“Ask them how they would like to find the information. ...asking them, from a user’s point of view and taking away the organizational silo’d glasses, how would you like to find the information logically?” writes Carm Porco, GM & VP of Prescient Digital Media. “For example, in an intranet, if I wanted to fill out my expense sheet, would I like to go to employee forms or an employee central area or go by way of the old process and find the department that has the form and look under their silo’d site.”

KISS - Keep it simple stupid

Information architecture should be focused on making it easier to understand and navigate content -- as quickly as possible. The above image was one of those that was delivered when I did a Google image search for "information architecture." My reaction to the information architect that (hypothetically)handed this to me... "Well, it sure is pretty, and clearly you're a very smart person... but you're fired."

Keep it simple. For example, I would never have an architecture with more than 6-8 parent groups unless I was forced at gunpoint -- or bribed. Card sorting is an exercise in simplicity and well help keep the focus simple. It itself is a simplistic exercise in understanding how employees think about content and navigation, from the employee perspective. A perspective that cannot be obtained through focus groups and user surveys.

However, card sorting shouldn’t be done at the expense of best practices and professional information architecture (IA). I would never start from scratch a first attempt of an information architecture with card sorting. I would use card sorting to revise and tweak a professionally prepared IA. Few organizations could afford to do cart sorting exercises with a scientifically representative sample of employees (100 or 200), nor should they be expected to.

Firstly, build a full intranet plan or blueprint – including strategic directives such as a mission and goals – and then have a professional craft the first draft of an information architecture based upon that plan (and the preceding intranet assessment). Once you’ve made your first attempt at an IA, and then take the IA to working sessions with your key stakeholders to focus on their areas (e.g. HR for the human resources section or site). It is at this point, when you’re engaging stakeholder groups that it is most valuable to undertake a card sorting exercise.

Read Carm Porco’s Pick a Card (sort), any card.

From the Intranet ROI webinar, here are (with some paraphrasing) some of the questions and answers on return on investment (ROI) and intranets:

Q – How do you get people to measure costs in the organization?

A- As the participant alluded to in so many words, it is difficult to get people to find, measure or share their often guarded cost data. However, the only way to measure ROI is to first determine the costs, and then measure or project the future value. Therefore cost measurement begets ROI measurement. Getting fellow managers and employees to go out and gather cost data is an exercise in motivation.

At Prescient, we conduct a team workshop with key managers from IT, Finance, Operations, Human Resources, Communications and others that might be relevant keepers of cost data that might include business unit or corporate service managers.

After introducing the concept and using case studies and benchmark examples we use a detailed matrix and review some of the 150+ measurable ROI benefits that can be accrued to an intranet or portal. Benefits are reviewed and agreed to and individual participants are assigned ‘homework’ to hit the books and to get the data (e.g. the current costs of operating the IT help desk, independent intranet sites, e-mail servers, etc.). See the Intranet ROI Workshop for more information.

Q- How does Cisco or others determine what goes on their home page?

A- Known intranet leaders such as IBM and Cisco have had intranets for more than a dozen years. So, for starters, they’ve had a lot of practice. Secondly, in those years, they’ve spent a lot of time getting to know employees and what they want. A lot of time has been put into tweaking and enhancing as the result of studying web logs, conducting user surveys, focuses groups and usability testing. Not to mention implementing best practices.

But it’s not just delivering on employee needs and expectations, but also those of the organization as a whole including management requirements and strategic goals. At IBM, the intranet home page is a personalized portal powered by Websphere. So the end user has the ability to pick and choose some of the content that appears on their home page (see

At Cisco, no personalization is delivered, but the user has the option to choose their own hot links or “My Links” – individual bookmarks that appear on the user’s home page. There is also role-based dashboards or pages that are targeted to specific employee roles such as new employees, managers, administrative, engineering, sales, and others.

How does understanding employee requirements relate to ROI? The intranet has to deliver value for employees to use it. If you build it... and employees don't see value in using the intranet, they will not come. If they don't come, you won't get the ROI.

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

Digg this           Post to del.icio.us         Post to Slashdot

For more intranet news visit www.IntranetReport.com

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

Some 2.7 trillion e-mails will have been sent by people around the world by the end of this year alone. If you feel the majority of them are ending up in your in-box, you're not the only one. E-mail fatigue has become a common business complaint. Increasingly, co-workers seem to figure there's no point in walking 10 feet to a colleague's desk and having a brief conversation when a 300-word e-mail mini-essay will do. —"Pop guide to beating e-mail fatigue," The Irish Times, December 12, 1997

E-mail is perhaps the biggest killer application in recent technology history. We all need e-mail as part of our day-to-day work lives. However, many, many organizations have come to rely too heavily on e-mail. This over reliance has come at the expense of employee productivity and intellectual property.

The Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) reports that as much as 75 percent of most companies’ intellectual property is contained in the messages and attachments they send through their e-mail systems (source: Message Therapy, CIO Magazine, January, 2005).

The problem is that far too many organizations use e-mail as the principal knowledge repository and storage system. The risks to relying too much on e-mail (and other systems such as shared drives) for information storage are well known:

Ø       Email is an inefficient document sharing system

Ø       With no metadata or search, shared drives become un-navigable

Ø       3rd party services are usually owned by the individual not the company

According to Seth Gottlieb, the Content Management and Collaboration Lead at Optaros, “a company's success in content management is inversely proportional to the amount of information that is exchanged over email.” In other words, the more e-mail an organization has, the more e-mail undermines the organization’s ability to manage content (particularly on the enterprise intranet).

A new study on e-mail suggests that e-mail has become a hindrance to many organizations. E-Mail Management: An Oxymoron? written by John Mancini, President of AIIM, the enterprise association on content management, states that a casual approach to e-mail management presents “significant risks” including major costs, significant litigation, and a drag on key processes. E-mail management including a strategy and processes for archiving, retention, and lifecycle management of enterprise e-mail.

The study culminates a great deal of analysis including a survey of more than 1000 e-mail managers (mostly IT managers and executives, and records and document management specialists).

Other study findings:

Ø       Nearly half those respondents (44%) spend more than 30% of their work activity on e-mail related activity. 

Ø       Only 25% of respondents have implemented an e-mail management strategy with most organizations leaving e-mail management up to individual employees (with little or no guidance)

Ø       23% of respondents in large size organizations (1000 employees or more) have had to turn over e-mail as part of a legal or internal investigation

E-mail management strategies and technologies can certainly help but are not the sole answers to the e-mail problem. Better knowledge management would certainly help (see The lost meaning of knowledge management). Also helping overcome e-mail fatigue at leading organizations are effective policies on e-mail use and the use of social media such as wikis and blogs.

Social media

If managed properly, the use of social media tools such as blogs and wikis can reduce e-mail volumes by as much as 30%.

While blogs, wikis and other social media such as podcasts and social networking sites have taken the intranet by storm, these tools have not found the same level of success on the intranet. A recent CIO survey found that only 18% of organizations have deployed blogs, and only 13% have deployed wikis. This is changing however. More than 40% are testing, piloting or evaluating blog and wiki applications at the time of the survey.

Furthermore, as a new generation of employees enter the workforce, more employees will begin to demand social media tools such as social networking sites. For example, MySpace grew by 609% in one year, from just under 3.5 million members in October 2004 to over 24 million in 2005.

Here are some important statistics on our future employees (fifteen- to eighteen-year-olds):

Ø       average nearly 6 1/2 hours a day watching TV, playing video games, and surfing the Net

Ø       A quarter of that time, they're multitasking.

Ø       The biggest increase: computer use for activities such as social networking, which has soared nearly threefold since 2000, to 1 hour and 22 minutes a day on average (Kaiser Family Foundation survey).

ON A PERSONAL NOTE: Many thanks to those sending notes of concern regarding the water situation in Vancouver (see Vancouverites boil water for 5th day as rain continues). We are doing fine on boiled and bottled water, thank you for asking. As I said to a friend, water problems are good for us – just as the brown-out across the continent was good for us a couple of summers ago; it helps force us to not take such advantage of a valuable resource.

I understand the Canadian Football League Championship was broadcast across the globe… did anyone watch? How about that Carl Kidd dive over the top to stop Montreal on the goal line and essentially clinch the Grey Cup for the BC Lions. A huge congratz to Vancouver’s own Paul McCallum for winning the most outstanding award!

Digg this           Post to del.icio.us         Post to Slashdot

For more intranet news visit www.IntranetReport.com

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

The intranet requires content and tools that are mission critical – information and knowledge critical to the success of the business.

Most intranets, however, are not fully utilized by the employee population at large. Raise your hand if you wish you could only attract more employees to use the intranet. More than 90% of you just raised your hand.

Intranet value begets intranet use. But it also requires education and promotion. As I like to say, “If you build it, they will not come…”

Adding non-mission critical content and tools can be a gold mine for driving traffic – and winning permanent and frequent users. Some of my favorite non-critical intranet tools include:

• Cafeteria menus
• Quick polls
• Weather forecasts
• Classifieds (buy and sell)
• Job announcements (anniversaries, promotions, etc.)

These tools are ‘killer’ – if you have some or all of these tools on your intranet, you no doubt enjoy very high traffic amongst your connected employee population (those with access).

Another goody and employee favorite: employee discounts.

Employee discounts are all but expected in some industries -- retail being a prime example. According to a poll by Maritz Research, 89 percent of people looking for retail employment want their companies to offer discounts on its products or services.

