Intranets

Jane McConnell, whom led a Communitelligence Learning Academy Webinar earlier this year (Making Your Intranet Essential – CD) has summarized some online conjecturing about what to call an intranet in her article: The intranet – what is the elevator pitch?

She started an interesting discussion with her suggestion that the word “intranet” should be changed to something more relevant such as “web workplace” (which came from a brainstorming session inside NetJMC & Co on Linkedin).

“Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including two wireless networks serving nearly 51 million customers.”

Intranet: i-Connect

HQ: Kansas City

Owner: Communications

Vision

“Always on, always accurate, always easy…wherever you need it.”

Purpose

The online home for fast, easy access to the essential Sprint tools, information and personal connections you need.

Intranet Success Standards

• Usage: The primary resource for internal Sprint information

• Content: Content is relevant, accurate and updated

• Navigation: Navigation is simple and associates quickly find what they are looking for

• End User Engagement: End users participate in the process of updating content and recommending changes

• Client/Business Partner Relations: Clients and business partners entrust us as the stewards of i-Connect and its users

• Overall Satisfaction: End users are satisfied

Survey Results Key Findings: Satisfaction

“In the last six months, how satisfied have you been with i-Connect as your online

home for fast, easy access to the essential Sprint tools, information and personal

connections you need?”

• Search

• Navigation (Department Pages, My Work & Our Company)

• Consolidation/better integration of web tools

• Log-In

• Customization

• Outside sources “scoop” internal news on occasion

Key Intranet Features:

• Comprehensive news center
• Blogs
• Discussion forums
• Project sites
• Company calendar
• My profile (my site)

To learn more about the Sprint intranet, and other top-rated intranets showcased at The Intranet Insider World Tour Live 2009 (NYC April 16 – 17). Register now for the Intranet Insider World Tour LIVE (only $900 for 1.5 days of jam-packed learnings). Terry Pulliam, Director, Intranet and Channels, Sprint Nextel, will be presenting a workshop the afternoon of April 16 titled:

GUIDING YOUR INTRANET THROUGH CHANGE

During the past 10 years at Sprint, Terry Pulliam has overseen every kind of change you can experience while running an intranet. From building a successful program from the ground up to corralling unwilling partners toward embracing a unified approach, and from a communications-intensive focus on brand and message delivery to the technology-centric proposition of meshing two intranet platforms after a merger, she’s seen it all. Learn from a communicator who’s guided an enterprise-wide intranet through a decades’ worth of change at a major

Toby Ward – Prescient Digital Media

Employee Communications is being called upon to soften the blow, calm the troops and prepare the news that is impacting employees in every business sector. This is a difficult time but also an exciting one. It is a welcome change to see the appreciation and dependence on the Communications staff. The opportunity to shine is more than just in your writing. Getting the words that are appropriately informative and compassionate without getting cross wise with Legal is an art in itself.
This is an opportunity to instill some good processes into the minds of your leadership team. Take this as a chance to identify the value of planning the communications to redirect the team to focus on productive activities. The intranet can be a valuable tool to provide not only access to gold sources of information about potential layoffs and corporate economics but also to provide a means of directing resources to ways they can contribute to the future viability of their companies.
I am not talking about obvious links to information and tools. I believe that most of you have examples of success in this area. At General Motors we used the intranet to link to product information, to provide data on the variety of hybrid vehicles they offer and links to products that get over 30 miles to the gallon. Before GM started this activity many employees didn’t know that GM had more vehicles with over 30 mpg than any other manufacturer. Over the past couple years if you wanted information on the restructuring of the company you knew where to get it. This was great and continues to be a valuable resource. Keep this up but do more.
Do your homework. Find out what each of your key leaders feels is most important for his team to focus on and dedicate some time to building a communications strategy for achieving the critical deliverables. What is it he/she needs done? What is it the team needs to know or remember to be successful? Build a plan to stage information to get them focused and moving in the right direction. Become integral to their process by demonstrating the power of knowledge, the importance of communicating expectations, implications and results.
This is the chance for you to be remembered as the key resource who took the extra step to get the troops moving by building their confidence in themselves even while providing bad news. Use your intranet, post links to processes and other helpful information. Provide charts showing expected deliverables and timing of events. Let leaders blog about key deliverables and steps to the future. What is the next generation of Communications going to be like? Does the future start now or after the crisis do you go back to normal? I’d like to hear where you think this leads.

Laurel Castiglione, Pacific Gas and Electric

Employees want to connect with each other, and more importantly, they want to connect with the company and senior management. A study by Towers Perrin found that employees overwhelmingly want to know “that leadership is interested in them.”

