IntranetBlogs

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

Technorati Profile

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).

Technorati Profile

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)

Follow me on Twitter (www.Twitter.com/TobyWard)

Technorati Profile

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!

Internal Branding and Intranets (and vice versa)

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:02:29 GMT

The first book on Internal Branding in German language has recently been published. It’s titled “Innen beginnen: Von der internen Kommunikation zum Internal Branding” (~”Beginning inside - from Internal Communication to Internal Branding”). I was asked to write an article about the role intranets can play in internal branding and feel honoured to have been able to contribute to this great book.

Some key points from my article:

Branding in relation to an intranet is so far only thought of in a very limiting way: using basic visual brand elements in the intranet design and/or creating a separate brand for your intranet. The by far richer possibilities of using an intranet to support turning employees into brand ambassadors are usually not even considered.
Organisations that take their brand and brand values seriously should have this also being reflected by their intranet. A good point to start is the intranet strategy. Internal branding should become a strategic dimension of every intranet, just as e.g. publishing information, fostering collaboration or employee participation (Social Media) are.
A fundamental requirement for successful internal branding activities in the intranet is that employees feel welcome and respected in using the intranet. Major flaws and failures in design, usability, readability, findability and accessibility make users feel “unwelcome” and thus usually create a sharp contrast to the positive aspects brand values are trying to convey.
Evolution of an organisation’s culture is an important success factor for internal branding programmes. The intranet can help to make visible and experience the desired future state.
I use prediction markets as an example of how organisations can dramatically change the way they work and which role each person has in a organisation.
There is a multitude of options for campaigning your internal branding activities via the intranet, from “learning worlds” to video-based story telling approaches to value indicators (that e.g. show how well a certain content represents the brand values of the organisation)

“An organisation has as many marketing departments as it has employees”

Internal Branding can be regarded as a whole new area of expertise that puts an organisation’s brand in a much broader concept and enables employees to actually identify with and live by the brand values. For intranets it offers a further chance to be put to the heart of an organisation by supporting internal branding activities in a substantial way.

Further info:

Press release: Marken strahlen von innen nach außen (German)
Order the book at amazon: Innen beginnen: Von der internen Kommunikation zum Internal Branding (German)

8 ingredients of a great executive blog

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 05:49:11 GMT

Most executives are pretty smart, capable people, but many (if not most) get a failing grade for social media, particularly blogs. While there are always exceptions to the rule, there are in fact very few good executive blogs. I’ve read many “leading” or “top 10” executive blogs (based on traffic and word-of-mouth, more than anything) and most are not bad, but few are really great.

Having examined many of these blogs, including other well-known and lesser-known blogs, here is a compilation of 8 key ingredients to a truly great executive blog, with good and bad examples for each:

1- Audience specific content (well-written & subject focused).

· Good example: John Dragoon (CMO, Novell).

· Bad example: Jim Estill (former CEO, SYNNEX).

2- Current, fresh content (timely).

· Good example: Paul Levy (CEO, Beth Israel Hospital).

· Bad example: Jonathan Schwartz (President & CEO, Sun Microsystems)

3- Easy to navigate (content categories).

· Good example: Bill Marriott (Chairman, Marriott).

· Bad example: Ross Mayfield (CEO, Socialtext)

4- Social media integration (bookmarking, sharing options, Twitter).

· Good example: Matt Blumberg (CEO, Return Path)

· Bad example: Bill Marriott (Chairman, Marriott).

5- Audience engagement (user comments & responding to comments).

· Superb example: Paul Levy (CEO, Beth Israel Hospital).

· Bad example: Jason Calcanis (CEO, Mahalo.com)

6- Clean design (not cluttered with ads and crap).

· Good example: Paul Levy (CEO, Beth Israel Hospital).

· Bad example: Huffington Post (not an executive blog mind you, but so, so terrible)

7- Cross promoting the business (without blatant advertising).

