“…in the end, management doesn’t change culture. Management invites the workforce itself to change the culture.”
— Lou Gerstner, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?
In a word, the role of the On Demand Workplace in IBM’s strategy is to be the vehicle through which workforce transformation takes place — to turn the IBM brand and values into enterprise-wide behaviour.
At the simplest level, the On Demand Workplace’s “work product” is a productive individual – where “productive” means not just cheaper and faster, but more creative, imaginative, independent, collaborative and opportunistic. We have to create a “horizontal” experience in which employees, wherever they sit, are free to collaborate, decide and act – and in which this vast, interconnected global business ecosystem operates in a way that makes it feel small.
For IBM, key to getting there will be an On Demand Workplace that provides:
- Content management and information architecture (IA) that are holistic, that organises the company without regard to geo or division or brand. (see also Guest Speaker piece by Sarah Goldman for more on IA)
- Instantaneous contact among people without regard to organisation, rank, profession or physical location. (see also Guest Speaker piece by Kristine Lawas for more on online, global collaboration)
- Common set of tools, applications and processes that are integrated end-to-end and that work automatically and ad hoc with one another.
- System that makes possible virtual team formation and marshalling of resources from around the world – all on demand.
In that spirit of where we need to go – w3 On Demand Workplace (w3 ODW) continues to evolve from it’s legacy role as our corporate intranet to a modern on demand workplace helping IBM employees be more productive by providing a single point of entry for the content and resources they need to do their work. “My ODW” today provides the capability to offer an employee a rich and personalised experience ranging from the content and tools presented for All IBM to know and use to the industry-specific content a seller needs in a specific geography or country in local language.
Over the past ten years content and sites has increasingly been converted to “look alike” from a design and standards perspective, but the problem has remained that the content has been generated by organisational silo – so in many cases – particularly for our sales force – the content not only looked alike it was alike! The only difference being the source of publication, e.g., brand, unit, corporate function.
Today, over 70% (i.e., 251,000) of IBMers have completed their w3 ODW profile and thus ready and willing to have timely, relevant content pushed to the array of portlets across all three tabs to help them manage their career, their clients and their life. The main challenges we face today are two-fold.
First, organising the delivery of content into a simple, integrated view that leverages the power of w3 ODW up-front and quickly directs employees to consolidated sites and resources as needed or required across the rest of IBM’s intranet.
Second, changing the mind-set of content creators and publishers world-wide to understand that the content is the valuable item to the end-user not the piece of real-estate they have created to wrap-around the information.
Through the creation of roadmaps to address integration from the end user perspective – this means the concern is how information is perceived by employees within the context of w3 ODW, rather than how information is most efficiently stored or manipulated within a given IT infrastructure – to developing compelling business cases demonstrating “value” tailored to the audience, i.e., employees, content authors, site owners and senior executives, we have are well poised to evolve.
What the On Demand Workplace will offer, for the first time, is an enterprise platform and management system adequate to the complexity and variety of our actual experience – something that can turn IBM’s size and breadth into assets, rather than obstacles. For IBM, “the way we do things around here” in the future will mean, to a very large degree, “the way we do things in w3.”
By Liam J. Cleaver, w3 On Demand Workplace, IBM’s Corporate Intranet
11-14-05
“…in the end, management doesn’t change culture. Management invites the workforce itself to change the culture.”
— Lou Gerstner, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?
In a word, the role of the On Demand Workplace in IBM’s strategy is to be the vehicle through which workforce transformation takes place — to turn the IBM brand and values into enterprise-wide behaviour.
At the simplest level, the On Demand Workplace’s “work product” is a productive individual – where “productive” means not just cheaper and faster, but more creative, imaginative, independent, collaborative and opportunistic. We have to create a “horizontal” experience in which employees, wherever they sit, are free to collaborate, decide and act – and in which this vast, interconnected global business ecosystem operates in a way that makes it feel small.
For IBM, key to getting there will be an On Demand Workplace that provides:
- Content management and information architecture (IA) that are holistic, that organises the company without regard to geo or division or brand. (see also Guest Speaker piece by Sarah Goldman for more on IA)
- Instantaneous contact among people without regard to organisation, rank, profession or physical location. (see also Guest Speaker piece by Kristine Lawas for more on online, global collaboration)
- Common set of tools, applications and processes that are integrated end-to-end and that work automatically and ad hoc with one another.
- System that makes possible virtual team formation and marshalling of resources from around the world – all on demand.
In that spirit of where we need to go – w3 On Demand Workplace (w3 ODW) continues to evolve from it’s legacy role as our corporate intranet to a modern on demand workplace helping IBM employees be more productive by providing a single point of entry for the content and resources they need to do their work. “My ODW” today provides the capability to offer an employee a rich and personalised experience ranging from the content and tools presented for All IBM to know and use to the industry-specific content a seller needs in a specific geography or country in local language.
