Like
any business, an intranet without a strategy is an intranet looking
to die. Although an over-arching business strategy should be highly
complex that takes into account many external factors and variables
(e.g. competitive assessment), an intranet strategy is not as complex
nor time-consuming.
An intranet strategy
has definition, is well documented and shared by all stakeholders,
and has key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics. The strategy
provides direction for executable actions (in the context of this
article, we will treat strategy as synonymous with plan, though a
strategy in the broader definition might contain many plans). For an
intranet, a typical strategy would include the following elements:
1- Assessment –
understanding the needs and requirements for the intranet
2- Planning –
strategy development including the governance model and design
3- Technology –
where execution begins with the selection of the technology
4 – Implementation
– “the rubber hits-the-road” execution of the strategy
5- Marketing –
communications, change management, and promotion
Execution
“A
very general definition of the term “implementation” is execution
of an idea, plan, design, model, standard, algorithm, or policy,”
writes Prescient Digital Media's Cathy Mcknight in Implementing
your intranet plan and other dastardly deeds.
“In the realm of information technology, an implementation is the
realization of a technical specification as some type of computer
related system or applications. The key words being; plan,
specification and realization.”
In
short, if your plans are sound, then execution is relatively
straight-forward: everyone knows their job, the schedule, and the
budget. This of course is easier said than done and requires strong
project management to ensure that all plans are executed as directed.
Of course, even the best plans and projects have hiccups; all
technology projects hit barriers and are challenged by problems
(technology is imperfect, almost as imperfect as the people
implementing the technology). To overcome these problems and
challenges requires the aforementioned detailed plans, and a strong
project manager or three that has experience steering intranet
projects.
The
intranet is not just a piece of technology; not merely an IT project,
nor is it a communications vehicle or channel; the intranet is a
business system that should represent and support all areas of the
business. In fact, the intranet is one part technology, and many
parts people and process, that requires a detailed strategy (plans)
to ensure all work in tandem. No complex system such as an intranet
can adequately support a company and a workforce without a thorough
strategy.
Read
more on intranet strategy: Intranet
strategy - planning a successful intranet
Toby
Ward,
a former journalist, prominent writer, speaker on intranets and
intranet planning, is the President of Prescient Digital Media. To
learn how to undertake effective intranet strategy please see our
intranet service offering The
Intranet Strategy ,
or download the free Good-To-Great
Intranet Matrix.
For more information, contact
Prescient
directly.
Like
the content of your website or intranet, planning and governance is
technology agnostic; whether its SharePoint or another portal or
content management platform, the necessity for and the approach to
governance is the same. Given its technology neutral status in the
realm of website and intranet evolution this module on planning and
governance is largely applicable to any technology platform and as
such is generic to start.
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.
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).
(TEL AVIV, Israel) I
once asked an intranet manager if they had a defined intranet
strategy. His response was to say “sort of... it's mostly up here”
(pointing to his noggin). Ummm... no, they didn't have a strategy.
Unfortunately, most organizations are not dissimilar and do not have
an intranet strategy.
A
strategy has definition, is well documented and shared by all
stakeholders, and has key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics.
The strategy provides direction for executable actions (in the
context of this article, we will treat strategy as synonymous with
plan, though a strategy in the broader definition might contain many
plans). For an intranet, a typical strategy would include the
following elements:
Intranet
and portal specialist Jane McConnell of NetStrategy highlights the
latest trends identified in her Global
Intranet Trends
Report for 2009
(226 participating organizations around the world; from under 5,000
to over 100,000 employees in Euope, North America and Asia-Pacific).
Important
ingredients for a successful intranet:
Leadership
Teamwork
Empowering
employees
Optimizing
activities & processes
Focusing
on the needs of the customer (external)
Direction
of intranets:
Portal
concepts – aggregating content and tools into a single screen
Integration
of applicatons – HR, business applications, collaboration spaces
Social
media – user-generated content
Management
awareness – senior management is slowly becoming aware of
intranets
Changes
in business:
Virtual
teams (geographically dispersed)
New
expectations
Tele-working
(working remotely)
Smart
phones (mobile access of the intranet)
The
intranet is on the verge of breaking:
Today's
typical intranet is not sustainable
Too
top-down
Not
business-oriented
Not
people-oriented
Out-of-date
Arthritic
– too hard to publish
Closed
– limited to employees (closed to partners & contractors)
Sendetary
– limtied to office, PCs
One
out of five intranets is in stage 3 (the intranet is “the way of
working” now); 43% are stage 2 (it will be “the way of working”
within in 1-2 years); 1/3 hope to evolve to stage 3 within 4-5
years).
Views
of Stage 1 intranet:
“Our focus this year
and last year is around communication, navigation and self-service,
as these are areas we have the most control over.”
View
of Stage 2 intranet
“Our biggest
challenge fo rnext year is to change the culture of the company to
not use email for example as a communication/ collaboration medium.”