· Good example: Mark Cuban (CEO, Dallas Mavericks et al)

· Bad example: Ray Lutz / GM Fastlane (GM)

8- Text + Multimedia (large blocks of text turn-off readers)

· Good example: Ray Lutz / GM Fastlane (GM)

· Bad example: Mark Cuban (CEO, Dallas Mavericks et al)

So know that we understand some of the best, most important ingredients of a good blog, how do we get started? Tune into the free webinar Implementing an Executive Blog on Dec. 1 (12pm EST) for the process of establishing and growing a blog, and examples from intranet based executive blogs. Register online.

Technorati Profile

Social business is nothing new

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 18:08:52 GMT

(SAN JOSE, CA) “Digital work became more social… but work has always been social,” says Thomas Vander Wal, InfoCloud Solutions, addressing the KM World 2009 conference. “Businesses by nature are social – you need to have people in your org talking to each other.”

Drivers of social media and enterprise 2.0 include:

Office productivity tools are not efficient for collaboration.
Social tools augment face-to-face.
Volume of information has grown
Gaps in enterprise tools, CMS, and other traditional work tools
Individuals are making a difference
Ease of sharing & connecting with others
Easier knowledge capture

“All of this is similar to e-mail in the 1990s. It was a strange new way of thinking… and now we’re using social tools and saying the same things that we did about email.”

“Social software creates a lot of information – many layers of information. We need tools to understand this information and structure for understanding.”

1–9–90 rule (Charlene Li) helps understand the ‘who’ in social media: 1% creates the information; 9% curates it; 90% merely are consumers of the information.

SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE INTRANET

“We’re looking at our intranet and it’s an utter mess. Something is really broken here,” says Thomas, emulating a typical intranet client. “Social media helps fill in some of the gaps in the enterprise tools (example: BBC intranet: 115% wiki use in 7 years)”

When comparing Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 Vander Wal has a clever analogy: Web 2.0 is like tunneling through a mountain (it’s tough to sort out the context in the mass of information, and problems are merely small cracks in a large mass); Enterprise 2.0 is like tunneling under water (it’s easier to get started, but problems quickly become massive problems). “Web 2.0 is about numbers of users, Enterprise 2.0 is about % of users (% of employees using social media).”

We need to encourage social comfort for employees:

Comfort with others (people to interact & share with)
Comfort with tools
Comfort with subject matter

“It’s been said that walled gardens are bad for the enterprise, but they give comfort to employees,” says Vander Wal, citing Andrew McAfee’s opening keynote at KM World 2009. “What we really want are comfortable walled gardens with permeable walls.”

Follow Thomas on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/VanderWal

Follow Toby on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/TobyWard

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New BT Homepage – what’s your view?

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:28:17 GMT

In the last BT Intranet user survey I carried out earlier in 2009 I asked people in BT if merging information and applications into logical groups based around activities/functions would help them. The majority answered ‘Yes’.

I am now testing the new version that tries to do this with users and asking for their views.

The last major change to the BT Homepage was at the beginning of 2009 with a recent change in some of the colours when the 2012 challenge countdown began earlier this month.

I’m sharing the proposed changes and how we are testing these with users in these slides.

What do you think of the changes and how we are testing with people to make sure they are right or be able to make further changes to get it better?

PS I’m on holiday for the next two weeks. My blog decided it wants a break too . So, my next post will be in December.

Tagged: 2012 Challenge, homepage, killer content, research, user testing, users

An easy way to improve web accessibility

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:09:16 GMT

Has anyone seen the new free accessibility tool on the WAVE site? I thought you might be interested in knowing there is a simple to use and visual tool out there compared with other tools that tend to be a bit ‘techie’ in their results.

WAVE is a free web accessibility evaluation tool provided by WebAIM. It is used to aid people in the web accessibility evaluation process. Rather than providing a complex technical report, WAVE shows the original web page with embedded icons and indicators that reveal the accessibility of that page.

