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Intranet evolution, best practices, and case studies by Toby Ward.

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Tuesday, January 31

QAS intranet case study – anatomy of a winner

by Toby Ward on Tue 31 Jan 2006 09:10 PM EST

A winning intranet has many successful qualities and features. The QAS intranet is a winner at many levels – rich with tools and demonstrable, measured value.

QAS is a World leader in address management and data accuracy solutions. Based on data secured from national postal authorities and other leading sources, QAS captures, cleans and enhances the integrity of name and address data. QAS has a geographically diverse set of 400 employees with offices around the globe in the U.K. (headquarters), U.S.A., Canada, Singapore, Australia, and across Europe.

A winner of a coveted 2005 Information Management Award for Knowledge Management, the QAS intranet, iQ, has many winning attributes including:

· A well defined plan

· Robust and flexible technology

· Rich applications

· Measured benefits & ROI

Read the complete case study QAS intranet case study – anatomy of a winner

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Wednesday, January 25

Top intranets of 2006 – more than design

by Toby Ward on Wed 25 Jan 2006 09:57 PM PST

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

My god they’re full of themselves. 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.

U.S. military creating world’s largest interconnected network

$9 Billion Bugs for U.S. Navy-Marine Corps Intranet (back issue)

World’s Biggest Intranet (back issue)

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Wednesday, January 11

Intranet Insider World Tour: Sodexho USA

by Toby Ward on Wed 11 Jan 2006 01:46 PM PST

Sodexho USA’s successful intranet is home grown – no portal solution, no content management platform. Despite the proliferation of expensive solutions, SodexhoNet (Sodexho’s home page) is a shining example of how intranet success can be delivered and measured without the benefit of an off-the-shelf solution.

SodexhoNet was the featured tour stop on today's Intranet Insider World Tour, presented by Communitelligence.com and hosted by myself and Sodexho's Angelo Ioffreda. Comments, questions and discussion are encouraged below...

Sodexho USA is one of the biggest companies you may not know. Sodexho USA (www.sodexhoUSA.com) is the leading provider of food and facilities management in North America, with $6 billion in annual revenues and 110,000+ employees. Sodexho runs cafeterias, housekeeping in the hospitality sector, grounds keeping, plant operations and maintenance and laundry services to more than 6,000 companies principally in health care, schools, and the military.

Headquartered in Gaithersburg, MD, Sodexho has employees spread out across and in all corners of the continent. An even greater challenge than the geographic disparity of its employees is the nature of their work. The vast majority of these employees are hourly workers who are not desktop workers with their own computers – they’re on the frontlines rather preparing and serving food, cleaning, and performing site operations. SodhexoNet is a tying bond that links most of the managers and management of this diverse and disparate group.

“The intranet is a perfect gathering place,” says Angelo Ioffreda, VP, internal communications, Sodexho USA. Companies with many thousands of employees dispersed across great regions and dozens of locations require an effective intranet. Today the intranet serves Sodexho’s managers across the world. Registered users have grown from 2,000 in April, 1999, to more than 14,500 users today.

To access the intranet, each manager pays $39.69 for annual intranet access. Surprisingly, this is not a bone of contention at Sodexho, but expected at an organization with a corporate philosophy for charging for costs incurred. The charge also benefits user managers as the onus is greater on the intranet team to deliver a winning product that is embraced. Finally, the charge also commits managers to use the intranet. If you’re paying, you better use it.

Like all effective systems, SodhexhoNet has a vision: SodexhoNet is a one-stop shop for all of our managers’ information needs and an indispensable part of a Sodexho work day.”

Accompanying the vision is some practical but key goals:

· Essential business and communications tool

· Robust, timely, relevant, accurate content

· Intuitive navigation

· Quick access

· Easy to search

· Feedback capacity

· Cost-effectiveness

SodexhoNet’s greatest strength however is its management team, lead by corporate communications.

The corporate communications team has five people including an art designer, a communications specialist/writer, the e-communications manager , e-communications specialist , and the VP. The e-communications manager and specialist are the only ones dedicated full-time to the intranet; the others contribute on a part-time basis. The eBusiness team from IT has a director, a project manager, two art designers, three programmers, and a technical trainer. They also support other IT projects.

