About Us

Toby Ward — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 11:43:00 -0700

Intranet Blog is an intranet news blog featuring best practices, case studies and everythign intranet -- plus the relevant musings (but often irrelevant musings) of Toby Ward, a senior intranet consultant and Founder and CEO of Prescient Digital Media.

In addition to editing Intranet Blog, Toby is the CEO and Founder of Prescient Digital Media. Prescient consists of Internet and intranet consultants for hire that plan and build highly effective intranets and websites.

Toby has had the pleasure and good fortune to work with dozens of intranets and many more interactive clients including:

Amgen
Atomic Energy of Canada
BC Hydro
Bell Canada
Boston Scientific
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC)
Federal Reserve Bank
Gartner
HSBC
Intrawest (Playground)
Manulife Financial
Mastercard
Ontario Ministries of Health, Health Promotion, & Finance
PepsiCo
RBC Financial Group
Sprint PCS
Thomson Financial
Vancouver Coastal Health
WestJet
and many others.

A broadcast journalist turned consultant, Toby founded and launched Prescient in early 2001.

Toby has contributed to two books, has his own in the works, and is a recognized expert on effective web planning, communication, benchmarking and best practice measurement (ROI). Toby is the author of Finding ROI, a leading study conducted on intranet Return on Investment that included participants such as KPMG, Scotiabank, Volvo, Shell, Royal Bank, New York Life, HP and others. Leading companies such as the New York Times, Intel, PBS, the Bank of Canada and many others have bought his white paper that has been read by thousands.

Toby is a regular writer for an assortment of magazines and is popular speaker in North America and Europe at conferences by the Conference Board, IQPC, IABC, Ragan, and others. He is also a regular blogger at IntranetBlog, GetStrategic, eHealth News and Communitelligence.com. You can also read his articles at CorporateWebsite.com and Ragan.com.

He has led Prescient Digital Media and clients to win 15 awards in the past two years from the International Association of Business Communicators, Canadian Public Relations Society, a the 2004 Webby Award for Best Government + Law Website on the Internet (for HealthyOntario.com).

To measure and increase the value of your intranet, please dowload the free white paper, Finding ROI.

You can contact or hire Toby and Prescient Digital Media please phone 416.926.8800 or via email at Contact Us.

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10 things to ask your intranet consultant

Toby Ward — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 05:00:00 -0700

There are many intranets that have been built in-house by the organization’s own people. IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, HP are just some that have been featured on IntranetBlog.com. Most of these however are technology companies that are highly web savvy and have had a constantly evolving intranet for more than 15 years.

There are many advantages to building or redesigning an intranet with internal staff resources:

· Costs less cash out of pocket

· Internal stakeholders are forced to learn the ropes

· Internal jobs are reinforced

The disadvantages of building or redesigning an intranet with only internal staff are obvious:

· Lack of skill and experience

· Lack of people to execute

· Internal politics on what and how to do it

· Lack of available time to execute

Many organizations however don’t have great resources or experienced staff that know what it takes to build a great intranet (see Good to great intranet). Hiring an external consultant makes sense for many that face some of the above hurdles. However, an Internet consultant is not an intranet consultant. A web design firm has deep creative skills, but rarely has any business acumen and intranet expertise. A big-five consulting firm has very smart people but is very expensive.

So what should you look for in an intranet consultant? Here’s 10 questions to ask potential consultants or intranet consulting firms:

1- How many intranets have you worked on?

2- How long have you been in business?

3- How well do you understand our organization / our business?

4- Provide a written understanding of our needs / requirements.

5- Provide client intranet case studies.

6- Provide intranet client references.

7- Provide bios of the proposed consultants.

8- Provide detailed pricing

9- Provide documentation of your project methodologies.

10-Provide evidence of vendor neutrality / technology neutrality or evidence of experience with the organization’s chosen technology.

Some things to look for and to be cautious about:

What to look for in an intranet expert:

· Intranet client case studies

· Detailed biographies with demonstrated project experience

· Experienced individuals that will be assigned to your project

· Client references with names and numbers (not just unnamed anonymous testimonials)

· Detailed pricing

· Corporate strength and documented financial viability

· Proven and detailed project methodologies

Be cautious if a consultant only has:

· Screenshots and mock-ups

· One or two paragraph bios that focus on favorite movies and hobbies with a cute or too-cool-for-school photo

· People on a list in some far flung office that won’t actually be working on your project

· Unnamed and anonymous testimonials

· Vague pricing ‘guess-timates’

· Tiny shops with no documented financials (P&L)

· Assurance that “they’re happy to work according to your project plan”

ADDITONAL READING:

Hiring an intranet consultant

About the author: Toby Ward is an intranet consultant (Internet consultant too) and the founder of Prescient Digital Media. He has worked with and improved many, many company intranets including Amgen, HSBC, Mastercard, Manulife, PepsiCo, Royal Bank, etc. Toby and his company are consultants for hire and can build your intranet or improve an existing intranet You may contact this intranet consultant directly via the Prescient Digital Media website or email him at: toby{at}prescientdigital{dot}com.

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