Even better from an intranet perspective, the WAVE Firefox toolbar allows you to evaluate web pages directly within your browser. Because no information is sent to the WAVE servers, the toolbar allows you to evaluate password protected, secure, or otherwise sensitive web content. The WAVE toolbar evaluates content as it is rendered within Firefox. This allows dynamically created, modified, or scripted content to be evaluated in real time.

Tagged: accessibility, applications, intranet applications, publishing, users

Enterprise 2.0: key ingredients & barriers

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 19:57:02 GMT

(SAN JOSE, CA) “Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms by organizations in pursuit of their goals,” says the man who coined the phrase, Andrew McAfee, Principal Research Scientist, Center for Digital Business, MIT Sloan School of Management; Author, Enterprise 2.0.

“A key word is emergent… we’ve always been good at imposing things on people,” adds McAfee, who was addressing the KM World 2009 conference in San Jose. “What we’re now doing is not dictating what people need to do… but instead throwing out a technology blank slate, and letting people fill it in.”

Key ingredients for Enterprise 2.0 success:

Altruism: People want to help (stop obsessing about risks)
Process: Beware of the ‘one best way’ (use tools that let structure appear)
Innovation: Expertise is emergent (build communities that people want to join)
Intelligence: Crowds can be very wise (experiment with collective intelligence)
Benefits: Real, measurable benefits (increased innovation, employee satisfaction)
Impact: Sitting this one out is a bad idea (look at technology with fresh eyes

“I think it’s (Enterprise 2.0) as big a leap forward in the 90s as enterprise-level technology (e.g. ERP),” stresses McAfee. “We’re not going back to business as usual.”

However, McAfee emphasized that failure is common and that it is, in fact, easy to ‘snatch’ defeat from the ‘jaws of victory’ by not avoiding some common barriers:

Declare war on the enterprise (“Its bad marketing to management.”)
Allow walled gardens to flourish (silos kill)
Accentuating the negative (spend less time on the risks)
Try to replace email
Fall in love with features (we don’t want more, keep it simple)
Overuse the word “social”

McAfee concluded his keynote address to KM World 2009 with the following quote from futurist Norbert Weiner in 1954: “The world of the future will be an even more demanding struggle against the limitations of our intelligence, not a comfortable hammock in which we can lie down to be waited upon by our robot slaves.”

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Innovative intranets

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:43:37 GMT

(SAN JOSE, CA) While an innovative intranet may be cool, and look great, a truly innovative intranet delivers true value and advances an organization's standing in its industry.

The Intranet Innovations 2009 report celebrates the winners of the 2009 Intranet Innovation Awards, produced by Step Two Designs, sharing remarkable ideas from across the globe.

Intranet Innovation Award winner, SabreTown (Sabre's social networking for employees)

Winning entries include intranets from all over the World including:

CRS Australia (Australia)
IDEO (USA), IBM (USA)
SunGard (USA/NZ)
NYK Group (UK)
Sabre (USA)
COWI (Denmark)
ChTPZ (Russia)
Prophet (USA)
AEP (USA).

The Intranet Innovations Awards celebrate new ideas and innovative approaches to the enhancement and delivery of intranets.Now in their third year, the awards have uncovered many innovative ideas from across the globe. Use these ideas to gain senior management support and to deliver an ever-better intranet.

For example, AEP, a US-based electric utility have created an online ideas system that has identified $8 million in savings, $2 million in the first month alone.

With winners across four categories (core functionality, communication and collaboration, frontline delivery and business solutions), there are valuable ideas for every intranet team.

The 198-page Intranet Innovations 2009 report shares the full results of the awards, including screenshots and details of the winning entries.

For more information:

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BT Directory – connecting people easily

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:47:36 GMT

When BT’s intranet started in December 1994 one of the key demands from people was to easily find and connect with other people in BT. Along with the BT Homepage and BT today, BT Directory was one of the ‘killer application/content’ that encouraged people to want to use BT’s intranet because it gave them a tool that helped make their life easier.

