not going to work this way will hopefully help ease some of the discussion we all lead when introducing Web 2.0 approaches in the enterprise.

*Disclosure: I have no financial involvement with the company this case is about and they are not a client of mine or the organizations that I represent

Benchmark to get the best value

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 12:22:09 GMT

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)

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 08:14:03 GMT

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

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

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

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

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?

Mark Morrell meets Oracle

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 10:24:25 GMT

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

Communication & intranet professionals should set the social media example (Part 1 of 2)

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:11:25 GMT

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

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 07:28:04 GMT

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

· Welsh Assembly Government

· 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).

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Intranet Konferenzen 2010

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 12:54:51 GMT

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

Worldwide Intranet Challenge - Conference Presentation in Denmark

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 00:35:40 GMT

How did the Worldwide Intranet Challenge get started?

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.

Intranet predictions for 2010

Fri, 15 Jan 2010 09:13:48 GMT

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.

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 planning

Intranet 2.0 becomes mainstream

Intranet Blueprint

Technorati Profile

Meeting mobile intranet users’ needs

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:05:21 GMT

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

2010 Intranet Resolutions

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 07:21:54 GMT

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

Technology, the intranet, and employee productivity

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 20:39:22 GMT

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:

Too much useless information

Intranet ROI

Intranet redesign: building a business case

Technorati Profile

The future for BT’s intranet?

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:26:12 GMT

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.

Tagged: applications, blog, bt intranet, BT today, content, governance, intranet applications, oracle, publishing, research, social media, standards, usability standards, wiki

BT Homepage: agreed by users

Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:16:25 GMT

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

Over 10,000 intranet user responses to the Worldwide Intranet Challenge - 2009 in review

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:33:04 GMT

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

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 09:12:19 GMT

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

Global Intranet Trends for 2010

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 20:00:00 GMT

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

Do Intranet Managers look through coloured glasses when judging their intranet’s impact on business?

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:33:45 GMT

When comparing the results from two recent reports on how business critical intranets are today - one being Jane McConnell’s superb Global Intranet Trends for 2010, the other the latest benchmarking report from the Worldwide Intranet Challenge - it struck me that the findings showed quite different perspectives on intranet value, depending on what stakeholder group you ask.

Blogs are about content & context, not technology

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 08:19:52 GMT

It matters little what technology powers a blog. Don’t ask me whether Drupal is better than SharePoint, or if WordPress is better than Blogger. If you ask such a question then you’re likely consigning yourself to failure. If you ask such a question, you best bring in an expert to help you because you’re missing the point: a blog isn’t a technology, it’s a tool (and like most tools, the quality of the end work depends on the ability of the user).

There are a lot of successful blogs that use free, open source software with little or no bells and whistle (e.g. www.RunningAHospital.com Paul Levy (CEO, Beth Israel Hospital). The success behind the blogs starts and ends with the writer, and is exemplified by the content, context and conversation. Specifically, have a look at some of the successful executive blogs highlighted in the webinar “Implementing an executive blog” (below) and be sure to note the 8 ingredients of a great executive blog that were culled by a thorough examination of dozens of executive Internet and intranet blogs.

Implementing An Executive Blog Slideshare

View more presentations from Toby Ward.

ADDITIONAL READING:

8 ingredients of a great executive blog

Intranet 2.0 becomes mainstream (intranet blogs on the rise)

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Going Dark

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 21:50:25 GMT

Going Dark: To disappear; to become suddenly unavailable or digitally out of reach for an undefined period of time.

That’s me. I have quite a bit going on right now, such that my Twitter & blogging participation is next to nil and will be for probably the next month or so. Nothing bad is happening, and I haven’t abandoned the blog. I simply don’t have the time.

It is purely a coincidence that Christmas is just around the corner.

Enjoy the holidays!