View
of Stage 3 intranet
“Portal usage is
include in personal KPI for our perfrmance management system. This
included measurements on quality / quantity of project updates,
information published, etc. This has encourage people to integrate
the portal in to their respective business processes.”
Is
the intranet is the main entry point to applications... (the user has
to go to the intranet to get to key applications)?
Business
applications & process support – 77% of stage 3 intranets; 45%
of stage 2 intranets; 27% of stage 1 intranets
Management
reporting, dashboards – 55% of stage 3 intranets; 30% of stage 2
intranets; 9% of stage 1 intranets
Employee
life and career (HR) -- 77% of stage 3 intranets; 45% of stage 2
intranets; 27% of stage 1 intranets
Management
reporting, dashboards – 90% of stage 3 intranets; 74% of stage 2
intranets; 58% of stage 1 intranets
OTHER
NOTABLE FINDINGS:
Stage
3 intranets have more top leadership & operational participation
in intranet steering committees.
C-level
executives now participate on the intranet steering committees of
half of the respondent companies that have a steering committee
(about 1/3 of the respondent companies have a steering committee;
roughly 1/6th of the total respondents therefore have a senior
executive actively involved)
Only
45% have networks or communities of practice for content
contributors
Only
36% of the organizations have “clearly designated business owners
for content”
only
1% stage 1 intranets have wikis in general use (optimized); 35% are
testing intranets (in some parts)
10%
of stage 3 intranets have wikis in general use (optimized); 74% are
testing intranets (in some parts)
2%
of stage 3 intranets have wikis in general use (optimized); 30% are
testing intranets (in some parts)
The
choir has been singing for some time. Though most executives haven't
bought into the gospel, they've heard the message and are beginning to take notice: the intranet is a valuable asset.
According
to Jane McConnell's annual Global
Intranet Trends 2009 report, c-level executives now participate
on the intranet steering committees of half of the respondent
companies that have a steering committee (about 1/3 of the respondent companies have a steering committee; roughly 1/6th of the total respondents therefore have a senior executive actively involved). While it is true that most of the
remaining organizations don't have a senior executive actively
engaged, this finding represents a marked increase over 2007. In
2007, only one-third of the intranet steering committees have the privilege of
a c-level executive on the intranet steering committee.
While there is hope that more executives will come to realize -- or be convinced -- of the intranet's value to an organization, there is still pause for concern. The study finds that only 14% of the respondent intranets consider the intranet as "business critical." This is unfortunate because in many instances the intranet is business critical; others may not have the chance to become business critical because senior management aren't convinced they should invest in the intranet or a redesign.
The
truth of the matter is that an intranet manger or consultant's number
one job is sales – selling the value of the intranet. Most c-level
executives don't have a clue what the intranet can do for the
organization, and they sure as hell don't use it themselves. Consider
the findings from last year's Global Intranet Trends Report finds:
40%
of respondents say the lack of senior management ownership
(stewardship or championing) of the intranet is a serious obstacle
44%
of respondents say the intranet is not seen as a priority and is a
“serious obstacle”
In
nearly half the organizations, senior management is a “serious
obstacle.” However, the blame is not always the fault of senior
management, who often don't understand the intranet because they have
bigger concerns. To wit: “Even when the intranet strategy is
documented, which is the case in over 60% of respondents the
precentages drop rapidly regarding senior managemetn signoffs,”
states the report.
Most
organizations, even the above average organizations that participate
in the annual intranet study, don't have a documented strategy! No
wonder your senior management doesn't support the intranet!
Executives can be excused for not supporting the intranet in those
organizations where the intranet doesn't have a stragegy or even a
simple business case in the form of a needs-benefits analysis. In
those cases, senior management is not the obstacle, its the intranet
team!!
Not
surprising then that the Global
Intranet Trends study has uncovered that 80% of “stage 3”
intranets (the most advanced, valued intranets on Jane's 3-point
scale) do have a strategy. The link between intranet value and
strategy is becoming clear. Having said that, a strategy unto itself
is not a strategy; the best intranets have strategies and senior
management support. “When documented strategies and steering groups
do exist, they often do not have sufficient involvement from business
related people nor decision-makers in out-lying parts of their
organizations,” concludes Jane. “This is part of the reason that
senior managers are not always sufficiently aware of the intranet.”
The
single-edged sword is not enough: a great intranet requires both a
strategy and senior management support. Without senior management
support, you need to find or buy a sales hat. Learn to sell the
intranet – or hire an outside intranet consultant who can (see How
to hire an intranet consultant). Putting on your sales hat,
requires:
Case
studies - showcase to executives what a winning intranet looks like
Active
commitment – use case studies and needs analsysis to secure an
executive champion (or 2)
Business
case – work with your executive champion to determine the
requirements for an effective business case
Sales
presentation – with all of the above, hit the road and sell every
executive that will listen
Proposal
– now you're ready to send your proposal to funding committee or
executive that will ultimately determine your budget
Unfortunately
the executive suite and senior management have proven that most
companies care little for the intranet, and still in fact view it as
a cost center. Unless intranet managers can find their sales hats
then little will change the minds of executives who, by and large,
will limit the investment in the intranet or enterprise portal.
