“Ask them how they would like to find the information. ...asking them, from a user’s point of view and taking away the organizational silo’d glasses, how would you like to find the information logically?” writes Carm Porco, GM & VP of Prescient Digital Media. “For example, in an intranet, if I wanted to fill out my expense sheet, would I like to go to employee forms or an employee central area or go by way of the old process and find the department that has the form and look under their silo’d site.”

KISS - Keep it simple stupid

Information architecture should be focused on making it easier to understand and navigate content -- as quickly as possible. The above image was one of those that was delivered when I did a Google image search for "information architecture." My reaction to the information architect that (hypothetically)handed this to me... "Well, it sure is pretty, and clearly you're a very smart person... but you're fired."

Keep it simple. For example, I would never have an architecture with more than 6-8 parent groups unless I was forced at gunpoint -- or bribed. Card sorting is an exercise in simplicity and well help keep the focus simple. It itself is a simplistic exercise in understanding how employees think about content and navigation, from the employee perspective. A perspective that cannot be obtained through focus groups and user surveys.

However, card sorting shouldn’t be done at the expense of best practices and professional information architecture (IA). I would never start from scratch a first attempt of an information architecture with card sorting. I would use card sorting to revise and tweak a professionally prepared IA. Few organizations could afford to do cart sorting exercises with a scientifically representative sample of employees (100 or 200), nor should they be expected to.

Firstly, build a full intranet plan or blueprint – including strategic directives such as a mission and goals – and then have a professional craft the first draft of an information architecture based upon that plan (and the preceding intranet assessment). Once you’ve made your first attempt at an IA, and then take the IA to working sessions with your key stakeholders to focus on their areas (e.g. HR for the human resources section or site). It is at this point, when you’re engaging stakeholder groups that it is most valuable to undertake a card sorting exercise.

Read Carm Porco’s Pick a Card (sort), any card.

From the Intranet ROI webinar, here are (with some paraphrasing) some of the questions and answers on return on investment (ROI) and intranets:

Q – How do you get people to measure costs in the organization?

A- As the participant alluded to in so many words, it is difficult to get people to find, measure or share their often guarded cost data. However, the only way to measure ROI is to first determine the costs, and then measure or project the future value. Therefore cost measurement begets ROI measurement. Getting fellow managers and employees to go out and gather cost data is an exercise in motivation.

At Prescient, we conduct a team workshop with key managers from IT, Finance, Operations, Human Resources, Communications and others that might be relevant keepers of cost data that might include business unit or corporate service managers.

After introducing the concept and using case studies and benchmark examples we use a detailed matrix and review some of the 150+ measurable ROI benefits that can be accrued to an intranet or portal. Benefits are reviewed and agreed to and individual participants are assigned ‘homework’ to hit the books and to get the data (e.g. the current costs of operating the IT help desk, independent intranet sites, e-mail servers, etc.). See the Intranet ROI Workshop for more information.

Q- How does Cisco or others determine what goes on their home page?

A- Known intranet leaders such as IBM and Cisco have had intranets for more than a dozen years. So, for starters, they’ve had a lot of practice. Secondly, in those years, they’ve spent a lot of time getting to know employees and what they want. A lot of time has been put into tweaking and enhancing as the result of studying web logs, conducting user surveys, focuses groups and usability testing. Not to mention implementing best practices.

But it’s not just delivering on employee needs and expectations, but also those of the organization as a whole including management requirements and strategic goals. At IBM, the intranet home page is a personalized portal powered by Websphere. So the end user has the ability to pick and choose some of the content that appears on their home page (see

At Cisco, no personalization is delivered, but the user has the option to choose their own hot links or “My Links” – individual bookmarks that appear on the user’s home page. There is also role-based dashboards or pages that are targeted to specific employee roles such as new employees, managers, administrative, engineering, sales, and others.

How does understanding employee requirements relate to ROI? The intranet has to deliver value for employees to use it. If you build it... and employees don't see value in using the intranet, they will not come. If they don't come, you won't get the ROI.

To measure and increase the value of your intranet, please dowload the free white paper, Finding ROI.

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For more intranet news visit www.IntranetReport.com

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

By providing better self-help information and FAQs, one financial client was able to reduce employee calls to the internal help desk by one-third, almost 40,000 calls per year (at $18  per call) – yielding an estimated savings of $697,115 per year. Enough to pay for the intranet redesign many times over.

One of my personal favorites is the Sodexho USA Sales SuperSleuth (see Intranet Insider World Tour: Sodexho USA). SuperSleuth is an intranet web page and application that encourages employees to submit sales leads and prospective clients via the intranet. The SuperSleuth intranet page generates cash rewards of up to $1000 for the person making the submission. Sodexho says it has contributed to a 100% increase in sales leads in the past year and led to US$90 million dollars in managed volume (net client sales including sales by client).

That’s the beautiful part about measuring ROI – you don’t have to measure the total value of an intranet (which is typically in the millions of dollars for a decent intranet for an organization of 5,000 employees), you just have to measure some of the low-hanging fruit.

