Iron Mountain Incorporated (NYSE:IRM) helps organizations around the world reduce the costs and risks associated with information protection and storage. The Company offers comprehensive records management, data protection, and information destruction solutions along with the expertise and experience to address complex information challenges such as rising storage costs, litigation, regulatory compliance and disaster recovery. Founded in 1951, Iron Mountain has 20,000+ employees and is a trusted partner to more than 120,000 corporate clients throughout North America, Europe, Latin America and the Pacific Rim.

The following is a summary of the “Delivering a high-performing intranet (Case study with Iron Mountain)” intranet webinar on May 28, 2009, with Cathy Mcknight and Cheryl Travis.

6 stages of project management (Cathy Mcknight, Prescient Digital Media):

1- Enthusiasm

2- Depression

3- Panic

4- Search for the guilty

5- Punishment of the innocent

6- Rewards for the non-participants

Planning:

• “Failing to plan is a plan for failure.”

• “A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”

• “Ensuring you have key planning documents in place (be it the style guide, or content plan)... it's absolutely critical, and its saved my (intranet) project in many ways,” Cheryl Travis, Iron Mountain
  
  

Planning involves understanding

• business needs

• functional needs

• the right technology needs

• resources (internal and external)

• budget

Planning is done – now what?

Governance

• Governance structure

• Roles and responsibilities

• Supporting documentation

Communications

• Engaging leadership

• Engaging content owners & publishers

• Pre-launch employee communications

• Launch

• Ongoing communications (keeping momentum)

“We certainly need to engage leadership because frankly these are the people that fund the intranet,” Cheryl Travis, Iron Mountain

Content

• Content audit

• Content ownership

• Approvals and publishing

• Creating and repurposing

• Translation

• Archiving

• Reviewing and updating

Technology

• System requirements

• Resource requirements

• Ongoing support

(Note: Iron Mountain uses SharePoint for their intranet, Scout)

Site Build

• IA

• Wireframes

• Design

“For information architecture (IA) and wireframes you can't rely on your own internal team because they live the company everyday,” says Cheryl. “You want the IA to live no matter how your organizations changes. To have a 3^rd party to structure your IA is critical.”

Lessons learned at Iron Mountain

• Engage content owners at the start

• Rely on your independent resources

• Trust your sixth sense

• Keep communications lines open

“The sooner you communicate with them (content owners), the better,” Cheryl Travis, Iron Mountain.

The intranet gap

“What the business wants and what IT delivers can be two different things,” Cathy Mcknight, Prescient Digital Media. “An intranet is a process, not an event.”

“Its really good to have an outside expert to apply best practices,” says Cheryl “They have the clout and experience to do this (Prescient Digital Media).”

While generic in nature, there are some components of SharePoint that require specific consideration, and are discussed and addressed by the interviewed subject matter experts and the included case studies (see Planning for SharePoint Success).

“Without proper architecture and governance, I can guarantee you that SharePoint will fail,” says Bob Mixon, President of Mixon Consulting, addressing the annual Enterprise 3 conference in San Diego.

In particular, the powerful Team Site features and easy deployment features (Site Collections) of SharePoint make it even more demanding of a rigorous plan and detailed governance model. While intranet governance provides clarity and rules: namely the titles, roles and responsibilities of its owners, managers, stakeholders and contributors.

Sadly, very few organizations actually have a well-defined governance model, and many of those have spent hundreds-of-thousands to millions of dollars on their website or intranet – amounting to extraordinary investments left to chance and execution on a whim.

According to the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey:

• only 47% of organizations have a defined governance model (32% have 6,000 employees or more; 11% have 30,000 employees or more);

• of the tools and platforms being used by survey participants, a whopping 47% are using SharePoint (MOSS 2007) in some shape or form.

Intranet Sprawl

As IP technology has advanced corporate intranets have become more complex and interactive including human resource and purchasing applications, collaboration tools, business intelligence and real-time reporting tools. Some organizations without intranet governance and enterprise standards (for web page and content creation) have seen the birth of individual intranets for every department and work team. “Do-what-you-like” was the only rule and the corporate network became the wild west or ‘intranet sprawl’.

