Often overlooked, as I stated today in my speech at the 2006 Corporate Reputation and Communication Conference (Conference Board), is the power of the employee in representing the corporate brand and the necessity of employee communications and the intranet in maximizing the value of your brand.

So what does the brand mean to the intranet? How do you brand the intranet? Firstly, the intranet must reinforce and support the corporate brand. The intranet is one of the most visual representations of the organization to employees on a day-to-day basis. Therefore, the intranet cannot be designed willy nilly. It must adhere to corporate branding standards and creative including: 

• Use and treatment of the corporate logo
• Applications of color from an acceptable and complimentary color palette
• Treatment of images, icons and photos that align with the corporate image

Does this mean though that the intranet home page should look like the Internet home page? No it doesn’t. It should not be a replication of the external site – there should be some distinction. However, there is a fine line between replication and reinvention. If you adhere to corporate branding standards (I’m assuming you, like most organizations, have them) then there will be some consistency with the external website (e.g. colors) but it should be at a glance visually distinctive so employees know that the intranet is just for them.  

"Visual appeal can be assessed within 50 milliseconds, suggesting that Web designers have about 50 milliseconds to make a good impression," according to Dr. Gitte Lindgaard of Carleton University in a recent e-commerce Times article about a report published in the journal Behaviour & Information Technology. 

As I’ve said time and time again, there is far too much emphasis on look-and-feel and design. “We’re doing a redesign” is a common turn of phrase meant to convey a complete restructuring of the intranet or website, but it in fact emphasizes the look-and-feel. In my experience, the user, your target audience, determines what is important.

It goes without saying that building an intranet brand is far more complex than marketing. A number of key contributors must be carefully mixed and executed to create a valued resonation:   

• Site design
• Usability
• Site layout
• Content quality
• Application value
• Collaboration

This does not mean however that the intranet ‘brand’ should be left to chance and that it is not important. The intranet brand is very important given its profile as an ever-present representation of corporate messaging, goals and source of information and collaboration. While the design or look-and-feel of the intranet should never be done on a whim or without a plan that aligns with the corporate brand, it should not be forgotten that employees don’t go to the intranet for brand, they’re after content.

ADDITIONAL READING:

Building a web brand (Get Strategic)

Don't Shout, Listen (Fast Company_

On the Web, Branding Is Back (Business Week)

Web branding is more than skin deep (Gerry McGovern)

 

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

You need to talk their talk. HITS just don’t cut it. Senior management want to know how the intranet delivers measurable value to the organization.

As I’ve said time and time again on this site and at many conferences I address, most senior management still view the intranet as a cost center – a necessary evil. To change this mindset, intranet managers need to show them the money. As with any critical business system, an intranet or portal must deliver measurable performance and remain accountable to the investment. If the site’s value is not being measured, then it risks failing the needs and demands of employees and management.

Senior management are much more likely to invest in an intranet if they can see it delivering measurable returns, such as increased business efficiency, reduced overheads and enhanced customer satisfaction. Increasingly the intranet manager will need to put in place viable processes for recording and reporting intranet value, in short demonstrating a return on investment (ROI) and employee productivity.

I will be delivering the keynote address on the second day of the annual Intranet Benchmarking Forum (IBF) LIVE conference, October 5, in London, UK. Building sustainable sponsorship and leadership engagement is focused on just this subject: talking the talk and selling the intranet to senior management.

The conference also features insight and case studies from advanced intranet and portals including British Telecom, GlaxoSmithKline, HSBC, and others.

Additional topics being discussed and presented include:

• change management
• internal communications
• effective search
• benchmarking
• culture
• content best practices
• business value
• internet/intranet
• career development

Additional attention will be focused on latest Web 2.0, social software, collaborative tools and Intranet 2.0 deployment.

I understand there are still spots to reserve and at it is very reasonably price at only £999 for members and £1399 for non-members.

Form more information view the full IBF LIVE 2006 program.

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ON A PERSONAL NOTE: After an amazing sunny and warm summer the rainy season has begun a little early in Vancouver. This of course holds the promise of a great ski season, but will no doubt dampen and cut short my hiking and mountain biking season.

Nonetheless I joined a hockey team for the first time in…. well, ever. I’ve always been a casual player so I really enjoyed my first game with the Spartans and scoring our first goal J Twenty-five games (plus playoffs to go)…  Playing with a two referee system was however quite bazaar. And just like the NHL refs, they're calling EVERYTHING!!

All the girls in my house are sick… I wonder how much longer I can hold out?!?! Perhaps my timing of trips to Toronto, New York, London and likely Paris too in the next three weeks are well timed! Though that’s an exhausting amount of travel and too much time away from home L

There sure was a flurry of comments on the blog during the month of August when I was on hiatus… and then very few since I returned… where’d everyone go?!?!

If you have a good intranet case study to share I’m looking for some co-presenters for the continuing webinar series The Intranet Insider World Tour presented by Communitelligence.com. The next stop is HP in November and promises to be a great webinar…

Anyone excited about the upcoming hockey and basketball seasons? Our Vancouver Canucks play in perhaps the toughest division in all of professional sports. All five teams were .500 and all will likely be there this year. I’m also looking forward to another season of impressive play from Steve Nash and the Suns… Finally kudos to Arsenal for blanking ManU at Old Trafford – without Thierry Henry!!! Woot!!

Today’s webinar “Top 5 Traits of A Winning Intranet” was an apparent success with a couple hundred participants. We covered a lot of ground and had a lot of questions… unfortunately we had too many questions in the short time available. But I’m glad there are so many inquisitive and capable intranet managers and consultants who are passionate about their respective intranets.

So here are a couple of questions I didn’t get to with my response:

Q: What is your recommendation for a content management system?