Employers have even started offering employee discounts to the general public. In 2005, Ford, Chrysler and GM all offered all of America the chance to cash in on the discounted automobile rates paid by their employees.

"(Offering employee discounts) definitely improves retention," says Bob Schiff, senior vice president of YouDecide, a company that helps employers provide voluntary benefits and discounts for their workers. Schiff says that after his company puts all of an employer's benefits on one portal on its HR intranet, "it increases intranet traffic by 300 to 400 percent."

Read the full article Great part-time jobs for discounts (CNN.com)

Digg this           Post to del.icio.us         Post to Slashdot

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

Some organizations have turned to the kiosk as a communications solution for bridging this digital divide, but the results are usually unimpressive. Rarely are kiosks ever used to the extent management hopes or expect.

“In practice, it may be impractical (or prohibitively expensive) to reach all staff using just kiosks,” writes James Robertson of Australian-based Step Two in his article Intranet kiosks or remote access? “Staff may also be reluctant or unable to make effective use of the kiosks during their work breaks.”

I recently conducted a client focus group at a remote field office with workers that work outside and don’t have a dedicated computer, but they do have a shared computer workstation (kiosk). Not surprisingly, these employees have intranet access but the workstation kiosk is not well used. “We don’t use the intranet much and don’t really care… but I would if I could access it from home.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE: Intranet kiosks vs home access

Digg this

Post to del.icio.us

Post to Slashdot

Paul Strassmann, the creator of the Information Productivity metric, makes his 5 key recommendations (5 Steps to Improve Your Information Productivity) for improving information enterprise management (www.BaselineMag.com):

1 - Make the tough decisions. Since costs are a key factor in Information Productivity, companies need to know how to cut their losses on projects that aren't delivering. If management spends too much time trying to fix a project, the time and costs involved will quickly add up and eat the savings the project was expected to generate.

 

The solution is to either eliminate the project or scale it down to something manageable and less expensive. Either solution will save money.

"Cutting your losses is the quickest way to improve Information Productivity," Strassmann says. "That rule accounts for everything."

 

2 - Cut the fat. Information Productivity is calculated by taking a company's Information Value-Added—the value added to a company's economic performance by good information management; it equals profit minus the cost of capital invested by shareholders—and dividing it by sales, general and administrative (SG&A) costs, or the expenses related to managing information. So if your costs are out of line, your Information Productivity will be, too.

 

Strassmann recommends looking at your company's expenses to find out what's weighing it down.

Benchmark those expenses—looking out for pricey plants and factories, excess inventory and bloated SG&A costs—against those of three competitors. That exercise will give you some clues about where the fat can be trimmed. Technology projects can then be aimed at inefficient areas, say, high inventory levels, through automation or the streamlining of processes such as shipping and receiving.

 

3 - Evaluate outsourcing. While your company's revenues may be climbing, the value-added of your employees may be declining. You may be outsourcing (that is, purchasing) an increased share of your production costs to subcontractors.

 

When that happens, you may still be keeping the same overhead (SG&A) as before, while the base that requires administrative and general support starts to shrink. Revenue-based ratios (such as the ratio of SG&A to revenue) will be telling you that all is well, whereas value-added ratios (SG&A divided by costs minus purchases) will in fact suggest that you have too much management trying to supervise a smaller workforce. To keep Information Productivity growing, you will have to cut your overhead costs or increase the value-added.

 

The "shrinking corporation" is a widespread occurrence as companies make less while reporting rising revenue. This approach is particularly marked in information-technology companies that purchase most of their components from others and only assemble them for sale.

 

4 - Focus on people. Retaining quality managers is vital to improving Information Productivity. To Strassmann, technology has largely become a commodity that you can outsource to India, Bucharest or anyplace in between. But people with solid corporate knowledge—especially the ability to see where technology will help a company seize a new business opportunity—are priceless.

 

What's the best way to keep your best people? Challenge them by giving them big goals and projects. Give them the opportunity to grow their knowledge and build their careers. If you don't do these things, it's highly likely they'll leave for greener pastures.

 

And weed out people who have no interest in developing their careers. Why? Ultimately, these hangers-on will become obstacles for your company as pay rises and their technology skills don't.

 

5 - Innovate. The way to go about innovating is to find a function or key business goal—such as faster checkout in a retail store, millisecond response time or near-100% system reliability—and then see how you can use technology to reach that goal.

"You need to look at the organization from the top down," Strassmann says. "Then when you go into your financial review, instead of looking at the information-technology operating budget, you can look at the company overall."

--

Keep in mind this is more enterprise information management as opposed to employee information retrieval and management. Different issue altogether and the focus of a future blog.

UPCOMING SEMINAR: