PLEASE NOTE THE CORRECTED DATE. THIS WEBINAR IS THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2006.

A successful intranet requires a lot of smart work, hard work, planning and technology. Verizon is a company with an intranet that embodies this success, but not at the expense of innovation.

The giant U.S. communications company has a cutting-edge “technology digital workplace” that allows its geographically dispersed employee base to access corporate news, information and other important work tools via multiple online channels, including:

·    a voice-recognition portal that allows employees to get news, find out about jobs and send/hear emails over the telephone;

·    collaborative web conferencing;

·    and employee-managed forums, blogs and wikis.

The Verizon intranet

The new intranet or “workplace” has evolved well beyond a traditional intranet where employees click and pull information. Verizon’s Digital Workplace offers multiple access points to make it easier for employees to meet and do business. It's a place where access to information is unprecedented and geographic boundaries are eliminated. Verizon’s Digital Workplace is the total environment where employees create, innovate and communicate on all aspects of the business without the limitations imposed by divergent resources, face-to-face interaction and four walls.

If you’d like to learn more about Verizon’s success and its leading-edge innovation then tune into the next Intranet Insider World Tour: Verizon, Digital Workplace from Communitelligence.com and hosted by Verizon’s intranet guru Donna Itzoe and myself as the facilitator.

Intranet Insider World Tour: Verizon, Digital Workplace

Thursday, November 2

2-3:15 pm Eastern

• Find out about how Verizon provides multiple online gateways to access to applications and systems, news, project information and other tools that employees need to do their jobs.
• Learn how employees use a voice-recognition portal, instant messaging, blogs, wikis, text messaging, email and, of course, authenticated and unauthenticated web sites to collaborate and communicate real-time.
• Discover how Verizon breaks down the internal digital divide using by integrating new technologies integrated with innovative communication techniques

Reserve your spot on this key 75-minute Webinar: Intranet Insider World Tour: Verizon, Digital Workplace

Boo! Okay, really, that’s about as scary as I’m going to get here. After all I am talking about intranets... dull, boring, uneventful intranets. Hell, I may be passionate about them but I’m also a realist...

On the eve of Halloween, and having seen so many hundreds of intranets, I thought it would be fun to relate my top 5 scariest moments in my intranet years. Of course, intranets can’t really be scary in the literal sense so when I say ‘scary’ I’m really meaning ‘stupid’.

Warning: the following contains scenes with little or no graphic violence, some suggestive language and only hints of nudity and explicit conduct. Caution: Stupid managers and executives who can relate to these should hide under a blanket or shiver with embarrassment. (Some of these stories I’ve related over the years but are too amusing not to relate again...)

·    A COO who berated me for making her intranet manager cry when I gave their intranet an evaluation score of 3.5 our of 10 (when asked to rate the intranet themselves, her senior management rated the intranet even worse: 3 out of 10). Man, I’m a cruel bastard!

·    A CEO of a major financial services company with a horribly pathetic intranet with a a zero-dollar budget and was looking to cut funding further... “I think we’ve invested too much in technology already.” Blood from a stone anyone?

·    An intranet manager who put an animated cartoon caricature of a jogging Bill Clinton on the intranet HR home page. Said the intranet manager when asked the value to the business of an animated U.S. President, “... he’s sooo cute!” I guess Dick Cheney wasn’t sexy enough...

·    A Director of Human Resources: “I don’t understand why we need an intranet... I mean we have a pretty good phone system that cost us a lot!” Forget the phones; I think ‘telegrams’ are due for a comeback.

·    Any company, at any time, that chooses an intranet consultant based on a blindly designed mock-up. Forget about a plan, employee productivity, or ROI, what kind of colors and stock images will you use?!?!?!

Any scary or stupid tales to relate? Let me know and I’ll give it ink!

RELATED READING:

The Thirteen Scariest Things in IT

Is there any limit to Microsoft’s success, or their confidence (read arrogance)? For what is dubbed as “history’s biggest IT project”, Microsoft is making the final preparations to launch Windows Vista.

