Redesigning an intranet does not mean you are fixing it; a broken intranet requires a lot of work and design is one of the smallest components.

While important, even technology is not the most important ingredient. Far more important to the success of any intranet is people and process.

There’s a process that should be followed for redesigning any intranet – a process that is focused on people, and grounded in the needs of the business.  The process or methodology applied to a redesign is best summarized in the following flow-chart from Prescient Digital Media:

Intranet Project Methodology - Prescient Digital Media

“When properly rolled out, social media and Enterprise 2.0 tools can help companies meet their No. 1 internal communication goal — engaging employees,” said Michael Rudnick, global intranet and portal leader at Watson Wyatt (see Social Media: The Next Frontier In Employee Communication).

“Instead of simply mass e-mailing information or posting to an intranet in hopes employees will see it, social media tools help employees actively participate in creating and sharing information. This shift to employee-generated content has resulted in employees’ becoming more engaged online.”

Michael is a pretty smart guy and he’s bang on. As he and his Watson Wyatt clients can attest employee communications (internal communications) is a synchronous or two-way street that requires active participation and dialogue between management and employees. The new Enterprise 2.0 or Intranet 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis are excellent tools for promoting this dialogue.

And yet, the adoption rate of social media tools within the enterprise continues to be startlingly low despite all the press and fanfare of the past 3 years.

Writer Nic Patton rightly asserts, in his article the article Employers must learn to love social media (Management-Issues.com), “Instead of trying to crack down on workers' use of new social media and Web 2.0 technology, employers should be embracing it as a way of creating better workplace communities, engagement and communication.”

Rudnick says these concerns are reminiscent of the productivity fears raised, and subsequently disproved, when the Internet was introduced into the workplace in the mid-1990s. The way for employers to address these concerns is to do just as they did 10 years ago — setting clear guidelines for acceptable use while adopting social media for a productive, internal purposes.

In Your employees love to surf porn, among other things I highlighted far greater concerns and risks than those posed by social media – namely surfing porn and general goofing around by employees. If staff can find ways to do this, what makes anyone think a wiki, which is self-policing by the entire employee population, is any worse?

Verizon has hundreds of discussion forums, blogs and wikis that are entirely self-policing and they’ve never had to censor or remove any content or would-be inappropriate postings (see Verizon's Digital Workplace). Why would your organization be any different?

Prescient Digital Media has just launched a new Intranet 2.0 service for those companies looking to examine, plan and rollout new Enterprise 2.0 tools. The offer includes:

• Requirements analysis
• Intranet 2.0 plan
• Blogs and wiki policies
• 1-2 trial wikis (with several options, features and content focuses)
• 1-2 trial blogs (with several options, features and content focuses)

If you’re interested in this new Intranet 2.0 service, please contact us directly (through the website) or give me a shout at 416.926.8800. 

UPCOMING WEB 2.0 & INTRANET 2.0 EVENTS:

Southeast Asia:

If you’d like to learn more about Intranet 2.0 and Web 2.0, and you’re in the Southeast Asia area (kiwis and aussies welcome too!), then you should definitely attend my half-day workshop on Web 2.0 as part of a three-day workshop in the 2008 Deploying First-Class Web Content Management For World-Class Websites (Ad Astra) in Hanoi, Vietnam from April 23 – 25.

I’ll be repeating the workshop April 28 – 30 in Jakarta. These workshops will be three full-days and promise a lot of learning, examples and hands-on work. To register for either please phone (65) 6334-9828 or email sales@adastra.com.sg

North America:

My colleague Carm Porco is chairing the 2008 Social Media Summit Canada Conference (Advanced Learning Institute) in Toronto, ON from March 31 - April 2, 2008. Three days of Web 2.0 best practices, case studies and learnings for which you can Register Online.

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Some of the upcomign conerences and seminars dedicated to intranets:

10th Annual Intranets for Corporate Communications (Federated Press)

February 11, 2008     Toronto, ON

Contact Federated Press to register

IntraTeam Event 2008 (IntraTeam)

March 5 – 6, 2008     Copenhagen, Denmark

Register Online

London-based Intranet Benchmarking Forum (IBF) is looking for a few more participants for its Founding Meeting of IBF North America. There is capacity of no more than 20 organizations to attend - all must be Fortune 500 or equivalents and those attending already include Intranet and Portal Managers from HSBC, Procter & Gamble, Visa, Swiss Re, JP Morgan Chase, Chubb and Gillette.

There is no charge for attending this Founders Meeting. The meeting features:

• Two "live" intranet tours by HSBC and Swiss Re - both IBF Members
• Focus from Gillette on "Second Life" and its implications for intranets
• Review of IBF NA services for 2007 – 2008 through interactive session and discussion
• Hot topic member "open space" knowledge sharing.