If you’re one of the few fortunate that don’t have to justify an intranet redesign than you are one of the few fortunate. There are however few organizations that do not require a business case for six-figure redesign or the implementation of a new content management system or portal that typically runs anywhere from $100,000 to several million dollars. The average would be between $200,000 and $300,000 for an enterprise solution. Of course the bigger company and the more integration required, the bigger the bill. The bigger the bill, the more reason for you to measure ROI.

If you haven’t done any ROI measurement, then I strongly suggest you attend the Measuring Intranet Value: Proving & Delivering ROI webinar. At only $95 and 75-minutes long, this is a very worthwhile investment that promises you a positive ROI (tried as I might, I could come up with nothing more catchy or ute to write).

This informative 75 minute webinar will teach you:

Ø       How to measure return on investment

Ø       How to identify very specific measurable benefits

Ø       Priorities for building a business case

Ø       Best practices & case studies that measure ROI

To measure and increase the value of your intranet, please dowload the free white paper, Finding ROI.

Register now for Measuring Intranet Value: Proving & Delivering ROI.

(VANCOUVER, CANADA) Placemaking (325 employees) is the real estate development division of resort developer Intrawest (25,000 employees). Placemaking employees are all knowledge workers and located across the globe developing resort villages such as Whistler-Blackcomb (British Columbia), Mountain Creek (New Jersey), and Tremblant (Quebec).

Tracy Hutton, Director of Learning at Placemaking, wanted to leverage the company intranet to create community at the recently re-organized company. She also wanted a better way to capture Placemaking’s intellectual capital online. The previous intranet, released in May 2004, was infrequently updated and poorly used (averaging 0.5 page views per employee per day).

Without a full-time resource to commit to creating a new intranet, Placemaking chose social software engineers Chris McGrath and Darren Gibbons, creators of ThoughtFarmer, a product of One Intranets Inc. and OpenRoad Communications. ThoughtFarmer is a wiki-type technology to create a self-sustaining intranet maintained by all employees.

In April 2006, the new intranet, the Portal launched on the ThoughtFarmer social software platform.

the Portal, Placemaking's intranet home page

The wiki approach

The Portal is built on the wiki principle of open editing. All employees have the ability to add and edit

content, even on the home page.

Unlike wikis, Placemaking’s intranet has a hierarchical content structure with autogenerated navigation. It was felt that non-technical business users wouldn’t be comfortable with WikiWords and free-form page creation. Instead, clicking the “Add a page” button creates a subpage of the current page.

The first social feature of ThoughtFarmer to resonate with Placemaking employees was Employee “Places”: a personal spot for each employee to add a profile and create pages. As employees uploaded photos of themselves, added amusing anecdotes, and revealed a little more of who they are, the popularity of People Places skyrocketed. Within 3 months, virtually all employees had added their own contact information, one-third had added a personal profile, and 15% had created pages.

Placemaking's president, Drew Stotesbury, has been an active user and proponent of the collaborative intranet, posting news articles, uploading photos, and starting new forum topics.

In September, Mike Hartigan, a Placemaking project manager in Vancouver, created a page about a method of finishing concrete floors that creates an appearance better than tile at a substantially lower cost. Using the method at the entrance to a resort saved $500,000 and reduced the project timeline. Other project managers in Florida and Nevada posted comments to the page, asking further questions. In response, Hartigan posted photos of the finished job and addressed their comments. The other construction managers planned on using this valuable knowldge in future projects.

Note that in the above posting the author includes photographs and information on the particulars involved in his money-saving idea. Not only are the pictures and details helpful, but any employee in the company can respond to the posting – and also edit the article, the details and even the photos. Many other employees responded with their feedback including additional tips and photos. (Notice how each employee has their own photo that is chosen by that employee. Some have even gone so far as to choose something a little more fun such as a shot of Magnum P.I. or his adversary and foil Higgins).

Despite the open freedom to edit and post, the company reports no misuse since the new intranet launched. No content can be posted anonymously, as Placemaking’s intranet software integrates with their Windows network and Active Directory. Employees take responsibility for their own postings and this self-policing seems to be effective.

Metrics for success

Placemaking manages dozens of multi-million dollar developments a year. These construction tips, if implemented on just a handful of projects, will save the company millions of dollars. Without the everyone-is-an-editor intranet, it is doubtful that they would have been shared.

Placemaking's total investment in their intranet, including customizations and information architecture consulting, was under $100,000.

At launch, intranet use immediately increased tenfold to 5 page views per employee per day. The increased use has held steady for 6 months. The success has translated into use outside the company by parent company employees. In fact, parent company Intrawest employee users now dominate the use of the intranet.

Planned improvements

In December, Placemaking will migrate to ThoughtFarmer 2.0, which includes email-based signals when a requested page changes. In addition, Placemaking’s updated intranet will include content tagging, social bookmarking, and "related content" links. It is hoped that these system enhancements, all part of McAfee's "SLATES" formula for Enterprise 2.0 collaboration, will increase participation on Placemaking's intranet.

One new feature to be added to Placemaking’s intranet in December is a simple social bookmarking system. Users can favorite a page with one click. Their lists of favorites are visible to others, and their favorites count as “votes” that impact search results.