“Vista will be a real boon for PC buying, PC manufacturers and the PC industry because it has energy and excitement,” MS CEO Steve Ballmer told the MercuryNews.com (see Microsoft's top exec talks about Vista). “You get this really great new user interface. You get great new applications that work with that user interface. You get great new applications that work with that user interface. It's great that we have a new application that we do, Office 2007, that comes out at the same time. Some other new applications will highlight some of the key things in Vista.”

You could say that the new version of Windows, and its new version of MS-Office and Sharepoint hot on its heals, is an indication that MS is in the throws of reinventing itself. Well, not really. But they are certainly doing their damnedest to energize their battered stock price (about $7 less than it was at the start of 2002), their flat income and its continually maligned software from bugs, outside attacks, and rhetoric from the developer community that likes to put rival Apple on an evangelical pedestal.

Vista Sidebar & Gadgets

Vista though has not captured the attention and buzz that previous launches enjoyed (think Windows 95 and XP). But MS is trying.

Here’s what we know about Windows Vista:

• Business customer rollout (Christmas 2006); consumer rollout (early 2007)
• Slick new user interface (look-and-feel and navigation) with lots of graphics, animation and motion video as well as translucent window borders
• Main screen sidebar with ‘help’ gadgets including a calculator, a news reader and a currency converter.
• A window flipper where the user’s current open windows flash through a full rotation akin to a slide show
• Additional security including tougher treatment and protection against viruses (my favorite is that it apparently warn you when ANY program is to be installed on your computer including spyware and trojans) and the ability to see if anyone (such as your neighbor) is piggy-backing on your wireless network
• Users (e.g. parents) can restrict online activities (by age or by content type) such as blocking certain games and limiting computer use (Vista will also produce usage reports on where the child or user goes and for how long
• Multimedia tools for better managing photos and videos including meta tags and instantly turning photos into videos
• Hinted but not really confirmed: Vista will be able to connect to Xbox 360 and allow gamers on each platform to compete with each other

How eager is Microsoft to have you buy Vista? Well, while Vista will NOT be available for consumers in time for Christmas (despite its original plans), there is a ‘coupon’ of sorts for those of you planning to buy a computer this season. MS has announced a Vista upgrade program, which gives the buyer a

“not necessarily free Vista upgrade”. MS estimates this coupon program will cost them $1.5 billion in revenue.

Individual Vista upgrades should cost between US$100 and $260. For more information, visit www.WindowsVista.com.  

Are there any geeks out there that can recite most of the scenes from Life of Brian? No I didn’t think so...

Most of us North Americans will always liken British humor to Monty Python (or FaultyTowers). Of course Yes Minister and The Office certainly have their fans, but Python continues to be the standard bearer of British humor from our western colonial perches.

Preceding my keynote address (Building sustainable leadership support) at this year’s IBF LIVE 2006 were a couple of actors who did a four minute ditty on intranets in that classic Monty Python-esque chat amongst chaps. There were only polite snickers from the all-European audience, but I thought it was funny... but what do I know? I’m just a slow-witted Canadian (with an American-Irish lineage and influence).

Here’s an outtake (which I imagine is John Cleese and Graham Chapman so I’m going to call them as such):

John C: I didn’t even know you had an intranet?!?

Graham C: Oh god yeah, our intranet is HUUUGE! Yes, in fact, we like to call it an intranet portal.

John C: Ahhh yeah.... right. *deadpan* What’s that then?

Graham C: *pause* What is it?!

John C: Yeah.

Graham C: Well it’s quite complex to explain really... it’s like an intranet, but it’s got more... sort of... you know, stuff.

Graham C: Right. You mean it’s a BIG intranet?!?!

John C: *proudly* Oh you could say that! Yeah, Yeah. And you?

Graham C: Oh yes, yes, we’ve got an intranet as well.

John C: Big?!

Graham C: Enormous!

John C: I should say huge actually... ours is actually GIGANTIC!

Graham C: Well, ours is humongous, really. *deadpan* You can’t really buy a bigger one.

And so on...

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If you’d like to hear this bit and the entire first hour including my entire keynote address (where I also lamely poke fun at Canadians, Americans (my kin! please don’t flame me!), George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Microsoft and techies).