This IBF North America Founding Meeting establishes a new division of IBF focused exclusively on the US and Canada and will comprise only major North American organizations. A full agenda is here and those attending plan also to stay over if needed at the Millennium Plaza Hotel. If you would like to attend then please request a place by completing the online booking.

IBF is the world's leading intranet and portal benchmarking group and has established industry standards for intranet performance and management. Founded in 2002, IBF has grown to almost 60 major organizations globally including ExxonMobil, Unilever, Kellogg's, AstraZeneca, Cadbury Schweppes and GlaxoSmithKline.

The Intranet Innovation Awards are global awards that celebrate new ideas and innovative approaches to the design and delivery of intranets. I’ve agreed to lend my name and Prescient Digital Media’s support to these first annual awards as I customarily highlight and regularly document and write about award winning intranets on this site.

The goal of the awards is to recognize innovative intranets (whether large or small), and to share them with the wider intranet community. Uniquely, these awards recognise individual intranet improvements, and not intranets as a whole.

The Intranet Innovation Awards are now open for submissions, which must be received by 15 May 2007. Full details on the awards (including the entry form) are at: http://www.steptwo.com.au/iia/index.html

The Intranet Innovation Awards have been created by Step Two Designs, a recognised thought-leader in intranet strategy and design. These are also truly global awards, supported by a network of intranet-savvy organisations from the US to the UK, Europe and beyond.

“Intranets must innovate in order to prosper; they must constantly grow and evolve to better meet the needs of the organisations they serve,” says Step Two’s James Robertson. “While there can be no single 'best intranet', there are innovative ideas and approaches that warrant recognition.

The Intranet Innovation Awards have therefore been established to celebrate the great work done by intranet teams across the globe, to give them the recognition they deserve.

Gold Awards are given across four different categories, each focusing on a specific aspect of intranets. Platinum Award winners are then chosen to recognise the most extraordinary entries for the year.

These awards are about improving all intranets, by increasing the pace of innovation across the whole of the intranet community. Every idea, no matter how small, adds to our understanding of what it means to have a successful intranet.

Read more about the awards and download the entry form.

Getting the necessary support and funding for an intranet redesign is usually a struggle at most organizations, particularly when most view the intranet as a cost center – a necessary evil. To change this mindset, intranet managers need to show them the money.

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.

Presented by Prescient Digital Media and Summers Direct Selling A New Intranet to Senior Management is a webinar to arm you with invaluable ideas and steps for building a business case for redeveloping or redesigning your existing intranet.

Date: February 27, 2007 & Time: 1:00 – 2:30 p.m. (EST)

Specifically, we’ll teach you:

• Priorities for building a business case
• How to measure return on investment
• How to identify very specific measurable benefits
• Best practices & case studies that measure ROI

To register phone 1-866-869-7969 or e-mail register@summersdirect.com

NOTICE: The British Airways intranet webinar has been rescheduled to March 15, 2007. See Intranet Insider World Tour: British Airways.

RELATED READING:

Selling the intranet to senior management

Infant intranets need executive loving

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Learning from best practices and case study leaders is highly important to delivering highly effective intranet and Internet websites.

Here are just some of the conferences, seminars and webinars on both intranets and Internet websites that I or one of my colleagues at Prescient are conducting over the next few weeks:

(Vancouver) The Best Intranets of 2006 (BC Communications Forum)

January 29, 2007  Vancouver. BC

(Vancouver) Social Media: Are you in?

UBC Robson Square, Vancouver BC, January 30, 2007

(Calgary) Social Media: Are you in?

The Fairmont Palliser, Calgary, AB, January 31, 2007

(Toronto) Managing Change using Intranets, Blogs and Wikis - What the Professional Communicator needs to know Toronto, Ontario, February 6, 2007

Intranet Insider World Tour: British Airways

Webinar (Communitelligence.com), March 15, 2007

2nd Annual Alberta Communications Forum

Calgary, Alberta, March 1st, 2007

IntraTeam – Event 2007

Copenhagen, Demark, March 08, 2007

Selling A New Intranet to Senior Management

Webinar (Summers), February 27, 2007 (Download the registration form)

Social Software: Assessing the Value to MyBusiness

Toronto, ON March 7, 2007 (Download the registration form)

Attracting Site Users and Improving their Online Experience

Toronto and Vancouver, March 15, 2007 (Download the registration form)

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Kudos to my friend and colleague James Robertson for promoting his upcoming events and availability for clients during his next European trip. As for my availability for other speaking events or consulting to your organization, please contact me sooner than later (particularly for my upcoming European trip starting in Denmark) as I’m 85% booked over the next 8 weeks.