Key Learnings

Instituting a collaborative intranet environment can be a challenge. More than issues of integration and technology a collaborative intranet tool is more an exercise in change management.

Currently, about 50% of Placemaking employees do not edit the intranet. 44% are occasional editors, and 6% are active participants. Although participation is high compared to internet-based social systems, Intrawest is still hoping to improve and look at new ways to get the 94% of low- or non-participators more involved.

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ON A PERSONAL NOTE: Happy Thanksgiving to all those Americans celebrating (including more than half of my family)! I didn't have any turkey today but to celebrate I did have chicken and a non-alcoholic beer. I can honestly say I feel more rested than when over indulging on football, turkey and beer and/or other spirits.

It's been a big couple of days as well in Canada with Vancouver's own Justin Morneau winning the Major League Baseball American League MVP. That's three Canadian MVPs in three of the United State's four big major sports... yes, we're darned proud of that Justin, eh.

Does anyone think that Michael Richards apology on Letterman was sufficient? I do. It was an unacceptable mistake -- well frankly his rant was more than a mistake. But it's tough to be in the spotlight and most of us wouldn't hold up to the scrutiny. I believe the sincerity of his apology. I'm not so certain about Mel Gibson but since I don't know him I tend to give the individual the benefit of the doubt if it doesn't show a pattern of mistakes or abuse.

How about Celtic upsetting Man United? What a goal by Nakamura!

Hey, my baby girl has learned a new word (phrase) just short of 10 months: hot dog. Get em started on the BBQ culture early I say!! My eldest daughter is preparing a new calendar with her original art that we'll distribute at Christmas... order now

For more intranet news visit www.IntranetReport.com

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

Technology vendors always paint a rosier picture than what reality otherwise proves. Ultimately, technology vendors want you to buy. That’s why free webinars are almost always sales pitches that have little to do with reality, and everything to do with selling you software and hardware.

Now, I really like the concept of portal software and solutions. I particularly like how portal solutions and content management systems (CMSs) are melding into a single solution. In fact I predict that a single hybrid solution will dominate the market place within a couple of years. These hybrid solutions are already being marketed by Microsoft, Vignette, Oracle and others.

In the meantime however, portals are really quite awful. I just had a chance to spend an hour navigating and surfing through an enterprise intranet portal at a large financial corporation. It is awful. Just awful.

Read my complete article Vendor perception versus reality: the state of portals (on Communitelligence.com)

--

In the meantime, Microsoft Sharepoint is ready to be released. In fact, you can download beta version yourself and begin using it.

Here is are the Step by Step Instructions (with Screenshots) Office SharePoint Services B2TR to Release  (SharePoint MVP).

Here are the license keys:

SharePoint Server Standard Trial: XJMKW-8T7PR-76XT6-RTC8G-VVWCQ
SharePoint Server Enterprise Trial: F2JBW-4PDJC-HKXTJ-YCKRP-T2J9D (corrected)

RELATED READING:

Bill Gates and Microsoft take aim at the intranet

The future of portals

Portals found lacking

I promise not to turn this into a rant. I further promise not to turn this into yet another dressing-down of portal and content management system (CMS) vendors. I will try to be unbiased and fair…. mostly fair and somewhat unbiased (after all there’s lots I could sell but I don’t sell anything on this blog).

Content management systems, like portals, continue to be a hot topic amongst intranet managers, consultants and analysts. They promise so much and the technology while nascent is so… well promising. The optimal word is ‘promising’. See how nice I can be if I put my mind to it?

The ‘challenge’ is that the technology is still so new and emerging – perfection is a long way off. In fact, I’ve met maybe two or three companies that are happy with their CMS or portal product.  And I’ve talked to many, many dozens (hundred). Now here’s where I get down right cozy with the tech vendors: your unhappiness with your technology solution is not just their fault, you are partially to blame. (Please hold-off on your vendor reselling letters and contract to me, I’m not done yet). If you’ve not purchased or using a CMS or portal product then really take this to heart…

It is your organizations responsibility to rigorously define and document the global, management and user requirements and needs for a content management system or portal before making any technology evaluations or purchases. Vendors have a job: to sell you as much as they can. If you don’t do your homework in a platform market of more than 2000 CMS and portal solutions, then you are looking to waste money and unfulfilled potential.

“Unfortunately, it’s common for organizations to buy more CMS functionality than they can use easily, or at all,” says Tom Marciniak, Senior Consultant at Prescient Digital Media. “As a result, organizations are forced to use overly complex enterprise solutions that are not well integrated into business processes and ultimately result in low adoption rates.” 

“Developing a list of must-have site features for a CMS to support cannot be done in a vacuum. Everyone, from technical support staff and site management to content contributors and end users, have to follow through and commit to the ongoing use of each item on the wish list in order to derive maximum benefit from the investment. Otherwise, you’re just buying a shiny toy that will be discarded when attention is diverted to the next cool idea or trend that comes along.”

Read Tom’s complete article: Can you realize the potential of your CMS feature wish list? 

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For more intranet news visit www.IntranetReport.com

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media