The entire MP3 which includes:

• Two chaps comparing their intranets (00:00 – 4 minutes)
• Conference day overview by IBF LIVE Chair Paul Miller
• Conference notes by Paul Levy
• Keynote speaker introduction by Paul Miller
• Keynote speech by Toby Ward (begins at about 13:30)

Download the entire MP3 here: http://www.mediamemory.co.uk/IBF06Part3TonyWard.mp3  

Intranets are still in their infancy, and they require more involvement from senior management. These are two of the major bang-on conclusions of Jane McConnell’s superb study on intranets ("Intranet Strategies Today & Tomorrow").

“Senior management perception of the intranet is out of sync with reality on the ground,” says Jane, a France-based intranet consultant (who works internationally) and author of the NetJMC Blog blog.  “They are largely unaware of the usefulness of the intranet for employees for their work. 55% of the respondents say that if the intranet were unavailable for 1 to 2 hours, employees would be disturbed in their work, yet only 13% of the respondents say that senior management perceives the intranet to be “business critical.”

No surprise there. The weakest intranets have the lowest level of involvement and active support from senior support. The best intranets have incredible senior management support.

Is it any surprise then that decision-making is an issue for most organisations? “Lack of awareness of the potential role of the intranet” is cited as the top obstacle for decision-making. Of course, there would be no problems with decision-making if there was in fact a senior management champion at the same organizations.

Money begets executive support. The study also found that, intranets lack sufficient funding and resources (though that almost half of the respondents expect their budgets to rise in 2007.

Jane’s study found that “almost 40% of the respondents have or plan to have internal blogs, significantly higher than the current or planned external blogs (around 15%).”

I still find it surprising then that given the current state of the intranet – what I referred to as ‘piss poor” and James Robertson referred to as “sh-te” (at this year’s IBF Live 2006) – that so many managers are obsessed about blogs, wikis and podcasting. They should be concerned about planning and governance and the role of executive management as part of that governance. But hey, blogs are certainly more sexy than governance models!!

Study participants represented 101 organisations headquartered in Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific, ranging in size from under 5000 to over 100,000 employees. Nearly 60% of the organisations operate in over 20 countries, and over one third have from 2 to 4 official languages, making the survey population very international.

“I don’t give a dam about the color… it’s about how you get things done.”

Poignant, but all-true words of Alan Huish, Employee Self Service and Intranet chief at British Airways in his presentation “Connecting Frontline Employees Globally” at IBF LIVE 2006 in London.

Despite the force of his words and practiced conviction, the sage wisdom is delivered with a dry wit and warm if not collegial appreciation for the attentive audience. And he’s right. The British Airways intranet is proof positive; nothing fancy, flashy or cool, just highly effective.

 BA Intranet (Source: Alan Huish,

“Connecting Frontline Employees Globally”, 2006)

Here’s a telling statistic of how connected employees are at BA: there are 48,000 employees worldwide, many of which are in the sky, in airports, on the road, and despite the lack of desk jockeys, the intranet gets up to 23,000 unique visitors a day. Wow.

How do they do it? They don’t give their employees laptops to travel with. There are few kiosks for them to access. In fact, BA has about 120 intranet kiosks at their big hub at Heathrow International – and their barely used.

“The key,” says Huish, “is home access: the lion’s share of access is from home.” Employees access the intranet from home – or from any browser – via a .com address with a user id and password.

Some other measures of success:

• 300 trained publishers using Lotus Notes as a publishing tool
• 94% of all employees access the intranet every month representing 6.5 million page views per month
• 100% of internal (and external) recruitment is done online
• 100% of employee travel is booked online
• 75% of pensioner (retiree) self-service is done online (wow!)
• 80% of employees update their own contact information online (from 10% in 2003)
• 33% of all training is conducted online
• $80 million in savings in the past year and a $110 million annual target

The number one application is e-Pay where employees access their paystub – delivering savings of $180,000 per year.

Huish adds that the keys to success include planning and governance with strong governance from a small cross-representative team fueled by clear transformational targets and measures.