Over the past ten years content and sites has increasingly been converted to “look alike” from a design and standards perspective, but the problem has remained that the content has been generated by organisational silo – so in many cases – particularly for our sales force – the content not only looked alike it was alike! The only difference being the source of publication, e.g., brand, unit, corporate function.
Today, over 70% (i.e., 251,000) of IBMers have completed their w3 ODW profile and thus ready and willing to have timely, relevant content pushed to the array of portlets across all three tabs to help them manage their career, their clients and their life. The main challenges we face today are two-fold.
First, organising the delivery of content into a simple, integrated view that leverages the power of w3 ODW up-front and quickly directs employees to consolidated sites and resources as needed or required across the rest of IBM’s intranet.
Second, changing the mind-set of content creators and publishers world-wide to understand that the content is the valuable item to the end-user not the piece of real-estate they have created to wrap-around the information.
Through the creation of roadmaps to address integration from the end user perspective – this means the concern is how information is perceived by employees within the context of w3 ODW, rather than how information is most efficiently stored or manipulated within a given IT infrastructure – to developing compelling business cases demonstrating “value” tailored to the audience, i.e., employees, content authors, site owners and senior executives, we have are well poised to evolve.
What the On Demand Workplace will offer, for the first time, is an enterprise platform and management system adequate to the complexity and variety of our actual experience – something that can turn IBM’s size and breadth into assets, rather than obstacles. For IBM, “the way we do things around here” in the future will mean, to a very large degree, “the way we do things in w3.”
By Liam J. Cleaver, w3 On Demand Workplace, IBM’s Corporate Intranet
Search is an absolute essential to any successful intranet. And not just a search engine, an effective search engine. If its less than stellar, the search engine will become a distraction and detraction where the most common employee complaint will continue to be “I can’t find anything!”
While the key to effective search is more focused on the rules and processes (effective page titles, strong links, keywords, summaries, meta data, etc.), the supporting technology shouldn’t be overlooked.
Google is now retailing Google Mini at an entry price of $2,995 — a highly effective solution. My company (Prescient Digital Media) now uses Google Mini on a client site (http://www.HealthyOntario.com) and we’re impressed by the feature set and ability to customize results and presentation. Particularly great is Google Mini’s ability to Interpret mispelled words (which you can set and hardcode yourself) and the Advanced Search options.
Google Mini is a definite must for any organization looking at replacing their existing search capability, but don’t forget the emphasis on rules and process…
A great report out this week from Ipsos-Reid reveals that Canada continues to be a world leader with a highly connected population – right up there with the Scandanavian countries, the United States, Korea and Hong Kong (did you know in a study of e-business readiness conducted by IBM and the Economist, Azerbaijan ranked 50th out of all countries? Who knew?!?!).
73% of Canadians are now connected to the Internet; 62% of households have high-speed access. Similar numbers are reported from the other leading countries.
What does this have to do with the intranet? Glad you asked…
A vast majority of organizations still only extend intranet access to a percentage of their employees. It often ranges from 33% to 75% of employees have access. With some exceptions (Cisco, IBM, Xerox and some other financially strong, leading-edge appreciators of technology), this is largely due to the fact that many, many employees, in most industries, do not have or work with a computer. In most organizations, no computer = no intranet access.
While some companies, particularly in the manufacturing sector, have established intranet stations or kiosks for employees without computers, the success of joint or shared workstations and kiosks have largely been lackluster. (One exception is Dutch Railway company NedTrain with an employee workforce of 4,000, the majority of which do not have dedicated computers. Despite the limited computer access, the company encourages employees to use centrally located touch-screen kiosks to access the intranet. The result: an astounding 2.5 million quarterly visits – or 200 intranet visits per employee per month).
Given the cost and cultural challenges of extending access to employees who don’t have computers some companies are extending intranet access to the employee at home (many companies offer home intranet access via a VPN or dedicated or password protected connection but often this privilege is only extended to executives and middle managers).
Others like Alaska Airlines have put their intranet on the public Internet – that’s right, a .com site on the Internet! Knowing that most of their employees work ‘on the road’ they got smart and put it on the public Internet (of course, secure areas are password protected and reside behind their firewall).
Quite simply, our workspaces will have to change to digital workspaces. And only a few companies like Microsoft and IBM are talking about this. What I’ve seen in my research with executives and MTC Directors is that the world is moving faster, product cycles are shorter, and yet the workplace is still built for slower moving organizations. I can say with confidence that the workplace has to change dramatically in order to remain effective.
