If you want to see a great employee portal in action, plan to attend Communitelligence.com’s webinar Intranet Insider World Tour: GM’s mySocrates (this Thursday, June 1).

mySocrates was launched in 2001 for GM employees and contractors in the U.S. Human Resources, Information Systems and Communications joined forces to deliver secure access to communications and self-service applications enabling access to the intranet from any internet machine 24/7. Since initial launch the portal continues to transform to provide role/location based access to tools and information to GM employees throughout the globe.

Today, the mySocrates corporate team is led by people from HR, Communications and IT. Each of GM’s global functions also have people working on intranet integration. Socrates has solid tendrils into every key process, function and location of GM. Everything from benefits enrollment to supply ordering to 360-degree performance management can all be done online. 

Socrates took two giant steps at the end of 2001. A fully-personalized portal was deployed (SunONE) and the company provided low-cost home intranet access for all U.S. employees. Since its launch, mySocrates has been governed by the Intranet Strategy Board. Business and IT stakeholders from all functions and regions work together to establish web strategy and develop and implement enterprise approaches to increase business effectiveness and efficiency.

Take the Intranet Insider World Tour -- a unique teleseminar series from the Comunitelligence Learning Academy. See behind the firewall and pick up tips, techniques and secrets for maximizing the value of your intranet or portal. You and your intranet team will have a chance to dissect and discuss what makes each intranet world-class. Most important, you’ll get to ask real-world questions from intranet insiders and see best practices that could work on your own intranet.

Learning Topics

• History/evolution of mySocrates - and integration of business teams into process and portal
• Role-based publishing
• Governance and globalization – importance of involving right level of leadership with the appropriate areas of focus
• News Publishing on Socrates
• employee Marketplace
• My Authorization
• GM Drivetime daily video newscast
• Collaboration and Knowledge-Sharing Tools
• Socrates Metrics
• Intranet ROI

This webinar is presented by Laurel Castiglione, Manager – Intranet Governance, Globalization and Marketplace for General Motors. As the business leader of the mySocrates Globalization Project she is responsible for deployment of the mySocrates to portal to employees and contractors in 38 countries , 13 Global Process Teams enabling an integrated portal across business sectors. She has successfully implemented a governance board which involves stakeholders from all levels of the organization. She is also responsible for deployment of the employee Marketplace.

To register for this see Intranet Insider World Tour: GM’s mySocrates

The intranet is only as good as the people that run it. The technology is secondary and only an enabler.

Transforming the intranet is the new intranet manual by Melcrum. It’s really a must have if you’re connected to managing or planning any intranet. However, if you don’t have $395 and don’t have time to read this news blog on a regular basis, then Shiv Singh’s recent article Value-driven intranet design is a good synopsis:

"Within most corporations, taking ownership of an intranet is an unglamorous, exhausting, and thankless job for a new intranet manager. Many corporate intranets lack thoughtful, focused, and disciplined design and are often extremely large and unwieldy. Fixing these intranets can seem an impossible and futile task.

Furthermore, with new terminology proliferating from the armies of IT consultants, software vendors and business professors in the marketplace, it is becoming even harder to define an intranet, determine what it should accomplish, and measure those accomplishments. In the domain of company intranets, terms like empty portals, peer-to-peer sharing, smart enterprises, digital dashboards, social networks, taxonomy design, and knowledge management all come together and compete for attention and dollars. These buzzwords capture the imagination of senior executives who force you to devote dollars to intranet-related initiatives that the organization may not be ready for or that do not benefit the employee community."

Shiv specifically offers some advice regarding defining and measuring the intranet’s value, as well as managing and nurturing intranet talent and consultants. Nice addition.