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 help improve your intranet… if given the right amount of time and motivation J You can e-mail him at toby{at}prescientdigital{dot-com}

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For more intranet news visit www.IntranetReport.com

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

Any of you fellow parents out there know that the wish list letter to Santa is a big deal. My daughter Rachel had her letter in the mail on December 1. Anything Barbie or Bratz is an instant winner. Frankly, I think they all look like cheap harlots.

Anyhow, I am not as well organized as my daughter so I figured I’d skip the letter writing paper and hit the blog with my intranet wish list for Santa. Gone are the dreams of the ol’ G.I. Joe, or the subsequent Star Wars action figures (though that Jar Jar Binks action figure is an instant collectible!). I’ve even given up on the Porsche and hockey season tickets. Instead, I’ve prepared a most reasonable wish list – all in the name of clients.

Dear Santa, having been a good boy (mostly) this year, I would like to request the following for the intranets of my clients (past, present and future):

1-     Senior management support – as you know all to well, as the CEO of a flourishing elven manufacturing conglomerate, the success of the intranet is largely dependent on the level of support afforded by the executive suite. As your case study reveals, the success of Santa’s intranet largely flows from the big guy in the big red suit. Please impress upon the elves and in turn all of their customers and clients that their respective intranets deserve more support (and funding) from the other big fat executives.

2-     Measured value – successful intranets deliver a ton of value – almost as much value as toys in your sleigh. From cost savings to increased sales and employee productivity, the intranet is a virtual Christmas stocking chalked full of goodies. Please convince more companies to measure the value of their intranets – particularly ROI and employee productivity. If they refuse, a lump of coal should suffice.

3-     A decent RFP – Santa, please send a fleet of your elves out into the market to teach purchasing, IT and communications managers how to write an RFP. With the North Pole’s purchasing power and financial genius surely you can impart upon these souls that a successful RFP is more than one or two paragraphs of requirements and 15 pages of legal mulch and schedules. As Donder and Blitzen have oft said, a thorough RFP to reconstruct an intranet has some at least a dozen (if not two dozen) pages of requirements and should include information architectures, site metrics (including number of pages requiring migration), required functionality and integration, etc. If teaching fails, then send that new reindeer Knuckles.

4-    Loose the design – Please ignore any letters that ask for an intranet redesign. Even the half-wit reindeers Prancer and Vixen know full well that the success of an intranet has nothing to do with design. In fact, design doesn’t even make it into the top 20 most important aspects of an intranet. Please deliver each manager seeking to reconstruct their intranet a copy of Transforming your intranet so that they may shake this deadly design virus. Or heck, give them an RSS feed of IntranetBlog.com. It’s particularly good reading when washed down with some shortbread and egg nog (the real stuff, not that sickly drool called egg nog lite. Be afraid of any food that spells ‘light’ as ‘lite’… be very afraid.)

5-     A gun – Actually, all I want for Christmas is a Red Ryder carbon-action, 200-shot range model air rifle with a special sight, a compass in the stock and a sun dial. I promise not to shoot my eye out. But I’d settle for world peace – and tall glass of real egg nog.J

ON A PERSONAL NOTE: We’ve crawled from under all of the freakish storms that have pounded the Pacific West Coast in the past few weeks. We survived, but unfortunately, the equivalent of many forests were wiped out (see some of the windstorm damage to the world famous Stanley Park where thousands of trees were toppled).

I won’t be working much over the holiday except for the odd sign-in and missive on IntranetBlog.com so please, no e-mail! I’ll be too busy having fun with family, playing hockey, skiing a lot, catching up on my reading and mostly sleeping (if the baby lets me).

Happy holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Channukah, Merry Kwanzaa and Happy (insert religious festival here)!! Special kudos to the Iraq Study Group, Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns for winning 15 games straight, Stephen Harper for calling Hamas for what they are, Sidney Crosby for taking over the NHL, and to everyone and anyone who gives generously to the less fortunate this year (my cause continues to be Unicef – click to donate).

Most intranets have humble beginnings that grow and grow and then, like a weed, grow out of control. Fidelity’s intranet began at the grass-roots level in the mid-1990s, and since then has undergone three formal design iterations – with many smaller enhancements along the way. 

In 1997, the first official corporate intranet introduced content integrity standards, a cohesive information architecture, and a standard look and feel.  In 2002, the introduction of portal technology allowed content to be targeted to employees based on criteria such as business unit, region or role, and enabled each employee to customize the homepage to best meet their needs. The portal’s user interface got an extreme makeover in 2006, with a streamlined appearan