Here are 10 reasons why:
1. We’re going to be measuring emotional IQ in the workplace:
Happiness and sentiment for the enterprise? Sounds sappy right? But it’s going to happen. There are companies working on this now -because you get what you measure. And if you measure employee happiness to changes in their work and physical environments, management can make the necessary changes to increase productivity. Using the data, ethical leaders will rebalance the work environment to support greater collaboration, serendipitous encounters, informal knowledge flows and more profit.
Environmental Changes Needed- Sensors in the workplace that measure how people are using spaces and infrequently query employees on sentiment for a given topic.2. The right information will find us:
The user interface of the workplace is a major inhibitor to growth. Because people are not working on the most important things at the optimal time with the optimal people that can solve the problem. Why? Because we don’t know – what we need to know – unless we know to search for it. But information in the future will find us by checking our calendar for meetings and people, looking at our activity streams for trends, and studying the rest of the organization for information and people that may be important to our job.
Technological Changes- Big Data will become Smart Data and all of that information being aggregated by social platforms (SharePoint, Connections, Yammer, etc.), email (harmon.ie, Gmail, etc.), sensors in the workplace and mobile devices will soon be used to increase workforce effectiveness.3. The workplace will reinforce corporate goals and strategy:
Based on a recent study by Chris Zook of Bain, only 40% of the workforce knew about the corporation’s goals, strategies and tactics. Imagine if you had a football team, where only 4 in 10 knew what the game plan was. A physical environment that reinforces strategies and tactics and prioritizes them is paramount.
Environmental Changes- Using Smart Data analytics, digital screens and surfaces in the work environment will automatically display goals and strategies in the context of a meeting. Changes to strategy will automatically be sent to an affected employee’s mobile device in order to reduce inefficiencies.4. Employees will provide vastly higher levels of real time feedback:
Command and control management models will disappear over time. Employees will gain the ability to provide real time feedback to management through social platforms, mobile devices and automatically through their digital behavior (Smart Data will capture this). These feedback mechanisms will be built right into their work flow processes. Management will use that feedback to become more agile and adaptive to changing market conditions.
Cultural Changes– Management will encourage employees to provide consistent and relevant feedback on projects, customers and the organization’s strategy and tactics.5. Mobile devices will interact with our physical environments:
Why is it that we still can’t capture and interact with notes produced in our physical environments? Sure we can snap a picture of a whiteboard, but the picture doesn’t understand the contents of the whiteboard. That’s going to change. Harald Becker, who leads business strategy for Microsoft Office Labs showed me how mobile devices are interacting with smart boards and screens placed around a room. The technology enables bi-directional content sharing from screen to mobile devices with the press of a button. This will enable far greater collaboration and information capture for both manager and employee.
Environmental Changes- Digital smart boards and screens will need to be placed around the workplace. Mobile apps will need to be downloaded in order to interact with them.
- 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
It all comes down to parenting. An intranet’s success is less dependant on technology than those individuals tht manage and steer the intranet. In fact, there is no more important quality and care for an intranet’s upgringing than the support and involvement of senior management.
This conclusion is echoed loud and clear in Jane McConnell’s superb study on intranets (“Intranet Strategies Today & Tomorrow”).
“Senior management perception of the intranet is out of sync with reality on the ground,” says Jane, a French-based intranet consultant and author of the NetJMC Blog blog. “They are largely unaware of the usefulness of the intranet for employees for their work. 55% of the respondents say that if the intranet were unavailable for 1 to 2 hours, employees would be disturbed in their work, yet only 13% of the respondents say that senior management perceives the intranet to be “business critical.”
No surprise there. The weakest intranets have the lowest level of involvement and active support from senior support. The best intranets have incredible senior management support.
Read more Infant intranets need executive loving (http://www.IntranetBlog.com)
It is generally accepted now that an intranet is far more than an internal phone book and document store, the portal approach has been adopted in many organisations with the intranet acting as a one stop shop for process specific business applications, management tools and links to business management systems. Increasingly, organisations are now adopting Enterprise 2.0 features which use collaborative and social technologies to improve business processes and bring increased efficiency to how organisations work. These tools make it easier for departments and teams to share information, develop documents and track progress on projects.
However, as more and more information is added to intranets valuable data can become locked away in separate silos, inaccessible by other employees. This can result in intranets acting more like information gatekeepers, limiting productivity and frustrating users, rather than achieving their intended goal of harnessing and sharing the collective intelligence of an organisation and providing a productive and collaborative platform for staff.
In my role as Intranet Consultant I come across many intranets that contain masses of fragmented information which is difficult to manage. Users find it increasingly difficult to locate what they are looking for, or are not even aware of its existence, leading to duplication of effort and frequently ‘re-inventing the wheel’. This is unproductive and inefficient and leads to frustration and a lack of trust in the intranet. I strongly believe that the future of successful intranets lies in their ability to eradicate these information silos in order for them to evolve into strategic, collaborative business tools providing better knowledge sharing, easier access to best practice and the ability for improved internal networking – ‘intelligent’ intranets.
