The Nielsen Norman Group (NNG) has released their Intranet Design Annual 2006. Headed by the king of usability, Dr. Jakob Nielsen, NNG claims this year’s winners to be the best intranets of 2006.

The report does feature some great intranets including one of the World’s best, IBM’s W3 (see Intranet World Tour: IBM leads the World ). However, the judging is highly suspect, reliant on volunteer form submission. How could you determine whether an intranet is good or not without actually seeing it and clicking through it? Well apparently a one-sided voluntary form submission with a couple of screenshots is enough for NNG. (If I tell you to fill out a form for an award, are you going to give me the full story or tell me what you want to hear?).

Unfortunately, the Design Annual focuses on design and usability. Sadly, Nielsen et al have yet to figure out that an intranet’s design (look-and-feel) is not a requisite for success. Design is in fact, the least critical of all they key intranet mandatory assets (see The Nexus of Intranet Success). Anyone who works on or manages an intranet knows that the aspects that truly determine success include people, process, governance, standards, resources, content and tools. Even usability accounts for only about 15% of an intranet’s total value to an organization.

Nonetheless, the report does show some good screenshots and some good examples of the dos. This year’s winners include:

• Allianz Australia Insurance, Australia
• ALTANA Pharma AG, Germany
• Bank of Ireland Group, Ireland
• Capital One, USA
• IBM, USA
• Merrill Lynch, USA
• METRO Group, Germany
• O2, UK
• Staples, USA
• Vodafone, UK 

Unfortunately all the winners are big companies (median size: 62,500 employees) with big budgets. And 4 of 10 are financial service companies. If you can read such a report with a huge grain of salt, however, and you can stomach the US$148 price, then it is interesting fodder. Heck, I bought a copy.

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The best government intranet designs

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media 

Deloitte consulting has released an excellent paper on outsourcing HR called Making HR Business Process Outsourcing Work (Jason Geller, Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP). Terrible name, but an excellent paper (thanks to Bill Ives and Portals and KM).

A recent Deloitte HR study (Calling a Change in the Outsourcing Market) that organizations that do not consider and plan for pitfalls and outsourcing troubles are likely to be hurt by the results. The study of 25 large companies found that 70% had "significant negative experiences" with outsourcing projects and now use greater caution in ousourcing deals.

The benefits off outsourcing are many including ROI benefits:

• Headcount reductions of HR, HRIS, and payroll staff
• Reduced spending on technology licenses and maintenance
• Reduced spending on third-party vendor services
• Greater use of self-service for managers and employees
• Basic efficiencies realized from centralization of processes

Of course, as the study participants can tell us, the process of moving to an outsourced model is fraught with pitfalls and requires a lot of planning. Deloitte offers a well-thought approach:

1 Making HR Business Process Outsourcing Work

In particular,  the report emphasizes the requisites for hiring an outsourcing vendor. Deloitte recommends that the HR outsourcing contract with the winning vendor should cover the following elements:

• Scope of work
• Service levels and performance management
• Pricing
• Gain sharing
• Required documentation from all involved parties
• Software and hardware provided by the vendor; technical
• infrastructure; telecommunications
• Service locations
• Key staff
• Implementation plan, critical milestones, process redesign
• Termination fees and termination assistance
• Security
• Disaster recovery and business continuity
• Personnel conduct policies
• Relationship management and governance
• Change control procedures
• Quality management and improvement
• Subcontractors
• Regulatory Requirements

Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) is one of five region health authorities in four cities and 30 small communities in British Columbia (greater Vancouver). VCH employs 25,000 employees and 4,000 physicians and manage a budget of more than $2 billion.

The present state of their intranet is challenged by some of the ubiquitious problems faced by many, many others:

• Multiple silos
• Confused consumer base
• Short-term thiking
• No customer service outcome measures

Tudor Williams and Peter Roaf of Vancouver Coastal Health presented a fine case study on intranet measurement at this year’s Corporate Communications Conference in Las Vegas.

Charles Pizzo, the intrepid communicator gourmet and designated blogger for this year’s conference, talked with Tudor and Peter prior to their presentation:

“Number one – you need a vision,” said Tudor, adding “there has to be a very clear definition of what the intranet is going to do for the organization and the people in it.”

Tudor emphasizes that an intranet strategy requires four essential components:

1. Access to the intranet
2. User collaboration
3. Technology integration
4. Content immediacy (when the user wants it)

As for measurement strategy, Tudor cites three key requisites:

1. Outputs (tasks, counts, hits, participation, usage, time on site, costs, revenues)
2. Perception (attitudes, reputation, recognition, appreciation, likes, dislikes, preferences)
3. Outcomes (business results, profits, losses, ROI, behaviors, culture, etc.)

One othe key tools used by Williams and Roaf was an online employee survey of 12,000 employees (representative sample). Key findings of the survey included:

• More than 80%
• Use the Web (intranet and Internet) in their day-to-day work
• Want search functions for directory information and job postings
• Want news and information
• Trust information on the intranet
• Prefer the intranet to perform administrative tasks

Amongst the concerns cited by employees included:

• Timeliness of information
• Ability to find information
• Ability to provide feedback
• More interactivity

Of particular interest: there is little support for employee blogs but increased support for text messaging.

“The problem was that most employees don’t know what blogs are,” says Tudor. “We’re finding that blogging is more of an education issue rather than a resistance issue.

The process also included a complete intanet audit and led to a number of changes and recommendations to their intranet:

• Purchase and deploy of a content management system (Percussion)
• Form Web Management Council
• Develop a Web Strategy and Knowledge Strategy
• Develop measurable goals that include regular user satisfaction surveys for measurement
• E-learning courses and modules
• Searchable knowledge directories

One of the measured outcomes includes a measurement on return on investment (ROI).

Working together Tudor and Peter are bulding the business case for more  collaboration and e-learning on the intranet and estimate annual travel expense reduction of between $2.9 - $4.9 million plus travel time savings of about $9 million. They estimate the online directory will produce estimated savings of approximately $6 million.

Wouldn’t we all be a little more healthy if other healthcare organizations followed the lead of Vancouver Coastal Health authority?