'Intranet sprawl' can be a poisonous side-effect of SharePoint Team Site and site collection use without the proper “rules” for deploying and managing sites. However, its not merely a SharePoint problem. At one point at the turn of the millennium, IBM's network was choked with approximately 10,000 intranet sites before they undertook a governance process and federation (consolidation campaign) that saved the company untold millions (IBM claims its saved more than a $1 billion).

Perhaps more so than most, SharePoint (MOSS 2007 or WSS) requires a governance model. I categorize intranet governance by four broad approaches or models:

• Decentralized (no single owner; do-what-you-like)

• Centralized a single owner or department controls it all; highly bureaucratic; common in small organizations)

• Collaborative (shared ownership via committee)

• Hybrid, centralized (single owner, with collaborative accountability, decentralized content ownership)

Learn more about planning and governance for the corporate intranet, with a specific focus on MOSS 2007, during our free webinar Planning for SharePoint Success (April 13).

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“Sprint Nextel offers a comprehensive range of wireless and wireline communications services bringing the freedom of mobility to consumers, businesses and government users. Sprint Nextel is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including two wireless networks serving nearly 51 million customers.”

Intranet: i-Connect

HQ: Kansas City

Owner: Communications

Vision

“Always on, always accurate, always easy…wherever you need it.”

Purpose

The online home for fast, easy access to the essential Sprint tools, information and personal connections you need.

Sprint intranet home page, i-Connect

Intranet Success Standards

• Usage: The primary resource for internal Sprint information

• Content: Content is relevant, accurate and updated

• Navigation: Navigation is simple and associates quickly find what they are looking for

• End User Engagement: End users participate in the process of updating content and recommending changes
  

• Client/Business Partner Relations: Clients and business partners entrust us as the stewards of i-Connect and its users
  

• Overall Satisfaction: End users are satisfied

Survey Results Key Findings: Satisfaction

“In the last six months, how satisfied have you been with i-Connect as your online

home for fast, easy access to the essential Sprint tools, information and personal

connections you need?”

• Search

• Navigation (Department Pages, My Work & Our Company)

• Consolidation/better integration of web tools

• Log-In

• Customization

• Outside sources “scoop” internal news on occasion

Key Intranet Features:

• Comprehensive news center

• Blogs

• Discussion forums

• Project sites

• Company calendar

• My profile (my site)

To learn more about the Sprint intranet, and other top-rated intranets showcased at The Intranet Insider World Tour Live (NYC April 16 – 17). Register now for the Intranet Insider World Tour LIVE (only $800 for 2-days of jam-paced learnings).

Some of the other top rated intranets being showcased at this year's conference:

• Sprint Nextel

• Con Edison

• IKEA

• Siemens

• IBM

• Deloitte

• Thomson Reuters

• And more!

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If you're in North America and didn't make the IntraTeam Event in Denmark earlier this month, the next great intranet conference is coming-up next month: The Intranet Insider World Tour Live, New York City, NY, April 16 – 17.

Here are some of the intranets being showcased at this year's conference:

• Sprint Nextel

• Con Edison

• IKEA

• Siemens

• IBM

• Delloite

• Thomson Reuters

• And more!

I'll be co-chairing this 2-day conference in NYC (April 16 - 17) that showcases some of the best intranets going. This intimate and interactive conference event builds on the webinar and brings together the experts and practitioners from leading intranets.

This conference is taking into account the global financial crisis and is AMAZINGLY INEXPENSIVE (only $900 for 2-full days!).

Don't miss the best buy of the year and Register now for the Intranet Insider World Tour LIVE.

Here are some stats:

• 55% of organizations have implemented or are considering implementing SharePoint (Global Intranet Trends 2009 report - 227 participant organizations)

• 46% of those companies using social media on the intranet are using SharePoint(Intranet 2.0 Global Survey – 430+ participant organizations)

• Only 47% of organizations have a defined governance model (Intranet 2.0 Global Survey)

• 70% use at the department level; only 38% use it at the enterprise level (AIIM)

Many communications professionals have asked, “Is SharePoint good for my company intranet?”