ON A PERSONAL NOTE:

E-MAIL ALERT!! Apologies to anyone who sent me an e-mail last Wednesday or Thursday and didn’t hear from me. Please re-send as my computer broke on the way back from London…

A belated Thanksgiving to all my fellow Canadians who rightly celebrate in October –not on football day in November! Thanksgiving was a lot of fun with family but I am rather sick of turkey. I need a big Christmas ham this year…

My baby girl is getting more teeth… and she said both ‘dada’ and ‘mama’ on the same morning (only minutes apart!). What a sweetie J

Here’s an interesting factoid(s): the MVP of the NBA is Canadian Steve Nash (BC); the MVP of the NHL is Joe Thorton (ON); and the probable MVP of the American League (MLB) is Canadian Justin Morneau (also from BC). Ahhh, we are quite the breeding ground…

(LONDON, UK – Appended from “Building Sustainable Sponsorship” keynote address by Toby Ward, IBF LIVE 2006) 

In organizations with successful intranets, the intranet champion is a c-level executive. In other words, a senior executive that reports directly to the CEO. This could be the CIO, the CFO, the COO or perhaps the SVP for communications or human resources.

The greatest barrier to an intranet’s potential is politics. Technology and budget are secondary barriers. The intranet is a political football and you need an executive linebacker on your team.

Unfortunately, most intranets don’t grab the attention of executives. The intranet is left to middle managers in communications and IT with limited budget and power; conflict ensues and the intranet stalls – often for years.

If communications tries to take the leadership helm, other stakeholders are often suspicious of a ‘power play’. The same can be said for IT and HR. If budget allows, everyone respects an experienced and capable mediator. Ultimately, though, breaking this political limbo and ensuring enduring conflict resolution requires senior management support, intervention, and funding.

Tearing down the political barrier often requires an executive with the power to change. Sometimes this support can be coaxed and augmented by a third-party consultant with lots of expertise and no political axe to grind, but an arsenal full of best practices. But the buck stops at the c-level office suite.

Determining which executive makes the best champion in your organization depends on the executive and their power and influence within the ranks. Firstly, your executive champion should understand the value of the intranet and the potential it can deliver. Secondly, your executive champion needs to be involved. Not on a day-to-day basis, but when a decision needs to be made or funding is required. As far as a time commitment, your champion need only attend an occasional meeting (perhaps twice per year).

Often, executives don’t know much about intranets. In fact, most think of the intranet as a cost center. You need to educate them.

Education comes in the form of:

• Best practices and case studies (see Know the leaders and the competition)
• Employee research
• Business case with ROI

Developing a complete business case with all of the above will convince just about any executive of the need for a high value intranet. Most understand that it takes money to make money – and they want you to “show me the money.”

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(PARIS, FRA) Clearly I don’t have enough free time on my hands that I should spend any time thinking of this, but since this particular trip is completely subsumed by everything intranet (on behalf of clients and conferences), here is a randomly generated metaphor that springs to mind as I sit in a brasserie downing a quick and unremarkable verre de Merlot before my harried return to London on the Eurostar….

Paris is like a corporate intranet:

• Large and sprawling;
• Busy and bewildering;
• Noisy and vibrant;
• Culturally rich;
• Confusing and inconsistent navigation schemas (signs);
• Highly political; and
• Its citizens are highly demanding and passionate with extraordinarily diverse needs and interests.

There really is no other city like Paris (of course, Nice has always struck me as just a smaller, richer, sunnier version…) but the same could be said of some of the other great cities I’ve spent time in the past week: New York, London and Vancouver.

Landmark spectacles that Paris has that should be present on the average intranet:

• Fine museums (detailed historical and photographical archives);
• Large pointy towers that serve no particular purpose but to attract flocks of cash wielding people;
• Brasseries avec Kronenburg et Bordeaux;
• Sprawling artistic cemeteries with rotting, famous musicians, poets and actors; and
• A massively ornate, excessively expensive shrine to a formerly disgraced megalomaniac and war mongering dictator.

Oh wait, actually the intranet could do without the last two… but the Bordeaux would be nice.

(LONDON, UK) 80% of larger organizations said that employees were not taking full advantage of intranet, according to a new study introduced by the The Irish Computer Society.