But how will this be achieved? We are frequently guilty of expecting intranet users to fend for themselves when trying to find information and this needs to change. It isn’t just a simple case of getting the navigation right, intranets need to be proactive in getting the right information to the right people by understanding a user and promoting relevant content to them.
Typically, the onus lies with content providers to ensure the visibility of their content – this usually means manually linking content to other related content – not only can this result in highly subjective decisions, but it is not practical or reliable as it is time consuming and difficult (if not impossible) to find all other related content. My experience in working with companies to improve their intranets over the last five years led me to the conclusion that the best way to overcome this challenge was that intranets needed to liberate content providers from the constraints of author-generated links to other information. Intelligent intranets should automatically find and promote links between all aspects of content; between articles and authors, between authors and the content they are responsible for, between articles and similar articles, between comments and relevant blogs, between users and users.
Intranet content is an all-encompassing body of information and knowledge that has some very specific elements. It is a collection of information; of articles, best practice and events, a communication database for a who’s who, discussions and blogs. Whilst these are separate items they are not isolated. Connections exist between each and every one. These connections should be identified, created and promoted.
This happens every day on some very popular websites – consider a visit to Amazon, it welcomes you back and it recommends things to you; why? because it wants you to spend money, and how? because it has identified previous behaviour and has an intelligence to recommend something it thinks you will like.
The same happens on iTunes; you purchase a song and, based on your choice, it will recommend the top 5 songs by the same artist and based on the genre – via the ‘Listeners Also Bought’ function it will suggest five other artists and tracks you might like. You follow any of these suggestions and five more suggestions are made. Facebook follows similar principles; its ‘Suggestions’ links will suggest people who you may want to add as friends.
Intelligent intranets should log information such as browsing routes, search entries, documents ratings and hits and use this information to promote content to users. Intelligent intranets would know who you are, what department / teams you are a member of etc. and automatically create links to other information such as articles, discussions, events and people so that each piece of information is not isolated, but is part of a greater whole – the intranet information store. The more the intranet is used and the more content is added the more powerful and effective it becomes.
Intelligent intranets that seek out relevant content and actively promote it to users will revolutionise internal communication and knowledge sharing by making it easier to tap into the collective intelligence of the workforce. Intelligent intranets know what users want and need before users do. They learn and adapt and push relevant content to users and they make life easy for those providing content by automatically creating links to other related information. The more they are used and the more content is added results in a more powerful and efficient intranet. They provide a consistently positive experience for the user who can rely on and trust the intranet to help them do their jobs better, by anticipating their knowledge requirements and presenting them with relevant information.
Nigel Danson is a specialist Intranet consultant and MD at Odyssey, suppliers of Interact Intranet software. He has successfully delivered over 150 intranets to the public and private sector to help with communication, collaboration, knowledge management and business processes
Guest Post: Nigel Danson, Managing Director of Odyssey Interactive Ltd, discusses the emergence of the next generation in intranet technology – intelligent intranets.
Social media adoption has accelerated on the corporate intranet, led by blogs, wikis and discussion forums. Despite a low cost of entry—often below $10,000—adopters are not reporting outstanding satisfaction with the investment, especially among the executive ranks, driven by inadequate planning and weak or non-existent business plans.
This data is contained is contained in the results of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey, which included the participation of 561 organizations of all sizes from across the planet.
Intranet 2.0 Global Survey Results
“Once a nice-to-have or a future wish, Intranet 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and other vehicles have become mainstream, and are present in nearly 50% of organizations (regardless of size) in North America, Europe, and Australia and New Zealand,” says Toby Ward, the study author, and President, Prescient Digital Media.
Read about the results Intranet 2.0 becomes mainstream
Intranet 2.0 (social media on the corporate intranet) has not only become a collection of mainstream technologies, it has become a necessity for organizations that want to be an employer of choice.
Employees want the opportunity to be heard and to express their opinions and needs more frequently than the annual employee survey. As powerful as the traditional intranet can be, the next generation of intranet, Intranet 2.0, best represented by powerful Web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and social networking that have migrated behind the firewall, have the opportunity to be even more powerful and more engaging.
In fact, social networking and other 2.0 tools have become so popular that an organization without a 2.0 strategy risks being left behind, or outright failure (though death may be slow). Employees want to work for progressive and innovative organizations, and expect 2.0 environments from employers of choice. So much so that a recent survey of 1,000 workers found that 39% of 18 to 24 year-old employees would consider leaving their employer if they were not allowed to access sites like Facebook and YouTube; a further 21% indicated that they would feel ‘annoyed’ by such a ban (Telindus study of 1,000 European employees).