The
above findings and insight from this year's Global
Intranet Trends 2009 report are just a fraction of a percentage
of the insight and findings you need to know. Do yourself a favor and
order the Global Intranet Trends 2009 report – it's worth it.
Additionally, you can see both Jane and I present our insights and findings from our respective studies (mine being the big study on Intranet 2.0) at this year's IntraTeam
Event on March 3-5, 2009
in
Copenhagen. This will be the top intranet event in Europe this year. Readers of IntranetBlog.com also get a discount of 15%. Just use price code: "Prescient15" when you reserve on the IntraTeam website.
Once a
necessary evil, or completely ignored all together, employee communications is
becoming a vital discipline and corporate function at leading organizations.
“10 years
ago in employee communications I found that we were moving away from the
classic, traditional forms of employee communications… and to this new age that
we’re in: moving away from regional and cultural change into an age of new
commitment,” adds Keith. “And that new age of commitment means we have to use
listening tools better, we have to use the technology we have today better than
we have ever in the past. And that includes intranet technologies, as well as
other forms of digital and social media.”
The need
for better “listening” and communications could not be more starkly highlighted
in the Watson
Wyatt Communication ROI Study™.Among the findings, those companies that invest in employee
communications realize greater profits:
Companies that communicate
effectively have a 19.4 percent higher market premium than companies that
do not.
Shareholder returns for
organizations with the most effective communication were over 57 percent
higher over the last five years (2000-2004) than were returns for firms
with less effective communication.
Communication effectiveness
is a leading indicator of financial performance.
In
becoming effective employee communications cultures, technology including the
intranet and social media are becoming critical delivery and participation
channels.
“I
believe today that with the focus on authenticity, with the focus on new ways
of delivering communications… and social media… our world is dramatically
changing,” says Burton. “We have employees today, as an
example, who are receiving information both in the media as well as inside the
organization that influences their working different parts of the world.”
As for
the future, story-telling models and social media (Web 2.0 / Intranet 2.0)
might provide a sneak preview to the changes aheadin an increasingly important field.
“I think
the next 10-years will be dramatically different,” says Burton, who leads arguably the world’s
top agency dedicated to employee communications in Chicago-based Insidedge. “I think we’ll see more focus
around a grass-roots, bottom-up form of employee communications… rather than
the hierarchal communication. I think it will be populated more by the
story-telling model models that we seen in companies like Dow Chemical. We’ll
see organizations that have to bridge cultures better… in creating a
singularity in culture where employee communications is a very, very vital part
of that world.”
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
I’m not going to drone on about this process and the importance of people and business requirements in a blog article. Sufficed to say however I’ve built a business around this methodology and worked with many dozens of companies that understand the need to align the business with the intranet and to demonstrate measured value. Initiating an intranet redesign begins with the people and documenting their requirements and that of the entire business.
Speaking on a similar topic at KM World & Intranets 2006 this past week in San Jose, my colleague Carm Porco met Nicole Engard, Web Manager for the Jenkins Law Libraryin Philadelphia. Nicole actually has a pretty good little blog (What I Learned Today) where she’s published a very detailed, lengthy and worthwhile case study documenting the complete redesign of their intranet.
“While the design was important, we saw an opportunity for a complete redevelopment. After researching what other libraries were doing with their intranets, we decided to use read/write Web or Web 2.0 technology,” writes Nicole in her posting Intranet 2.0: Fostering Collaboration with a Homegrown Intranet. “In May 2005 we offered an introduction to the read/write Web for our staff. We defined terms like blog, wiki, and portal, then pointed them to Wikipedia [www.wikipedia.org], encouraging them to edit articles that interested them so that they could get used to wiki technology and syntax.
Once we had a direction, we needed to decide whether to use a prepackaged site or develop something in-house. We wanted more than just a wiki; we wanted blogs (one for news and inter-department communication, and several for ongoing projects), a Web-based helpdesk, and a shared calendar. Most importantly, we wanted to be able to easily link to our homegrown modules. At first we looked at free and low cost portal/content management packages, but nothing lived up to our expectations. In the end we decided to build our own site using PHP and MySQL.”
Jenkins intranet home
The case study focuses a little too much on tools and design and barely touches on the needs of the organization and how performance will be gauged and measured, but it is a pretty good illustration that the efforts involved in a redesign are very significant.
To learn about Prescient's intranet planning services, please see our Intranet Blueprint service.
--
Toby Ward, a former journalist and prominent writer and speaker on intranets and intranet planning, is the President of Prescient Digital Media. To learn how to undertake effective intranet planning, or to get our free intranet white paper, Finding ROI, please contact us directly.