Social media on the corporate intranet (Intranet 2.0) presents a unique opportunity for all employees at all levels and geographies to better connect, and share information and knowledge they might not otherwise share or learn. In fact, distance – both geographical and intellectual – between these connections is often significant with little if any filtering from one side to the next; an information gap that is not easily bridged in larger, dispersed organizations. For example, the Towers Perrion study also found that:

• 43% of employees do not feel they know enough about their own customers
• 65% of employees do not feel they know enough about the competition to be fully effective
• Only 39% of employees feel they are informed about the differences between their company’s products and the competition

Social networking allows employees to connect with relevant or related individuals by subject matter, job description, geogrpahic location, and by personal networks to help birdge this information gap. In fact, for those social media doubting-Thomases that question the value of Intranet 2.0, there are increasingly more numbers that quantify the measured value:

• 52% of organizations using Web 2.0 achieved Best- in-Class performance (5% didn’t) (Aberdeen Group)‏
• Companies using Web 2.0 tools achieved 18% increase in engagement (1% of those that didn’t) (Aberdeen Group)‏
• Sabre has already attributed $500k in savings to their employee social networking tool
• Cisco attributes $millions in savings to their wikis

Leading organizations that understand the power of Intranet 2.0 are blazing some incredible trails. Early adopters are finding positive business results by helping employees connect through “internal Facebooks.” By effectively harnessing these new networks, organizations are seeing positive impacts on internal brand building, as well as employee engagement, satisfaction and motivation — which leads to higher levels of productivity, revenue, and profit.

But the world of the internal social network is the opposite of command & control. That said, reasonable guidelines, a group of informal influencers, and a posse of community managers who help keep the dialog lively and the network on track.

One place to learn more about internal social networks is from the Intranet Insider on Communitelligence.com which is featuring an upcoming webinar on the topic, Building Employee Branding And Engagement With Internal Social Networks (March 17, 2009 at 2pm EST). Hosted by Lee Aase, Manager, Syndication and Social Media at the Mayo Clinic, with Polly Pearson, VP Employment Brand and Strategy Engagement, EMC Corporation, and Paul Pedrazzi, Vice President, Product Strategy, Oracle. The webinar promises to educate “on what works and what doesn’t in this brave new world of internal social networks from companies that are already figuring out the path to success. “

Reserve for INTERNAL SOCIAL NETWORKS.

Another related, upcoming webinar of note: INTRANET NEWS 2.0: Creating an Intranet News Publication in the New Age of Communication on April 2, featuring Katie Sauer, Monsanto.

Finally, a special welcome to my new co-leader of the Intranet Insider community, Laurel Castiglione, formerly of General Motors Communications, of Bridge The Gap Solutions. 

Toby Ward – Prescient Digital Media

Watching the challenges facing companies in today’s challenging economy I wonder how much of a priority leadership will place on their intranet activities.

I shouldn’t have to wonder but we seem to be in an era of confusion as to what really drives productivity in the workplace.  To those of us closely linked to our user community it may seem obvious that corporations will need simple, easily adopted collaboration tools.  These tools are needed to help employees rediscover the wealth of knowledge being lost as the experienced and often high powered workers walk out the door.  Unfortunately for many corporations, the loss of intellectual property will be a high price to pay for financial crisis survival.

This could be a chance for your intranet to grow in importance if you approach the situation proactively.   Messaging is not expensive, create the content and capitalize on the demand for information about current events and organizational changes.   Take advantage of the curiosity of your users.  They are feeling lost, concerned or at the very least happy to be in the company that isn’t downsizing.  They want to read all about it.  Provide them the updates and establish yourself as the gold source.

How can you demonstrate to management the value of social media?  Build an internal wiki where your users can pose questions to the general population.  “Does anyone know why there’s a 5k cap on type 2 purchase orders?”  “Is there anyone who knows how to design a whatever?”  “I have a problem with fitting my part in the assembly, who knows the tolerance history?”  Get people to share and they will become a community focused on the future.  They will be looking for answers and empowered to move forward.  Moving forward provides a mechanism for hope that provides a small sense of control in a world of uncertainty.

Don’t ask for a project or funding to implement these changes.  You must be resourceful when times are tough.  Relook at the tools at your disposal and figure out how to make this happen.  You may not have onsite posting, web content management or a social media tool waiting in the wings but you do have other means to solicit and post questions and responses.  Perhaps you could focus on highlighting key information, critical process reminders, hints and helps.

Ask yourself where your company is?  Where your company wants or needs to be?  What is the gap?  What information can you share to bridge that gap?  How can you be a solution in times of confusion and trouble?  I suggest that you build a communications strategy and determine how to position content over time to build organizational understanding.

Change the focus of your content and watch the organizational change begin to transpire.  Be the light, integrate your intranet into the culture of your newly defined corporation.   What have you got to lose?   The priority leadership will place on your intranet is directly proportional to the impact the intranet has on the organization.  You can determine your own future if you are willing and able to post the content. Go for it.  This could be the opportunity your web team has been waiting for.  You and your intranet can make a difference.

Laurel Castiglione, Pacific Gas and Electric

I just previewed the slides Liam Cleaver of IBM is presenting at the upcoming Intranet Insider World Tour Webinar: IBM’s w3 – Transforming The Total Workplace Experience.  

“We see the future workplace as ubiquitous; totally integrated; and senses work activity and responds with resources,”  says Cleaver. The goal of the IBM intranet is to increase productivity, collaboration and innovation of its 380,000 employees worldwide, 45% of whom work remotely in all global time zones.