Once a nice-to-have or a scribble on a wish list, Intranet 2.0 tools are present in nearly 50% of organizations (regardless of size) in North America, Europe, and Australia and New Zealand, according to Intranet 2.0: Social Media Becomes Mainstream on the Corporate Intranet. The report reveals the findings of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey of 561 organizations of all sizes from across the planet.
Among the findings, intranet blogs, wikis and discussion forums are quite pervasive, while other less common tools such as podcasts and mashups remain an after-thought at most organizations:
- 47% have intranet wikis (17% enterprise deployment); 10% have no plans or interest
- 45% have intranet blogs (13% enterprise deployment); 11% have no plans or interest
- 46% have intranet discussion forums (19% enterprise use); 9% have no plans or interest
- 46% have intranet instant messaging (29% enterprise use); 21% have no plans or interest
- 19% have intranet social networking (6% enterprise use); 20% have no plans or interest
Intranet 2.0 Tool Adoption – Intranet 2.0 Global Survey
Many couldn’t define a blog or wiki 3 or 4 years ago – now these tools are present in nearly 50% of organizations, regardless of their size or location. One of the reasons for this rapid adoption is the popularity of these tools on the public Internet: 4 of the top 8 most frequented websites on the planet are web 2.0 (YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, and Blogger). Another reason is the low cost of entry and implementation of these tools. According to the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey, of those organizations that have implemented 2.0 tools, almost half have spent $10,000 or less on these tools:
- 46% have spent $10,000 or less
- 35% have spent between $10,000 and $100,00; 19% have spent $100,000 or more
Other findings:
- Only 29% of organizations rate the tool functionality as good or very good; 24% rate them as poor or very poor
- Satisfaction rates with executives is dangerously low: only 23% of executives rate the 2.0 tools as good or very good; 38% rate them as poor or very poor
- For those organizations that have deployed 2.0 tools inside the firewall, about half of all organizations have SharePoint (in some shape or form) (47%)
- Only 15% of organizations have had Intranet 2.0 tools for more than 2 years; 35% of organizations have had their Intranet 2.0 tools for less than 1 year
Ironically, while many executives want to become an employer of choice, it is executives themselves that are the biggest barrier to Intranet 2.0 adoption. Of those organizations that don’t have intranet 2.0 tools, executive support is cited as the biggest barrier blocking the deployment of these tools. Close behind, 30% cite “lack of a business plan” as the biggest barrier to Intranet 2.0 adoption.
Without a proper plan and business case, many organizations will fail to properly implement Intranet 2.0 technologies. Those organizations that don’t have 2.0 tools are not getting executive approval to proceed as they don’t have a proper plan or business case that convinces senior management of the need. If senior management doesn’t wake up to the promise and revolution represented by social media they risk being left behind the competition that actively pursue status as an employer of choice.
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To learn more about Intranet 2.0, download a free, summarized version of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey findings and analysis report:
500 organizations of all sizes from across the planet have participated and the findings are invaluable – and surprising. If you haven’t already done so, please take 8 minutes to take the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey and you’ll get a copy of the full results including the good, bad and learned lessons. Please also direct clients and fellow colleagues. It doesn’t cost anything, and I’m not charging anything.
PLEASE TAKE THE SURVEY EVEN IF YOU DO NOT HAVE INTRANET 2.0 TOOLS — WE REQUIRE BOTH PERSPECTIVES!!
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.
Here’s a sneak preview of some of the findings so far:
- 43% have intranet blogs (10% enterprise deployment); 11% have no plans or interest
- 47% have intranet wikis (16% enterprise deployment); 10% have no plans or interest
- 23% have intranet podcasts (6% enterprise deployment); 30% have no plans or interest
- 17% have intranet social networking (5% enterprise use); 20% have no plans or interest
- 21% have intranet content tagging (9% enterprise use); 24% have no plans or interest
- 37% have intranet RSS (12% enterprise use); 12% have no plans or interest
- 47% have intranet discussion forums (20% enterprise use); 10% have no plans or interest
- 46% have intranet instant messaging (28% enterprise use); 20% have no plans or interest
- 8% have intranet mashups (3% enterprise use); 46% have no plans or interest
- 48% of organizations using SharePoint for Intranet 2.0 tools
A sneak preview of the findings and some of the case study examples will be showcased at J.Boye 09 in Philadelphia (May 5-7, 2009). Register now & receive a fantastic deal on a technology / communications conference of this quality that includes multiple tracks on intranet, SharePoint, content management, user experience and more. J. Boye also features star speakers including the NY Times’ David Pogue.
If you try to order these 12 activities then the sequential order would be:
1. Get an intranet sponsor
Their involvement can be crucial in helping you get things done or decisions made. They can act as your ally in giving clear and decisive intranet leadership. The intranet sponsor may also have a dual role and also be a key stakeholder.