SharePoint for Communicators is a webinar answers the question with advice on how to proceed.

In this five-week online workshop, we’ll examine MOSS as a technology platform, and as a communications platform for managing content including news and social media. MOSS is not known as a strong solution for a large-size enterprise intranet. But it is good starting platform in a Microsoft environment, and is very good for team and group collaboration. This workshop will consider all of the pros and cons of MOSS, with expert opinion and advice for non-techie business users and communicators. Included in this Webinar will be:

1. Introduction to MOSS—An overview of the technology in non-techie language.

2. Pros and cons of MOSS for communicators—The good, bad and the things Microsoft won’t always tell you.

3. MOSS for content management—The elements and functionality of the content management system and how it compares to other systems.

4. Planning & Governance—MOSS can in fact create more problems without the necessary planning and governance. We’ll tell you what you need to prepare.

5. Plug-ins and alternatives to MOSS—MOSS is a very complex platform, but there are many additional modules and plug-ins that can enhance it greatly… We’ll also compare MOSS to other alternative solutions.

Webinars are asynchronous-you participate when it’s convenient for you. A new text-based lecture is posted each Monday morning, but you can take advantage of it whenever you have the time. Be sure to watch the video demo of the webinar format to determine if it’s right for your professional development needs.

Register for SharePoint for Communicators webinar

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(COPENHAGEN, DENMARK) Full slides from the “Integrating Social Media Into Intranets” with added insight on marketing and promoting the intranet below:

Marketing Intranet 2.0 is not unlike marketing the original intarnet – emploeyes have to...

1- know that the tools exist, and how they work

2- understand why the tools are of value to them and the organization

As I stated in Marketing the intranet, “If you build it they will not come. Of course, there will always be the curious and keeners and those that inherently understand it, but an intranet firing at maximum value requires marketing.”

A number of recommended insights come from Sodexo USA (thanks to Angelo Iofredda and Eileen Daly) who were very active in marketing their intranet, and shared their intranet marketing plan that focuses on six major components:

• Promote ongoing SodexhoNet name recognition and key wins.

• Highlight the variety of useful content through on- and off-line.

• Increase essential content and applications available only online.

• Increase content – including fun content – that drives repeat visits.

• Encourage continued endorsements from senior leadership.

• Support content owners – increase skill level and enthusiasm, identify and leverage best practices.

As far as tactics go, tried-and-true practices are still relevant for intranet 2.0 including:

• E-mail broadcasts

• Home page and newsletter stories

• Cross link from blogs, wikis, discussion forums, etc.
  

• Executive promotion

• Hosted chats with the CEO

• Posters and mousepads

• Premiums (handouts)

• Screensavers

• Twitter/Yammer, etc.

Not to be underestimated, and probably the most valuable tactic would be to create stories or features that quote your own executives that relate to subject matters discussed on a blog, wiki, or in a discussion forum, that links into the related social media tool while encouraging employees to “join in the conversation” or to “agree, disagree or comment” on the subject at hand.

Continue reading:

Marketing Intranet 2.0

These are just some of the issues to be addressed in tomorrow's Putting Social Media to work in your Intranet Strategy (February 26th, 2009, 12PM EST – it's free to attend but you need to reserve your spot now).

The real value of social media on the intranet are the relationships and connections that are built and enhanced for unlocking tacit knowledge and unleashing creativity and future potential. Consider the research findings of MIT¹:

• 40% of creative teams productivity is directly explained by the amount of communication they have with others to discover, gather, and internalise information.

• Employees with the most extensive digital networks are 7% more productive than their colleagues.