In addition to the contributions of IT and Communications, there are well over 100 content owners-authors. Each business line has a principal content owner (e.g. health care, etc.). Each line has sub-groups (e.g. hospitals, etc.) that also contribute content.

One of the intranet’s key strengths lies in the team’s understanding that the intranet must intimately understand its target audience and constantly measure its performance. By measuring its success, Sodhexho knows where to concentrate its efforts and resources and constantly strive for improvement.

Among the many measures the intranet team tracks (for the last year measured compared to the previous year):

·         User behavior and how usage is trending (those never using SodexhoNet dropped from 19% to 1%)

·         SodexhoNet as a “valuable resource” to employees (from 74 to 84%)

·         Registered users who visit the site monthly (from 55 to 90%)

·         Most visited pages (career center, HR, health care, phone book, and search)

·         Most searched terms (forms, recipe collection, performance appraisal)

·         Return on investment (where possible)

One of SodexhoNet’s more innovative and successful tools is its SuperSleuth sales lead program. SuperSleuth is an intranet web page and application that encourages employees to submit sales leads and prospective clients via the intranet. The SuperSleuth intranet page generate cash rewards of up to $1000 for the person making the submission. Sodexho says it has contributed to a 100% increase in sales leads in the past year. Let me repeat: a 100% increase in company sales leads. In fact, the SuperSleuth tool has led to US$90 million dollars in managed volume (net client sales including sales by client). Proof positive of a killer application.

While the site has evolved considerably and its value has grown measurably in recent years, it hasn’t been without considerable effort and some lessons learned, says Ioffreda.

Amongst the key lessons learned:

Create a vision

Partner with IT (“big time,” says Ioffreda stressing the importance of a healthy working relationship with IT) – and HR

Establish clear standards for the site

Make end-users the center of your universe

Incorporate real-time feedback from end-users

Track user behavior

Make content ‘king’

Involve, support, and communicate with your content owners

Develop an editorial / programming mindset

Strive for intuitive navigation

Improve your search and speed

Commit to continuous improvement in product and processes

Make your site a business tool

Reduce costs

Raise efficiency

Bring in revenue

To purchase a copy of the flash presentation with audio, please visit the Communitelligence.com Learning Academy store.

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Monday, January 9

IBM leads corporate blogging pack

by Toby Ward on Mon 09 Jan 2006 07:45 PM PST

Some 7,500 blogs last year have increased to about 15,000 corporate blogs this year, according to an IBM company survey of employee bloggers highlighted in a Journal News article Big Blue bit by the blogging bug.

IBM doesn’t just encourage certain people to blog, they’re encouraging all employees to blog – to the outside world and on the corporate intranet. As long as they adhere to the corporate blogging policies developed last year (developed by open contributors to a corporate wiki that formed the final blogging policy), employees can blog what they want.

To quote Julie Moran Alterio in her Journal News article:

Irving Wladawsky-Berger, IBM's vice president of technical strategy and innovation and the company's highest-ranking blogger, said Big Blue is encouraging employees to bone up on blogging for the same reason it asked them to get savvy about Web commerce in the 1990s.

"We absolutely recognize that blogging, just like the Internet, World Wide Web, Linux and open source, is a major initiative in the marketplace that we should be part of. This best way to be part of it is not to observe it passively but to do it actively," Wladawsky-Berger said.

IBM had the same idea when it rolled out tools last May that allow every employee to create a blog on the company intranet.

So far, 16,416 people have registered and 2,291 have

created active blogs.

Among the most popular bloggers is an IBMer from Japan who likes to discuss idiomatic phrases in English and a researcher in California who is running a pet contest.

I predict that within the next year we’ll see corporate blogging used by the sales force that demonstrates a positive ROI and a direct correlation to increased revenue. IBM is a leader in corporate intranets, blogging and ROI measurement – I can think of no better candidate to deliver that kind of ROI announcement.

RELATED ITEMS:

Case study: PNM Resources CEO blog

Blogging The Intranet

Study: Intranet blogging on the rise

McDonald’s beefs-up intranet blogs

Podcasting the intranet at IBM

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Friday, January 6

Intranet measurement strategy (case study)

by Toby Ward on Fri 06 Jan 2006 05:58 PM PST

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?