2. Define SMART objectives for the intranet
Ask and answer the questions – “Why is the intranet there?” and “How will we know if the intranet is a success?” This can be done in discussion with the sponsor and in conjunction with the stakeholders, but it shouldn’t be a once and for all activity. There is benefit in revisiting and refining the objectives, particularly after concluding the activities undertaken in step 3 and 4.
3. Observe end users
In the belief that an essential intranet is a key working tool it has to be of use and benefit to end users. To that end you need to be aware of how people across the organisation work. What are their daily tasks, what information do they need to help them make decisions and how do they source it. While surveys can help this, it is only through heuristic observation that you get a clear picture.
4. Determine user expectations
While getting this information you will offer no guarantee of everything being delivered but it will help you uncover the “must have” elements as well as the “would like to have” ones. It can help you make decisions on what features and content should be prioritised for the intranet launch, and what can follow on as part of the intranet evolution (see step 12)
5. Compile content inventory
Having observed and interviewed users as the information and task expectations you can list the content you currently have and assess what content needs to be on the new intranet. Is current content fit for purpose, is it accurate, relevant and valued? As a rough guide it is not uncommon to cull 25% of existing.
6. Promote the intranet
In fact this is something that has already began, as during steps 3 and 4; observation and interviews you will have mentioned the new intranet and hopefully begun to enthuse people that something better is coming. As well as word of mouth and informal promotion it can also be the first marketing activity. A teaser campaign to build anticipation for the new intranet could be one of the first obvious marketing activities for the new intranet. It could be focused around a naming competition (see step 10.)
General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM), the world’s largest automaker, has been the global industry sales leader for 75 years. The intranet is a unifying force in massive, sprawling enterprise that employs about 327,000 people in 33 countries.
In 1999, the intranet was in fact a large, sprawling collection of many, many hundreds of websites and applications. Through the early part of the 21st century GM began creating functional portals for different business units. However, since the late 90s the focus of GM’s intranet has been on reducing the complexity of a massive and diverse environment and the drive towards a single, personalized portal called mySocrates.
The move to a single, personalized portal is driven by Communications, IS&S and Human Resources stakeholders in the form of a Global Web Steering Team.
The goals of the portal include[1]:
- Extended user access
- Single sign on
- Profiles and directories
- Governance teams
- Reuse of solutions
- Eliminate (reduced) cost
- Improved image
In 2001, GM created the new intranet home page, Socrates. Any person with access to the GM network can view Socrates. There is no personalization; everyone sees the same content and tools. Those that have access can login to mySocrates, the personalized portal. Unlike the static website that is Socrates, mySocrates pulls content from many different sources and repositories.
When the new Socrates debuted in May 2006, monthly logins increased 20% to more than 543,000. The portal has more than 100,000 active users including 40% of the hourly workforce.
The added challenge of making a portal relevant in 33 different countries and multiple languages is the process of integrating all of the regional requirements and concerns so that it is not something that is merely driven by HQ in Detroit. Challenges include[2]:
- Local, regional & global web content hosted in disparate locations
- using a wide-range of web authoring tools
- Non value-added time searching and navigating multiple portals and
- websites
- Redundancy and inconsistency with individuals/groups creating their
- own solutions including global, regional, local interpretations of content
- Difficult & costly to maintain up-to-date content & navigation
- Difficult to integrate processes and technology
- Limited personalized delivery and no re-usability across sites
The personalized portal looks to overcome many of these challenges with a governance model that engages and represents interests at various levels. While Communications, HR and IS&S continue to be the intranet owner champions, Regional Leaders of HR, IS&S, and Communications oversee deployment within regions and sectors of GM. Not only can users personalize mySocrates, but the portal is available in multiple languages.
Today, the portal focuses on the “one company” philosophy and primarily consists of announcements, news, links, & historical “static” information. The new working environment while in its infancy with bigger plans for the future has realized some real value including:
- 411.1M combined visits/hits
- 1.1M transactions with 98.1% online usage
- $17.4M combined soft/hard dollar cost savings
- $170K lost savings due to manual transactions
- GMID Password Reset Cost decreased 19% since January ’06
- Initial myJobs Tab has resulted in $1m in annual savings
Immediate plans for the future and the next generation (‘generation four’) of the portal include:
- Full cross-functional integration of work related processes
- Collaboration tools (e.g. wikis and blogs)
- Detailed data and reporting (e.g. business intelligence)
- Multiple platform delivery (e.g. wireless / PDA)
While GM has come a long way with their intranet, a lot more work is required – a process that will take years. The mySocrates portal is not in itself a benchmark in innovation, but it demonstrates how difficult it is to create a valued, unified environment in a traditionally decentralized company of many, many different cultures if all the far flung corners of the globe. GM has done well in creating a “one company” intranet that in comparison puts them far ahead of the pack amongst their many Fortune 500 colleagues.