Today Directory is still as critical as when it started. It is the easiest and quickest way to find out who you need to contact in BT. I have shared some examples of BT Directory for you to see.

Ease of use (slides 1 and 2)

It is very easy to find anyone in BT. You can use Directory to find people from any page on BT’s intranet using the Global Navigation Bar (GNB). You can see I have entered my name as an example of what you do, then just press ‘Go’. Their details will appear from Directory (slide 3). You can also click on the Directory heading in the GNB to enter to use all the features on Directory (slide 2).

People information (slides 3 – 5)

You can find a person’s contact details – office and mobile phone nos., email, address - their job title, manager and what part of BT they work in. Again, I’ve used myself for the example (slide 3).

You can also check their whereabouts (downloaded automatically each day from Outlook Calendar) to be able to choose when to contact them and if their office or mobile no. is better. It helps when planning calls or meetings too (slide 4).

You can also see who is in their team as well as their manager and where in the BT organisation structure a person is. I’ve used myself to show my team and where in BT – Group Communications – I fit in (slide 5).

Extra features (slides 6 – 9)

You can use a power search to find someone by just knowing their phone no., which location they may be at, part of their name or even initials (slide 6).

You can find out who else has a particular work interest, activity or title. The example shows how many people with a connection with ‘intranet’ in BT (slide 7).

Mobile users can also use a cut down version of Directory to find people’s contact details (slide 8). The results shown are the key contact details you will need (slide 9).

As social media tools continue to grow in BT, Directory will be a hub to help you find out more useful information to help them connect easily and quickly with the best people who can help you.

Tagged: applications, best practice, bt intranet, directory, killer app, killer content, navigation, people finder

The Worldwide Intranet Challenge - Wyeth MENA is number 1 (Case Study)

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:16:34 GMT

From the first 20 organisations who have participated in the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) (TM), the most effective intranet as assessed by their own users belongs to Wyeth MENA - and they are pretty happy about it!

That's an impressive banner!!

Who is Wyeth MENA?

Wyeth MENA is based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates and was a division of Wyeth (incidentally the Wyeth head office intranet is ranked number 4 in the WIC). Pfizer has recently acquired Wyeth. Pfizer/Wyeth is the world's largest research-based pharmaceutical company and provide a portfolio of products and medicines that support wellness and prevention, as well as treatment and cures for diseases across a broad range of therapeutic areas.

Worldwide Intranet Challenge rankings

The Wyeth MENA intranet received an overall score of 65.253% from their end users (the average score is 58.029%). In addition to this, the Wyeth MENA intranet was the number 1 ranked intranet from an end user perspective in the areas of:

Intranet look and feel
Intranet search
Intranet hierarchy
Discussing work topics
Providing feedback or comments about intranet content
Training (eg. manuals, online training)
Access to business applications
Training on using the intranet

It is no coincidence in my experience that having an effective search correlates to the value that end users place on an intranet. See my earlier blog post about the importance end users place on finding information. Providing training on using the intranet is also an easy and quick way to increase the value of your intranet - it may be that the search tool you have is OK but your end users don't how to use it.

The Wyeth MENA intranet is built using Webbuilder.

Interview with Magdy Youssef, e-Business and CRM Projects Manager

What techniques do you use to generate repeat business?
Techniques used include:

Gaining management support
Coordinated marketing plan
Maximizing the value of the homepage
Automatically loading homepage
Have your say
Monthly newsletter
Produce Regular Content
MENA Discussion Board
Brochures and Roll ups
E-mail links to intranet
Run surveys
Internal contest
‘killer applications’
Promoting via the business
Staff induction

What tasks are done to ensure the intranet is maintained?
Regular monthly tasks include:

Monitor usage statistics
Review intranet content
Rewrite key content
Mentor intranet authors
Build relationships with other teams
Meet countries needs
Support strategic projects
Build team skills and knowledge