What is often overlooked by most articles, case studies and manuals is the issue of people. People make the intranet work. The degree of their ability and effort determines the end value of the intranet. A content management system or portal may certainly bolster this intranet – but it could also hinder the intranet if not used properly

For more intranet news visit www.IntranetReport.com

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

“Intranets get plenty of complaints.  With cluttered homepages, out of date content, poor search engines and information people don’t want, too many employees just don’t have faith in their organization’s intranet.  And on top of this, senior executives can’t see the value in spending so much on something with so little return.  So how can you get your intranet to deliver real value?”

The introduction promoting Melcrum’s new intranet manual, Transforming your intranet, hits the nail on the head. The point is that most intranets are a mess and yet they hold so much potential value – if executed properly. If you’re at all connected to managing an intranet, you need this manual. Written by a number of leading intranet minds – including chapters by myself (on measuring intranet value) and Carmine Porco (on Content Management) – Transforming your intranet is the best how-to-manual you can get your hands on (next to this blog of course J)!  

“Written to turn your organization’s intranet into the time-saving, value-creating tool it was always meant to be.  You’ll find out how to take your intranet to the next level by integrating the latest strategies, technologies and metrics, ensuring people can get to the right information when they want it and, ultimately, delivering business value.  You’ll also learn how to prove value to senior managers, with measurement techniques that go beyond simply counting page hits.”

Here’s a sneak preview of the Table of Contents:

CHAPTER 1: STRATEGY

Strategy is the starting point for superior intranets. We show you everything you need to know about setting an intranet strategy that includes the vital elements of information, technology and governance.

What you’ll take away:

• A comprehensive strategy model with a detailed explanation of each element to help you write or benchmark your intranet strategy.
• A table with real-world examples of how intranets can meet business objectives.
• A table outlining how intranets can address business risks.
• Case studies on building employee buy-in at HP, 10 tactics to align the intranet with the business strategy at GlaxoSmithKline and 10 secrets of steady improvement at Sodexho.

CHAPTER 2: GOVERNANCE

We answer the questions: Who should be in charge of the intranet? How many editors do you need? How can you avoid the “headless chicken” model of intranet governance?

What you’ll take away:

• A diagram outlining the ideal governance structure, with an “executive content board” at the top of the hierarchy.
• The eight key elements of governance that an intranet team must have control in order to be effective.

CHAPTER 3: CONTENT MANAGEMENT

This chapter includes a cautionary tale: “One prominent financial services firm purchased a content management system for US$1.5 million. One year after implementation the CMS was scrapped.” We help you avoid the same fate with a step-by-step process for buying a content management system and setting up a content management process in your organization. 

What you’ll take away:

• A sample plan for buying a content management system, taking you through the planning phase, gathering business requirements, negotiating and awarding the contract.
• Worksheets with sample questions for stakeholder interviews.
• An evaluation matrix to help you evaluate which content management system will best meet your unique requirements.
• Case studies on choosing a content management system from Prince George’s County in the US and centralizing your content management processes at Rexam.

See Transforming your intranet

For more intranet news visit www.IntranetReport.com

Companies that are best at controlling health care costs are more likely than their poorer performing counterparts to offer multifaceted Internet tools that help employees model health care options, a study by Watson Wyatt and the National Business Group on Health has found (see Internet Tools Can Encourage Appropriate Health Care Decisions).

• 58% of the 585 companies surveyed provide intranet/Internet resources that allow employees to compare health care insurance options side by side
• Companies that are best at controlling costs offer additional intranet/Internet tools and are…
• 38% more likely to provide quality comparison tools and
• 36% more likely to provide tools to model the tax impact of health care decisions, such as signing up for a flexible spending account. 
• While only a small number of companies offer intranet/Internet resources for provider pricing, those best at controlling costs are 108% more likely to do so.

Read Internet Tools Can Encourage Appropriate Health Care Decisions

For more intranet news visit www.IntranetReport.com

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

Oh, yeahhh… baby, your employees do like porn… and other non-work related websites. And they surf these sites while at work.