(NEW YORK) Intranets help empower employees and sales teams to increase sales; a revenue enhancing benefit that is far too often overlooked by too many organizations. The IKEA intranet and other top-rated intranets were showcased at The Intranet Insider World Tour Live (New York, April 16 – 17, 2009).
IKEA U.S. has 37 stores, with over 12,000 co-workers; an employee audience that is both geographically dispersed, and has limited capacity to connect to the intranet. However, a challenging retail environment with a dispersed target audience and a limited attention span has not daunted the IKEA intranet team from focusing on the bottom line: decreasing costs, and increasing sales.
IKEA’s intranet team began with a series of philosophies that guide their work and execution:
- An emphasis on the power of people.
- Decentralization works!
- The Intranet is part of a total information landscape.
- It’s good to be a passionate fanatic!
- We are obsessed with impacting the bottom line!
The last philosophy ‘obsession’ with the bottom line has also served them well – leading to increased sales, and cost savings of more than $500,000 per year:
- PAPER COSTS = $192,000
- STREAMLINING PROCESSES / SELF-SERVE TRAVEL PROCESS SAVES $4,590
- MODERNIZING COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES VIDEO CONF to WEBEX = $90,000
- SELF-SERVICE HR = $219,000
The intranet is particularly focused on supporting the sales organization; especially sales events and the monthly “seize the day” sales. In particular, the intranet team delivers content that is highly focused on sales events with:
- Photos
- Stores “reporting in” with lots of co-worker quotes
- The good and the bad
- Employee discussion boards
- Sales number & metrics
Demonstrating their success in covering their big sales events, IKEA has consistently exceeded its sales goals since the third sales event proactively targeted by the intranet team.
IKEA’s intranet team also delivers key content and tools based on personas or “key roles” in the stores. The team built manual pages called “dashboards’ for role specific functions. In doing so, the intranet team hit the road and visited employees on the store floors to determine the scope and focus of these dashboards, working side-by-side with employees to understand what content and online they need.
- 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
(NEW YORK) What is the state of the intranet today? What do employees want? Where is the intranet evolving?
Statistics, findings and highlights from Intranet Insider World Tour Live in New York City (April 17, 2009).
From Watson Wyatt (Michael Rudnick, presenter):
- 80% believe intranet navigation needs improvement
- 50% don’t actually use their intranet on a daily basis
- 50% find search ineffective
Employees use on the intranet:
- employee phone directory
- cafeteria menu
- expense report
- pay stub
Employees use outside of work:
- 75% use Facebook
- 75% use LinkedIn
- 45% use YouTube
- 35% use Wikis
- 32% use Blogs
Intranet 2.0 used at work:
- Collaboration 34%
- Blogs 31%
- Customization 31%
What technologies are powering the intranet 2.0?
- 75% have SharePoint
- 3% have Notes Connections
- 14% have other
Intranet 2.0 Global Survey (500 organizations across the globe) findings (Toby Ward, presenter):
- 42% have intranet blogs (10% enterprise deployment); 10% have no plans or interest
- 47% have intranet wikis (16% enterprise deployment); 10% have no plans or interest
- 23% have intranet podcasts (5% enterprise deployment); 29% have no plans or interest
- 15% have intranet social networking (5% enterprise use); 21% have no plans or interest
- 20% have intranet content tagging (9% enterprise use); 23% have no plans or interest
- 35% have intranet RSS (12% enterprise use); 11% have no plans or interest
- 15% have intranet social networking (5% enterprise use); 21% have no plans or interest
- 48% have intranet discussion forums (19% enterprise use); 9% have no plans or interest
- 49% have intranet instant messaging (29% enterprise use); 18% have no plans or interest
- 7% have intranet mashups (4% enterprise use); 43% have no plans or interest
- 47% of organizations using SharePoint for Intranet 2.0 tools
Intranet ROI – cost savings attributed to IKEA intranet (Beth Gleba, presenter):
- Paper cost savings = $192,000
- Streamlining processes / Self-serve travel process saves $4,590
- Modernizing communication technologies video conf to WebEx = $90,000
- Self-service hr = $219,000
Con Edison intranet survey (Fred Leach, presenter):
- 3054 completed surveys (55% management; 45% union)
- 90% say company communications are somewhat or very helpful/informative
- Preferred communications channels are:
- intranet
- elevator screens
- hard copy (print)
- 54% have seen CE eye (employee video channel; employee stories are most popular)
- Most popular video: “To Catch a Thief in Brooklyn!” (documenting how a Con Edison nabbed a cable thief in a Brooklyn sewer – including a physical wrestle, chase & scuffle!)