RELATED ITEMS:

Intranet ROI

Intranet kingdom remains an unknown quantity

Intranet Business Case

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Tuesday, January 3

Successful employee yellow pages

by Toby Ward on Tue 03 Jan 2006 03:18 PM PST

Employee yellow page directories continue to be one of the few killer intranet applications. I’ve not come across an intranet or portal (that is undertaking proper log analysis metrics) where the directory isn’t in the top three most visited pages or intranet sections.

Unfortunately, there are very few really good employee directories. IBM, Cisco, and Mastercard have really good ones. Microsoft has an incredible employee yellow pages on their intranet. Among the standard contact information provided in the average directory entry, Microsoft employee profiles also showcase:

·    Employee photo

·    Shared links

·    Related (featured documents)

·    Backup contact name and information

·    Reports to...

·    Direct reports...

·    Team site link

·    Professional and technical interests

·    Industry experience

·    Language fluencies

·    Years at Microsoft

·    Personal interests

·    And more...

“None of us can personally know more than around 250 people, yet we want our companies to be smart, learning organisations where it's easy to find the right person to talk to,” writes Chris Collison, co-author of a new book "Learning to Fly - Practical knowledge management from leading and learning organisations" (Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell). “This is why many organisations create "yellow pages" applications, which enable employees to find and contact other staff with particular expertise and skills.”

Collison warns though that employee directories can be fraught with problems and “often end up as out-of-date, glorified intranet telephone directories.”

To traverse the slippery slope of creating an effective yellow pages application, Collison suggests in his book 10 key steps (adapted from Knowledge Management – Creating A Sustainable Yellow Pages System):

1- Maintain a clear and distinctive vision.

Be clear about what you are trying to achieve and avoid compromise. Beware of becoming ‘all things to all men' - particularly those in the HR and IT departments! Everyone will want a slice of the action - don't lose sight of the overarching aim of your system - making it easy to find people that you don't already know.

2- Strive for personal ownership and maintenance.

Create a process whereby only the individuals concerned can create and update their entries. This will drive a far deeper sense of ownership across the population.

3- Strike a balance between informal and formal content.

Encourage people to share non-work information about themselves in addition to valuable business information. Consider prompting for this with ‘fun' questions such as: "what was the first single that you bought?", "what is your favourite film?", or even "what makes you happy?".

4- Support the photographs wherever possible.

Nothing is more powerful and personal than a photograph. It speaks volumes about the person, raises the interest levels of others and generates personal ownership of the content. If possible encourage people to include an informal photograph. The security-pass-rabbit-in-the-headlights shots rarely show people in their best light! Better to have a photograph which says more about the person and what motivates them.

5- Ensure that your product design is flexible and inclusive.

Recognize that different people relate to templates, prompts and structure in different ways. Use focus groups to test opinion.

6- Start with a customer-facing pilot.

Critical mass is all important, so start with a group of people who have a natural need to be visible to internal customers. This might include supporting functions, existing networks or communities, or even business areas with new leadership.

7- Deliver through local enthusiasts.

Centrally-driven push isn't always the best way to engage the workforce. Tap into local enthusiasts and champions if possible - they will know how best to "sell" the concept locally.

8- Use success stories as a marketing tool.

Reinforce the usefulness of the knowledge directory at every opportunity. Publicize any examples or successes widely, and early, to reinforce your project. This is a culture change project, and culture change happens one story at a time!

9- Encourage use, but lead by example rather than edict.

Avoid mandating the population and use of the knowledge directory. People will provide better quality content if they feel that they are volunteering the information. At the end of the day, you can't ever conscript knowledge - you can only ever volunteer it. And let's face it, there's little point in finding the one person with expertise or experience that you need, if when you call them on the phone, they're unwilling to talk!

10- Embed into people processes.

Look for process and intranet ‘hooks' that could initiate and sustain the use of your knowledge directory (e.g. recruitment or induction of new staff, the launch of new networks, any reference on an intranet site which mentions a person's name can become link to their personal page.

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