What is the most popular use or feature of your intranet?
Poll,News,MENA spotlight,MENA discussion board

How do you make sure the intranet continues to meet your staff needs?
Getting feedback using our feedback form, conduct survey every 6 month to track the satisfaction level Provide relevant contents according to the job role, department as well as Geographical locations

How do you measure the success of your intranet?
Passive: Web trend Active: Primary survey. Focus group and face to face meeting

What are your plans for the future?
-Provide MENA intranet with specific Name ( Branding) -Add more relevant messages by segmenting the staff needs - Add more fun by running internal contest - Build one page for new staff to hold all the staff induction materials. to be the primary source of information @ new comers mind

What do you see as your biggest challenges in increasing intranet acceptance and use?
Management engagement to the Intranet services

What advice can you pass on to other intranet teams?
Get the maximum use of Home page, keep it simple and consistent.

The Wyeth MENA Home page

The following image shows the home page. It follows Magdy's guideline of being simple and consistent.

The Wyeth MENA Home page (click here for a bigger image)

How many people are using the intranet?

It's not only the positive feedback from the Worldwide Intranet Challenge that shows that the Wyeth MENA end users are happy with their intranet, they are also voting with their fingers. The following diagram shows the dramatic increase in page visits over a 3 year period. As can be seen from the diagram, when management support was obtained, things really took off.

And who is responsible?

Members of the team include Anca Davies, Baher Massoud, Claudia Burkley, Hala Abo Gazalah, Hamam Haridy, Hassan Ali, Hershey Mendoza, Joseph Tresa, Manar Hassan, Mark Allen, May Caro, Mayola D'Souza, Samantha Colaco, Sini Kurian, Trevor Parsons, Vanessa Edmunds and Vivika De leon

How do you think your intranet compares to Wyeth MENA?

So how do you think your intranet is traveling? The Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) allows Intranet owners to obtain feedback from their end users through a web based survey and then compare this feedback with other participating organisations).

Some comments from organisations who have already participated in the WIC include:

"extremely useful results for validation of development plan and to support engagement and change management." - Dominic Chiappe, Lloyds Register

"It was very useful and I would recommend it to any intranet manager." - Margherita Buoso, European Space Agency

"This survey is a good idea and will allow us to benchmark ourselves against other companies. We have already started to use the survey feedback to make improvements." - Barbara Peters, Wyeth

So why not register now, there is no cost to participate.

BT today – BT’s great intranet news site

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 15:03:41 GMT

I’ve mentioned in previous posts BT today as BT’s main intranet news site for the latest news affecting everyone in BT. But I don’t feel I’ve given it full justice until now. The problem is where to start as it has so much to offer!

BT today was one of the first sites on BT’s intranet when it was launched in 1994. It meant people could find out the latest news, whenever they wanted to and reduced the overload (and cost) of information being sent to everyone each day.

Since it’s launch BT today has been one of the most popular sites on BT’s intranet. BT raises several tens of thousands of pounds from digital advertising on the site. It has now grown to include:

Up to 10 news stories published each day
PDA version available for mobile users
Subscribing to different RSS news feeds
Raising issues that people across BT contribute to
Sharing important events like birthdays, anniversaries, etc.

I’ve shared some examples of BT today for you to see these.

Along with BT Homepage and Directory, the BT today news site is one of the key sites that encouraged people to start using the BT Intranet. Offering a wider range of news services has encouraged people to use it more, and more frequently.

Future plans include more use of photos for each story, larger photos where suitable for stories and people able to comment on each story.

Tagged: bt intranet, BT today, homepage, money, rss, social media, users, value

Intranet design

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:22:39 GMT

This is the story of a very profitable, successful, large enterprise that spent over $2 million on their intranet. When the intranet launched, it crashed in seconds. It has never gone live again (more than a year later).

Leaving an intranet design to the whim of a designer, a creative agency or any individual not working from a sound blueprint represents poor judgment, management, and is a recipe for disaster.