Here are some of the Web 2.0 areas that Liam, along with moderator, Toby Ward of Prescient Digital Media, will be showing and telling about:

Blue Pages: One universal employee directory, 50+ applications access & use the directory data, More than 1.5 million hits per day, 65% of employees use BluePages once a day.

Beehive: Opt-in social networking site from IBM Research, Create a personal page to share interests, thoughts, photos and/or what you do in IBM, over 33,000+ registered members and 41,000+ photos uploaded

Fringe: Experimental directory and networking site from IBM Research, Find colleagues based on skills, interests or other shared connections,
see what’s going on with the news in your social network through aggregated feeds

BlogCentral: Opens up collaboration and creates connections across IBM through use of Web 2.0 technologies, 50,000+ users, 1,600+ active blogs

WikiCentral: Provides easy and effective ways of collaboration in any size group. In April 2008, 3M+ page views, 1.3M+ total visitors

Jams and ThinkPlace: Open, collaborative and on-going global forum, surfaces solutions to specific challenges, 16,000 ideas submitted since launch, 350+ ideas adopted, facilitates exchange of smaller ideas

TAP @ work: SmallBlue: within intranet search retrieves experts based on tags and employee profiles recommending best path to connect, gives analysis of social network visually depicts people networks and geographic clusters.

The last slides includes this juicy quote from Clint Boulton, eWeek. 

“Google is often portrayed as the technology hipster, rolling out Web applications almost at whim.  But unseen to the public, IBM is rolling out Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis, mashups and virtual reality technologies to help its employees be more productive.  Inside its firewall, Big Blue looks pretty hip.”  Clint Boulton, eWeek.

•  Announcements
• Calendar
•  Contacts
• Tasks
• Projects
• Wiki
• Blog
•  Message Board
• Image Library
• Forms Library
• Shared Documents
• Surveys
• Meeting Workspace
• RSS Feeds

• Better and faster responses to customer RFPs
• Better customer service leading to more sales
• Reduced time to market for promotions
• Increased collaboration amongst sales people
• Enhanced collaboration between reps and customers
• Migration of sales brochures to the web

• Sales programs
• Products & services
• Sales support
• Commerce agents
• Proposals
• Training & events
• Forms & resources
• Compensation information (commissions)
• Expense reporting
• Etc.

“State officials launched their investigation after a Feb. 9 Watchdog column disclosed that Best Buy stores had a secret intranet site in its stores — one that mirrored the public BestBuy.com Internet site, but with different pricing. The intranet prices usually reflected the individual store’s price, not the public Internet price, which Best Buy since 2005 has promised to honor.

Since publication of the Feb. 9 and subsequent Watchdog columns were published, hundreds of Best Buy customers have complained to the newspaper about being charged higher-than-advertised prices. They said they looked up sales on bestbuy.com, but when they went into stores, clerks would show them a bestbuy.com site that would not have the sales price.

Customers were told that the sale must be over, or that they had misread the advertisement.

What in reality was going on was that the salesman was accessing an intranet website that was almost identical to public site. According to current and former employees and managers, some workers knew they were misleading customers, other employees were unaware of the duplicate site.

 

Of course, Best Buy employed the worst kind of communications and PR when faced with the accusation – they lied about it.

 

In what could result in millions of dollars in penalties and refunds, Connecticut officials have sued Best Buy, accusing the giant electronics retailer of deceiving and cheating its customers using a secret in-store computer network.

Consumer Protection Commissioner Jerry Farrell Jr. said Thursday that he believes the suit will result in a “multi-million dollar case” against the Minnesota-based chain, which has 10 outlets in Connecticut.”

• Intranet value (is the intranet any good? Does it inspire use?)
• Corporate culture (value of communications)
• Employee access (% with direct access to intranet)
• Web competency (ability and comfort level using the intranet by employees)

• Nordea: 70-80% of the employees visit the portal every day
• HP: 95% of employees use the intranet on a monthly basis
• British Airways: 94% of all employees access the intranet every month
• IBM: 80% of all employees access the intranet daily
• DaimlerChrysler: 70% of all users in Germany — including 120,000 blue-collar workers — log in at least once per month
• Microsoft: 60% employees visit MSW once a day or more, and an additional 25% use MSW at least a few times per week

The 1980s and 1990s were tough times for British Airways. The new millennium was not kind either when in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, some analysts began to wonder if BA would survive at all and talked openly about bankruptcy for more than one airline.

• Some other measures of success:
• 300 trained publishers using Lotus Notes as a publishing tool
• 94% of all employees access the intranet every month representing 6.5 million page views per month
• 100% of internal (and external) recruitment is done online
• 100% of employee travel is booked online
• 75% of pensioner (retiree) self-service is done online
• 75% of staff have undertaken online training (33% of all training is conducted online)
• 80% of employees update their own contact information online (from 10% in 2003)

• Usage and value: 80% of IBM employees access the intranet daily
• Workforce enablement: 68% view the intranet as crucial to their jobs
• Employee retention: 52% are more satisfied to be an IBM employee because of information obtained on w3