And yet while most social media represent simple technology (and some like discussion forums and instant messaging have been around for more than 10 years), it is new enough that most employees have little experience using it (particularly older generations) or struggle with understanding the value it represents to the business. This cultural shift or barrier is also explicit in the findings of the Intranet 2.0 Global Study (430+ organizations worldwide) where most organizations have implemented or are planning to implement social media, but few really know or understand how to make it work (or are able to convince senior management or employees of the value):

• 41% have implemented blogs, but only 11% at the enterprise level

  • Those that don't have blogs, only 11% don't plan to use them; the remainder have plans or are considering their implementation

• 46% have implemented wikis, but only 15% at the enterprise level

  • Those that don't have wikis, only 10% don't plan to use them; the remainder have plans or are considering their implementation

• 47% have implemented discussion forums, but only 20% at the enterprise level

  • Those that don't have discussion forums, only 9% don't plan to use them; the remainder have plans or are considering their implementation

Amongst the biggest barriers to implementing social media on the intranet:

• Lack of executive support (33%)

• Lack of a business case (31%)

• IT supprt (31%)

• Addressing internal policy concerns (29%)

If your executives don't understand or see the value in social media, older generation employees certainly won't flock to adopt. However, the pressure to adopt and innovate comes from the younger generation, particularly those under 40. Here in Canada, more than 90% of those under 40-years-old are on Facebook. You can imagine how eager those same employees might be to use “employee networking” and other social media tools on the corporate intranet if they were educated as to how it works, and why it's of value to them.

Leading me to the potential cost of failing to adopt social media into your intranet strategy: 39% of 18 to 24 year-old employees would consider leaving their employer if they were not allowed to access sites like Facebook and YouTube; a further 21% indicated that they would feel ‘annoyed’ by such a ban (Telindus study of 1,000 European employees).

--

ATTEND THE WEBINAR: Putting Social Media to work in your Intranet Strategy (February 26th, 2009, 12PM EST – it's free to attend but you need to reserve your spot now).

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER: www.Twitter.com/TobyWard

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While MOSS is being used for its ubiquitous file sharing capabilities, it is very rarely used for more advanced functions including:

• Web content management

• Digital asset management

• Business Process automation

• Records management

• Forms management

Of those tools and applications that are being used sometimes:

• Search

• Collaboration

• Portal

• Document management

Highlighted in an Oracle sponsored webinar (yes, that raised a few eyebrows) entitled “SharePoint: Truth and Fiction”, other survey findings include:

• Number one reason for deploying MOSS: its inexpensive

• 50% of participants found development of custom solutions required more effort than expected

• 70% use at the department level; only 38% use it at the enterprise level.

• Some to no leverage in compliance, e-discovery, external website, complex authoring, archival/preservation

• 78% of participant users rank MOSS file sharing as good to excellent

• #1 challenge to development: developer training and toolset (cited by 44% of participants)

Amongst the major recommendations conatined in the study's findings:

• Focus on collaboration (internal)

• Requires strategy, position, and planning

• Develop or acquire expertise

ANALYSIS: This survey is highly biased by MOSS users; 70% of organizations are not using SharePoint (research by Prescient Digital Media, Forrester and Gartner peg it at somewhere between the high 40 percentile and low 50 percentile).

However, the research (conducted by Carl Frappaolo, Information Architected) has some good intelligence and findings. Many organizations are in fact not using MOSS at the enterprise level – a very telling finding. But while MOSS is an inexpensive solution for a small organization, it is in fact quite the opposite for a large organization looking at enterprise licenses – a scenario which can be outrageously expensive and even considerably more than the Cadillac of portals, IBM's WebSphere Portal.

LEARN MORE:

If you're in Europe I strongly suggest you attend my session SharePoint (MOSS 2007)-Pros and Cons on March 4 at the IntraTeam Event (conference) in Copenhagen. Readers of IntranetBlog.com also get a discount of 15%. Just use price code: "Prescient15" when you reserve on the IntraTeam website.

Reserve now for IntraTeam 2009 in Copenhagen.

In North America, be sure to attend the free webinar Planning for SharePoint Success, presented by myself and Prescient Digital Media on April 13th, 2009.

Reserve today for Planning for SharePoint Success.

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