Sound intranet design follows a process that incorporates:

1- Business requirements (as expressed by management)
2- User requirements (as expressed by employees)
3- Strategic & functional planning
4- Governance
5- Best practices & usability

The process for arriving at the stage where a designer applies color and images to a design concept is one that should be taken seriously, and if done properly, may take a number of weeks. This process is the underlying foundation of a successful intranet design, one that is examined and outlined in the webinar Intranet Design – A Business Approach to a Winning Design.

Intranet Design – A Business Approach to a Winning Design

View more presentations from Toby Ward.

Note: not all 25 intranets profiled during this webinar, but not are available for distribution.

The story of the failed intranet, and the squandering of more than $2 million and years of worker hours, is ultimately a story about a failure in planning. Without sound requirements that drive a thorough intranet blueprint, culminating in the intranet design, your intranet risks failure.

Read More on Intranet Design:
Leading an intranet redesign
Intranet redesign: rolling content inventory
Intranet redesign: building a business case
Building an intranet blueprint

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Team BT 2012 Challenge

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:45:01 GMT

On 31 October we started the 1000 day countdown to the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics Games. To mark this BT gave an amazing lights and fireworks display from the BT Tower.

Just like the athletes who are preparing for the Games, BT is setting its sights high with the Team BT 2012 Challenge. It will help everyone in the company focus on the future. The ‘challenge’ we are taking on is a simple one – to make BT a better business with a better future.

To showcase the launch key intranet sites, including BT Homepage promoted the 2012 Challenge. You can see from these examples how we have coordinated the changes.

There will be some more changes to BT Homepage’s structure which I will share with you later this month.

Tagged: 2012 Challenge, bt intranet, homepage

A shiny new toy for you

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:06:12 GMT

I tried to start my last post by stressing the importance of learning a broad set of basic skills to complement one or two deep skill-sets. Ultimately though I was reminded that there is simply too much to know for that approach to be feasible.

Nonetheless, there’s no sense ignoring useful tools when you find them, provided there is a simple way bring them into your toolbox. It is with this in mind that I’d like to mention another McKinsey Quartely article on the Industry Cost curve. How it’s useful to KM is not immediately obvious, but bear with me and I’ll explain why I feel it’s useful re: the deployment of KM resources within a firm.

If you’re going to read the rest of this post you really should read the McKinsey Article.

Welcome back.

The Industry Cost Curve is an analytical tool that is used in pricing and to assess just how profitable a line of business could be. Traditionally it is used to analyse commodities to determine whether or not to build a new plant and the price/margin a given commodity might be able to fetch.

With firms seemingly wed to a cost-based approach to pricing (1 hour of work costs $x and is billed at $y) and offering a arguably uniform level of quality, the Industry Cost Curve is relevant to KM in three ways:

effective deployment of KM resource can help a firm improve its margin by executing deals in a less costly way;
analysis of the various curves (by engagement type) can help a firm understand how it can best deploy its KM resource by identifying areas where the impact will be greatest; and
at a more basic level, this can help identify the business case for a KM project, even if it’s a smaller, specific piece of work rather than a giant search, taxonomy or portal project.

Now, if you’re like me, you may struggle to conduct this analysis in on your own, but I imagine some boffin from your strategy or finance department might be able to help with some of the numbers. If your efforts prove successful, your hard work will help raise the profile of KM as a strategic tool in your practice; and if not, you’ve conducted an interesting piece of analysis which will increase your insight into the practice you support.

Before you go off piste with this, chat to your business manager to see if what tools they use to manage the practice and see whether there’s any other tools for you to adopt and adapt.

101 Skills

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 13:20:45 GMT

“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.” – Alexander Pope

This post started out as a quick rant about how important it was to make it simple to learn the basic skills needed to function in your firm. Fortunately, as I was trying to finish it off, I realised how naive the post was. I’ve included my original below for a bit of fun and for some public introspection.

Being from an IT background and finding myself continually involved in some sort of IT project or another I am constantly amazed with how little other people know about IT projects. Frequently I think to myself “This is IT Projects 101!” when I come across others who don’t understand unit testing, user interface design or any number of commonplace issues in IT projects. Of course, it’s basic for me because of my experience and education, and I will be the first to admit that there is far more that I don’t know than what I do know.

In the North American vernacular, 100 level courses are synonymous with first-year university courses, 400 level courses for fourth year courses, with a 101 course being the very first in a subject area. 101 courses are simple stuff against the backdrop of the deep and complicated concepts to come. While the standard is not terribly difficult, there are a great many areas we’ve never even gained an understanding of the basics.

There is great undoubtedly a benefit to focusing on one or two niche skills, but it is important in business to understand at least enough to know where to look should something crop up. Budgets are a good example of this. Many are frightened by the annual numbers drill, and the process is made even more unpleasant when accompanied by a crippling lack of knowledge. One of our roles in knowledge management is to make it easy to get people up to a 101 standard.

Here’s a few you may choose to ask yourself in a quiet moment:

What are the 101 skills people need at my firm? Can they get them?

What 101 skills am I missing that hinder my performance at work? Is it worth gaining them or can others do them for me.

What 101 skills to people need to work on my projects? Do I make it easy for them to attain them?

What inexpensive ways can I find to help people gain these skills?

If you can’t even get the 100 level skills right, why bother with the 400 level skills?

Of course, our resources are not infinite and our ability to make available a basic level of training on every topic is constrained. Further, firms are more likely to be able to make the big money from complicated engagement (400 level skills). In the end I feel firms need to strike the right balance between:

making 101 skills simple to obtain for those who need them;
putting people on a path to build 400 level skills and beyond; and
leveraging subject matters experts in other fields, internally or externally, when needed.

Improve findability for no extra cost

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:31:18 GMT

BT’s intranet search engine, Search BT, is the biggest instance of Ultraseek run in Europe. It searches nearly 2 million different pieces of content. This includes what we call formal, verified, content as well as collaborative, user generated content.

Here’s an example of how a couple of minor changes to an intranet page had a major impact on its findability for no cost.

People wanting to review or change sharesave plans needed to download and complete a form from the BT intranet and email it to the right group.

When they searched for the form by typing in its name to Search BT the top result was a form called ‘Saveshare Changes’. So they filled it in and sent it off. But the top result was the wrong form!

The form people needed to use was under a link on the same saveshare changes page as other forms including the wrong form. With no meta data or keywords on that page to help direct the search engine, it meant the top result took you to one of several saveshare changes forms, not the page for the right form.

Once the meta data was added in the page, it rose to the top result shown on Search BT for search queries on saveshare changes.

That minor tweak to one page saved people acting on the forms a lot of time and BT money in productivity savings. It also speeded up the time for changes people wanted made saving a lot of frustration.

Tagged: blog, bt intranet, help, search, social media, users, wiki

KM Suggestions: Buy two get one free

Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:16:47 GMT

This one’s a quickie, but not quite succinct enough to fit into 140 characters.

I just came across an article in the April McKinsey Quartely (password required) which discusses how to tackle strategic issues considering the current climate. Granted, while some say that the economy is picking up, several of McKinsey’s suggestions struck me as being both useful and offering an opportunity for KM folk to offer value in ways they might not normally do.

Suggestion 1 – Increase Monitoring of key industry variables. The idea being that a firm is especially sensitive to changes in the environment just now and so, the firm should keep a closer eye on what’s going on. Where KM can contribute to monitoring is in the use of available tools and information sources and in helping to identify what those variables are. Tailored alerts from providers like Lexis and Factiva can help a firm keep a tighter reign on things. Used cleverly this information can be integrated into a firm’s Intranet or delivered to Blackberries via RSS or email alerts.