According to the Web@Work study conducted by Harris Interactive® for Websense, 12% of surveyed employees have either by accident or on purpose, visited a pornography website while at work (versus 17 percent last year). The overwhelming majority of those who have visited pornography sites at work (95%) said their visit to the site was accidental.

Ha ha! I laughed till I cried… and then I laughed some more! What people ‘say’ they do and what they actually ‘do’ is often very different… I guarantee you all the money in my pocket that this is one of those cases – especially when taking a survey that asks them about their nudie picture habits while at work – and answering the survey while sitting at their desk. There are far more people than 12-17% of employees with Internet access that are surfing porn – or have viewed it online at some time during the workday. I’ll bet you it’s closer to 50% of workers.

Filthy, dirty...

One SVP of Communications at a company told me in (I assured him anonymity) that according to their logs, the top three most visited websites by their employees were all porn sites. Of course, that is one extreme. The reality at most companies is likely somewhere between this example and the findings in the report.

The survey also reveals that…

• 46% of employees surveyed reported that they believe they are at risk of losing their job if they visited adult content using their work-owned internet connection
• 30% said they would be fired if they infected the company with malicious spyware or a virus
• 12% of employees admitted that they have had a co-worker, friend, or acquaintance send a link to their work email address that they considered offensive
• 11% of employees admitted that a co-worker, friend, or acquaintance has sent a link to their work email address to a website that they thought might contain spyware or lead to some sort of security risk
• 92% of employees surveyed said that they believe that their company has the right to install web filtering technology to manage which types of websites they visit

“Protecting employees from hostile work environments that can result from the availability of x-rated content in the workplace will always be an important concern for organizations who seek to limit their potential legal liability for sexual harassment,” said Michael Newman, vice president and general counsel, Websense, Inc. “However, web-based security threats such as malicious spyware and viruses are much more difficult for both employees and companies to detect, and the potential for damage can be disastrous—one accidental click of the mouse can take an entire network down for days at a time.”

Interesting enough, 50% of the surveyed workers said of them said that they would rather give up their morning coffee than give up their ability to use the internet at work for personal use. Hmmm, substituting one addiction for another… tough choice.

What else are people doing at work?

TIME SPENT—93% of respondents said they spend at least some time accessing the internet at work.

PERSONAL SURFING—61% of employees who utilize a work-owned internet connection admitted that they spend at least some time surfing non work-related websites during the work day. Of those employees who access non-work-related websites, the average time spent accessing the internet at work is 12.81 hours per week, and the average time accessing non-work-related websites at work is 3.06 hours per week. This means that, on average, 24% of their time spent accessing the internet is non work-related.

TIME SPENT ON NON WORK-RELATED WEBSITES—IT decision-makers estimate that their employees spend an average of 5.7 hours per week surfing non work-related websites, while employees, on average, only admit to spending 3.06 hours per week accessing non work-related sites.

WEBSITES ACCESSED—among employees who access non-work-related sites at work, the top three non-work-related sites accessed are map sites such as Mapquest (83%), news sites (80%), and weather sites (76%).

BLOGGING—5% of employees said that they have a personal blog. Of those who have a personal blog, nearly half (46%) indicated that they do record work-related events or interactions with their co-workers in their personal blogs at least some amount of the time. 42% of employees said that their company has regulations that prohibit employee-blogging. Eleven percent of employees reported that they have visited blog websites during work hours. Of those employees, 31% said they visit them occasionally or very frequently.

Other notables:

• 24% employees watch or listen to streaming media at least once per week from work (up from 18% last year
• 17% use instant messaging (IM) at least once per week from work
• Of those employees who said they use IM, 29% said they use it primarily for non-work-related purposes
• 18% of employees have downloaded and stored non-work-related mp3s, personal photos, video clips, or movie clips on their work computer or network.

