Large companies with many thousands of employees dispersed across great regions and dozens of locations require an effective intranet. Communications, connection and community are critical making the intranet a mandatory requirement for success.

Sodhexo USA provides a solid example of how to deploy just such an intranet for a large diversely situated organization – and it’s 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. The intranet home page, SodhexoNet, is a tying bond that links most of the managers and management of this diverse and disparate group.

While most employees are not registered users with access, the value of the intranet drives the growth in the number that do use the intranet. Registered users have grown from 2,000 in April, 1999, to more than 14,000 users today.

Like all effective systems, SodhexoNet 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

SodhexoNet’s greatest strength however is its management team, lead by corporate communications. To be specific, the strength lies in the team’s understanding that the intranet must intimately understand its target audience and constantly measure its performance. By measuring its success, Sodhexo 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 SodhexoNet dropped from 19% to 1%)

·     SodhexoNet 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 SodhexoNet’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. Successful leads submitted via the SuperSleuth intranet page generate cash rewards of up to $1000 for the person making the submission. Sodhexo 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. Wow!

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 Angelo Ioffreda, VP, Internal Communications.

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

o        Reduce costs

o        Raise efficiency

o        Bring in revenue

Sodhexo also knows that just simply creating an effective intranet is not enough. Successful intranets also require marketing. More on Sodexho’s efforts and how to market your intranet in the next installment.

IBM’s intranet portal is one of my featured best intranets, and favorite intranets, at this year’s The Best of the Internet and Intranet 2005 presentation at the 2005 IABC International Conference in Washington, DC.

W3 is the intranet home page to IBM’s to approximately 300,000 employees worldwide. W3 is a key component of IBM’s “Workforce Transformation Strategy” that lists the following as key objectives:

·     Reduce complexity

·     Bring the marketplace inside

·     Drive individual control and productivity through new tools

·     Unlock the company's collective knowledge[1]

The complexity includes a proliferation of intranet sites that numbered nearly 10,000 in 1998 and now is approximately 5,000, more than 11 million pages, and a plethora of tools and applications.

W3 provides a single starting place for the workday that is personalized by the individual and profiled to their role in the corporation. Home page personalization features include Links, News, Stock Tickers, and What’s New.

A companion section to the home page called Working Knowledge serves up relevant content based upon their employee profile (geographic location, business unit, personnel role, etc.).

Working Knowledge is driven by a network of “cross-function, cross-unit Information Brokers or content advocates” that volunteer their contributions. These IBM brokers’ primary role is to understand and identify the relevant content needs for IBM's employee groups and delivering that desired content through working knowledge portal.

“It's searchable, and there is feature that allows you to create custom categories using key words,” say Michael Reiter, Managing Director of W3. “WK is organized by more than just topic. Content is delivered via the profile, so users can get information based on their job role, organization, location (site), country, geography AND topics of interest in the employee profile.”

“The end game is to create an ever growing, organized, searchable, archived resource of information specific to their assigned audience segments..”

The site features a wide abundance of productivity tools including:

·     E-meetings1

o        36,000 employees every month

o        Saves travel & setup costs

o        Combines instant messaging,
presentations, voice

·     e-learning1

o        48% of employee training delivered on the Web

o        $284 million in annual savings

o        200,000+ received education and training online

·     e-HR1

o        Employee sat from 40% to 90%

o        Health care enrolment

o        Performance measurement, skill & career development

o        Compensation, stock options, pensions, insurance

o        Time off, transfers, eldercare, adoption, community programs

Despite their size the results have been impressive:

·   80% IBM employees visit w3 at least once per day

·   Productivity savings estimate of $80.6 million

·   Every major web project potentially saves over $200K in develop & deploy costs

·   68% view the intranet as crucial to their jobs

·   Employee retention: 52% are more satisfied to be an IBM employee because of information obtained on w3

·   3 million page views per day on average1

READ MORE ABOUT THE IBM INTRANET:

Podcasting @ IBM

Intranet World Tour: IBM leads the World

Save your dough, shut-down the rebels

IBM leads corporate blogging pack