A: There are 2000 CMS solutions on the market so you have to be careful. And, even though one CMS works at one organization, it’s highly likely that it may not work at another. I’d suggest, once you’ve developed your plan and your content requirements, inviting 6-10 name vendors in your price range to propose solutions based on your detailed requirements. Mid-market vendors such as Red Dot, Serena, CrownPeak, PaperThin, etc. are safe bets – but it really depends on your requirements. Make the vendors work for your business by telling them what you need – in a detailed RFP.

Understanding your requirements is very detailed work. Prescient’s detailed CMS evaluation matrix covers hundreds of solution features and attributes – and weights them according to the client’s specific requirements (for more information see CMS Blueprint ©2005). The bottom line: you have to put in the work to fully understand and document all of your requirements – from publishing interfaces, to administrative features, to template creation and workflow – before you can select a CMS.

For more information on CMS solutions visit:

www.CMSMatrix.org

www.CMSWatch.com

Q: What are your recommendations in a geographically dispersed organization with regional intranets?

This depends greatly on the structure of the business, and the underlying culture. I’m a big fan of pooling resources and finding scales of economy – productivity and efficiency drives to the bottom line and puts smiles on the faces of senior management. I would like to see more organizations using a single platform and home page with a decentralized content management solution allowing regional and business unit owners to publish and manage their own content (while adhering to central policies and standards) without having to worry about servers and infrastructure. However, the business structure will determine the system. If you are in a large, decentralized company where different business units and country units operate as quasi-independent companies, it will be very, very difficult for you to build an effective, centralized employee intranet portal. You can build it, but “effective” is the key word. It is easier if there’s an edict from up high that says “thou shalt be done.”

In the absence of a direct order from the CEO, you will have to convert the masses and win fans. You will have to build it and hope that they will come. They won’t however come by merely building an intranet. You will have to sell, sell, sell. Think of it as a political campaign. You will have to sell the intranet, demonstrate its value, and make all sorts of promises and concessions… So, hire a good campaign manager J

If centralization is just not possible, then begin by striking a ‘global’ council or committee to develop standards and policies. Build in systems that enforce the standards (e.g. only sites and pages that meet the standards will be indexed by the search engine).

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If you have any additional comments or questions then please feel to post a question below or e-mail me through the Prescient website at www.PrescientDigital.com

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ADDITIONAL READING:

Sex, Lies, and CMS Vendors

More immaturity… from CMS to portals

CMS market evolution

Intranet excess

A global intranet survey of 101 companies by France-based intranet strategy consultant Jane McConnell has revealed what many of us have suspected – only 13% said their senior management perceived the intranet as "business critical".

I’ve long said that the vast majority of senior executives think of the intranet as just another ‘cost center’. Jane’s survey findings certainly reinforce this notion. The final report and findings are not yet ready but Jane has shared some of the initial findings:

• The most important factor of organisational complexity is the high number of offices & locations. Language barriers came next to last on the list.
• 55% said their employees would be disturbed in their work if the intranet "went down" for 1 to 2 hours.
• The main obstacle preventing the intranet from achieving its potential is that it is "too communication" and lacks integrated applications. (cited 58 times out of 95 respondents.)
• A factor that slows down strategic decision making is "lack of awareness of the potential role of the intranet" - cited 71 times out of 98 respondents.
• 47 out of 99 expect their intranet budgets to increase over the next 2 years. (good for us!)
• Only 26% are required to measure ROI to justify new or current investments.
• Out of 101 participants, 28 have implemented internal blogs and/or external blogs and/or wikis.
• 18 have implemented internal blogs, 21 more plan to do so soon.
• Out of 68 respondents, 32 have a general taxonomy across the organisation, 34 have specific, detailed taxonomies for some business and functions, 11 have taxonomies for specific, temporary project teams. (multiple answers possible.)
• Bottom up and horizontal information flows are much weaker than top down flows. (I have different stats per region and size of organisation.)
• Only 13% said their senior management perceived the intranet as "business critical".

Survey sample:

• 101 organisations: 87 private companies, 6 world organisations, 5 public service and 3 other.
• Regions: Headquarters based in Europe (58%), North America (29%) or Asia Pacific (12%).
• Size of organisation: Under 5000 employees (20%), from 5 to 15,000 (29%), from 15 to 50,000 (25%) and over 50,000 (25%).
• Organisational structure: De-centralised (29%), Integrated (21%), Matrix (47%), Other (4%)
• Over 57% of the organisations operate in over 20 countries.
• Over one third have from 2 to 4 official languages.
• 27% of the organisations have three-quarters knowledge workers.
• 21% said that about half of their employees do not have individual access to the intranet.

A new webinar I’ll be hosting for Ragan next Wednesday, September 13, 2006 (12:30pm CST):

Intranets can deliver a lot of value to any organization—if done properly. However, winning intranets require a lot of time and focus on the big five (engagement, governance, planning, measurement and content). In this strategy-packed, one-hour webinar, your host, Toby Ward, will layout the tactics the best intranet managers use to plan, govern and measure a better site—while they build and maintain internal support from management and users.
 
You’ll understand how to build a plan that incorporates:

Engagement: Engage business owners and your users; ask them what they
want and need, and incorporate your findings into your intranet plan.
Governance: Strong executive support mandatory—accompanied by a well-defined ownership model.
Planning: The intranet is infinitely more complex than a Web site and needs a this orough blueprint. Ward will show you the best out there.
Measurement: Successful intranets have pre-determined Critical Success Indicators that deliver measured value—including ROI. Learn how to use these CSIs to measure your program.
Content: Content is still ‘king’ and ultimately what every users seeks. Learn the royal must-haves and must-avoids.

I know people love screenshots so here's a sneak preview of one (the Microsoft intranet):

Reserve your spot now: Top-five traits of a winning intranet: How to get them on yours