Conducted by Amárach Consulting, the study of some 218 workers “responsible for managing intranets in their organizations” also indicated that 86% of participants indicated that intranet will become more important in the near future.

Neither of this of course is news, but it of course it is important to once again stress why intranets are not being used to the extent they should. The onus however is not on employees to go use it – the onus is on the organization and intranet managers to deliver the value and inform and educate the masses.

Reason #1: No value, no use. Sadly, most corporate intranets are still woefully sub-par. Employees see little value, are confused by poor navigation schemas and unwieldy search results (normally because of poor content management and meta tagging – or the complete absence of it). If the intranet delivers little value and confuses and frustrates users, then use will be predictably low.

Reason #2: No marketing, no use. If you use it, they will not come. Some will, but like everything in life, if employees know little about the intranet other than the quick glimpses they get of the home page, then use will be correspondingly low. The intranet must be sold and promoted. (For more information, see Marketing the intranet).

Reason #3: Change management. Most employees are far less web savvy than you and me.  Most staff are used to gaining information and collaborating through different channels – namely face-to-face, e-mail and phone communications. As such, making the intranet an important tool and system in the daily lives of workers is an exercise in change management which requires not only education, training and promotion, but systemic changes to internal business systems. For example, most organizations still allow employees to set their own default home page within their browser. It’s nice to have that freedom of course, but employees at work to work. I’m not an advocate of blocking Internet access to, for example, news and sports websites, but I’d make employees work for it.

Reason #4: Technology cart before the horse. Just about every organization has done it: selected the intranet platform or system, designed and launched the home page and then decided (sometimes years after the fact) that a plan is needed. There are thousands of content management systems, portal products and other emerging platforms out there… how does the standard organization know which is best for them without developing a comprehensive plan that itemizes and weights it’s business and functional requirements.

The Irish intranet study found that 61% of respondents indicated that they used Microsoft systems for their intranet. Why is that? I’ll tell you why: Microsoft have amazing marketing and sales. Most companies operate on Windows and MS-Office. Making the decision to buy MS-Sharepoint and MS-CMS are safe decisions. And these products work for some organizatons. However, what works for one organization will not necessarily work for another. Like people, they’re all different – with different needs, expectations and cultures. It’s good for Microsoft that many companies automatically defer to Microsoft products without a comprehensive plan, it’s bad for the intranet and employees.

OTHER SURVEY FINDINGS:

• 28% made Google the most popular proprietary search technology on intranet.
• 67% said there is no benchmarking of intranet against industry standards.
• 78% said they did not know of, or did not have any accessibility compliance.
• About 55% of intranets are controlled by IT.
• While a great variety of tools and features are available, document management, contact management and e-learning are consistently present.
• Both in-house and proprietary content management technologies are used in equal measure.
• Detailed tracking of staff or department use of intranet does not take place.
• Accessibility compliance is low at 20% but major improvements in this area planned.
• Almost 50% indicating that intranet had been revised and re-developed more than three times since inception; a significant number of organizations, 18% said they had developed and revised intranet deployments more than 5 times.
• Equal numbers of respondents 42% in both instances, indicated that they used in-house and proprietary Content Management Systems, with 16% saying they did not know the specifics of the CMS used.
• There was a three way split between respondents when asked to assess the level of importance of intranet compared to Internet. With 37% stating intranet was more important, 30% stating intranet and Internet were equally important and 33% stating intranet was less important.

ABOUT THE SAMPLE:

The survey was based on a representative sample of companies and organizations ranging in size from fewer that 50 employees to more that 250 and covering public and private sectors.

For the detailed report by the Irish Computer Society, please see Intranet Ireland 2006 Report.

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ON A PERSONAL NOTE: I’m splitting my time today between London and Paris so please go easy on the e-mail! I am looking forward however to the Intranet Benchmarking Forum conference, IBF LIVE 2006, to which I’m delivering the keynote tomorrow. Highlights of the speech will be posted tomorrow. Bah! I’m very disappointed that there are no soccer games on while I’m out here – and I’m missing the start of the hockey season!