Suggestion Two – Look beyond the crisis. In actuality, the work is quite similar, but look to gather and share trends that a firm may either be forced to ignore while it struggles to cope with the current climate. Again, an astute approach to the collection and distribution of this data will be helpful to others in your firm. This might involve a PSL or Information Manager keeping an eye on practice/sector trends and then synthesise these into pieces of thought leadership articles for the practice and its clients. After all, when you’re in the trenches it can be hard to get a read of the entire battlefield.

I’d like to include my own suggestion for good measure:

Be on the lookout for these requests within your firms. It can be very simple to meet a narrow request for information with a specific and narrow response. Imagine a Partner ringing you up and asks:

“Could I please have a Factiva alert on Transfer Pricing?”

The straightforward answer is ‘Yes’, whereby you login to Factiva, setup the alert and the Partner’s request has been met. However, consider what is actually being asked for and whether there might be an underlying need. Alternatively it might just be that there are other sources for that information or others in the practice who may also benefit from tracking the issue in question. As a service provider to the practice you’ll be well placed to spot trends in the behaviour of your lawyers that they may not be in a position to notice.

Thoughts on ‘Learning from failure or success’

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:48:53 GMT

Several weeks ago Mark Gould blogged about whether we learned better from instances of failure or instances of success. The post is interesting and I suggest you give it a read.

I don’t have any specific comments on what Mark has written beyond saying that I mostly agree with what he wrote; instead I would like to share some thoughts stemming from my own experience and views.

Bottom line, I’m of the view that failure is a better source of learning than success. Here’s an example which typifies my position.

Mrs. Knowledgethoughts and I are expecting our first child. As part of the process, every old wives’ tale and theory comes out of the woodwork. One of my favourites is that the severeness of morning sickness is indicative of the baby’s sex. The thinking goes that if there is morning sickness the child is more likely to be a girl, if there isn’t, a boy. A quick squiz on various baby forums shows this theory to be false and also shows cognitive fallacy at play.

“It’s true for me, so it must be true”

Which works for about two posts until contrary evidence is presented.

Correlation does not imply causation, and learning only from success often stems from correlation, the same type of learning that led us into the credit crisis (these CDSs make money now so they must do so in the future). It is just as easy to find examples of failure should you only look so far, and a single instance of failure proves the theory incorrect. Success can attributed to any number of variables, and that attribution may or may not be correct. Failure forces us to confront our Cognitive Bias, our tendency to make errors in judgement based upon cognitive factors. Failure forces an adjustment of our mental model.

Our adjustments won’t necessarily be correct, but in the process we have gained two valuable pieces of knowledge:

our mental model is not correct… yet; and
our understanding of the situation is not perfect

The first is obviously important, because you are required to either alter your view or bury your head in the sand. Should you chose the former, you will be better off in the future. Lawyers engage in this type of thinking whenever they construct an argument. Rather than accept raw ideas, they examine ideas for flaws, seeing how they stand up to changes in circumstance.

The second point is even more important because it shocks us into the unavoidable conclusion that our belief was mistaken and that future beliefs may also be incorrect and will require more rigorous conception.

I’ll close this post by sharing an example from my programming past:

When writing software, my first pass at coding is full of holes and flaws. I usually focus on implementing the perfect scenario. The user types the right thing, hits the right button and gets the right answer.

Perfect, but all I really know is that my software can handle correct input. I could run the software 100 times and get a right answer, but I haven’t learned anything about what’s wrong with it.

Fortunately I know from hundreds of previous bugs that my limited success is insufficient, and set about seeing how my system copes with unexpected inputs; users entering dates in the wrong format, missing out fields or clicking “submit” 50 times. The system will then fail time after time after time, whereby I refine the code (the model) and over time it becomes more robust, a process only becomes possible by intentionally seeking failure.

Ever come across a piece of software that didn’t work?

Don’t you wish the developer responsible had failed just one more time?