2009 Edelman Trust Barometer Executive (John Havens, BlogTalkRadio.com, presenter):
How a company treats its employees is tantamount in influencing the level of trust amongst its customers.
When you think of good and responsible companies how important is each of the following factors to the overall reputation of the company? (4475 people – 25-64 years of age)
- Offers high quality products & services – 94%
- Is a company that treats its employees well – 93%
5 Trends for Intranet Innovation (Amy Vickers, Razorfish, presenter):
- Attention Management – separating signal from noise
- Openess – cultivating transparency, sharing, and flatness
- Networks of Knowledge – graphing known and unknown connections
- Ecosystem Efficiency – orienting around business processes
- Back is the New Front (Office) – data and infrastructure drives innovation
How D Street Enhances Deloitte
- Innovation & productivity
- Talent Attraction & Assimilation
- Integrated Communications
- Talent Retention
- Knowledge Preservation
- Marketplace Eminence
Benefits of Corporate Social Networking at Deloitte Consulting (Arun Parshad, presenter):
- 8.2% increase in retention
- 10% increase in productivity
- 11.8% in new businesses
Deloitte demographic trends:
- Average new hire: 27 years old
- 65% of new hires are under age 25
- 35% work in a virtual team
- Nearly half (46%) of GenYers polled rate the availability of networking programs for enterprise as important to their job
- 75% of CIOs plan to invest in social networking tools in the next four years
D-Street social networking community at Deloitte features:
- Blogroll – blogs throughout
- Headlines – intranet news
- Snapshot – pictures from across the organizations
- Seen on the Street – external stories
- Communities
- Personal profiles
D-Street participation by employees:
- 1261 personalized profiles as of February 2006
- 19171 personalized profiles as of February 2007
- Last 6 months: 80 ad hoc communities with 1800 members
- Toby Ward – Prescient Digital Media
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.
A colleague recently asked for dos and don’ts in partnering with IT. It is a crucial skill in today’s corporate environment. Partnering with all functions in the organization is important, but IT in particular.
We need IT: we need the technology they deploy, good security, openness to new approaches such as social technology, clear, user-centered choices in technology.
IT needs communication too. They need adoption of new technologies, a clear connection to the business, openness to business process change, help leveraging their great solutions into the culture of the business. They need to be seen as not just a consumer of resources, but also a driver of business. All things we can help them with.
The way we approach partnering with IT professionals can make or break it.
Respect their knowledge and capability. Don’t be dismissive or condescending. They know important information – stuff we don’t know – and their perspective is often a good balance with the communicator’s perspective. It’s not that they “don’t get it,” it’s that the lens they are looking through is a different color. We should, however, seek to enlighten them about the role and value of communication.
Be linear, process-oriented thinkers. To work with them, we must become a little more like them. We must be able to connect the dots in a linear process, see the process breaks and bottlenecks. If we move through processes with them we’ll all see the end game together.
Speak their language. Know the basics, terms and concepts. Be able to converse about these with confidence. Doesn’t mean you have to sit down and code an application. I like being the dumb blonde in the hardware store. Working with my IT partners is no time for the dumb blonde routine.
Define roles and responsibilities clearly. IT has specific responsibility for delivering solutions that meet business needs and requirements. Communication should take responsibility for clearly communicating strategy and requirements, helping IT connect to the business goals, ensuring good change communication during rollout, and securing the change in the culture. Use our different areas of expertise to divide, conquer and succeed.
Think of IT as a client. Collaborate and ensure their success. Make them shine – sometimes IT can serve as a pilot and example to the rest of the organization. Give them positive visibility. Seek solutions, don’t take or give orders.
Communicate ROI and drive the business. What every good IT and communication professional wants to do for their company. We are on the same team and we share many of the same challenges and frustrations. Not being viewed as a strategic business driver or trusted advisor, is just one of them. We can help each other here.
IT isn’t gender specific. IT is becoming increasingly diverse with many women joining the ranks. I’ve seen some of my colleagues refer to the “IT guys,” but it’s no longer just a guy space.
Stacy Wilson, ABC, is president of Eloquor Consulting, Inc., in Lakewood, Colorado
John Havens is Director, Partnership Marketing & Integration, BlogTalkRadio, and co-author (with Shel Holtz) of Tactical Transparency.
John presented the luncheon keynote at the Communitelligence INTRANET INSIDER WORLD TOUR LIVE 09 Conference at Con Edison headquarters in New York City April 16-17.
In this 29-minute video clip, Havens talks about the concept of community and corporate transparency.
For an excellent article covering the entire event, read Kelly Kasses’ Communicators get the inside scoop on successful intranets in SimplyCommunicate.com.