Methodology

Data for the survey was collected by Harris Interactive on behalf of Websense. Harris Interactive is solely responsible for the telephone data collected and Websense is responsible for the data analysis and reporting. Both parties collaborated on the survey questionnaire. The survey was conducted by telephone within the U.S. during March and April 2006 among a nationwide cross sample of 500 employees aged 18+ who have Internet access at work and work at a company with at least 100 employees.

--

Microsoft owns your desktop and your browser (well, most of you). Google is the almighty search god. Who will win the battle for intranet search?

According to an iTWire poll, most think Google is the winner. However, Microsoft fans are significant (see Microsoft no threat to Google? Think again):

“An, which had 1111 respondents, asked the question: "Will Microsoft be a serious threat to Google in the search space?" 645 respondents answered no (58.1%), while 466 answered yes (41.0%). Microsoft, which is running a distant third behind Google and Yahoo, has been making a serious assault on the search engine business in recent times, with a massive rebranding and search product strategy exercise.

The launch of the Windows Live Search brand, the imminent launch of Microsoft's new browser, Internet Explorer 7, which will include Live Search as the default search box (despite protests from Google), and the announcement of an enterprise desktop intranet search facility integrated with the upcoming Windows Vista operating system are all evidence that Microsoft intends to be a dominant force in the search space.”

Bundling the search with Windows Vista is a massive blow for Google. Microsoft has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into improving their search engine. The 1000 pound gorilla is not down for the count.

For more intranet news visit www.IntranetReport.com

There exists a huge list of applications that originated on the Internet that have migrated to the intranet: search, content management, surveys, portals, wikis, blogs, podcasts, etc.  The reverse – applications migrating from intranet to Internet – is far more rare.

Sean McGrath of ITworld.com hypothesizes the reasons for the asymmetric flow of applications and why capitalizing on intranet investments for commercial resale is a tough hill (see The Asymmetric Web):

"Then came a period when Intranets were common and all of a sudden, software companies were not only hosting their own applications online but also making them available for deployment on intranets for a suitable fee. I would argue that part of the (fading) attraction of a big application framework such as, say, J2EE, was the idea that once developed as a J2EE webapp, an application can be hosted locally in exactly the same way as it is hosted on the Web.

Then began an awful period - which continues to this day, sadly -- of companies developing intranet applications and then concluding, erroneously, that the application can be deployed on the Web by just flicking the proverbial switch. There is an important asymmetry here between intranets and the internet. Applications can scale downwards - from internet to intranet - easily but the reverse direction - from intranet to internet - is rarely simple and often impossible. Millions of users, flash flood characteristics[1], five nines availability[2] are just some of the reasons (collectively referred to as "non-functional" requirements) why this asymmetry exists."

There are a few applications that originated inside the enterprise that have made it onto the commercial web such as financial systems (e.g. QuickBooks), customer relationship management (e.g. SalesForce.com), and others. Perhaps the biggest grand-daddy enterprise application moving to the Internet is electronic health records (see EHR enhances the doctor-patient relationship  and The business case for healthcare technology investment ).

The point though is simple: don’t develop intranet applications based on a business case of reselling that application on the Internet! An intranet application has a very defined focus – serving employees.

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

“Consider search. Can you instantly find everything -- at company, departmental, or workgroup scope -- that you’re allowed to see? I thought not,” asks Jon Udell in his InfoWorld article Reinventing the intranet.

“It ought to be the other way around. Inside the enterprise, teams, tasks, products, and services define metadata vocabularies that the Internet search giants would kill for. Exploiting those vocabularies to deliver search results that are better than what’s available on the open Web is low-hanging fruit. As we roll out SOAs that route well-formed messages through a fabric of intermediaries, it’ll get even easier. What Verizon’s CIO calls “Googling the enterprise” should be the rule, not the exception.”

Udell cites the advantages of social media – such as social bookmarking (see Social bookmarking the intranet) – for improving the total value and efficiency of the corporate intranet.

Check-out the recommended Ning a free online service for “cloning, customizing and sharing Social Web Apps.” This is an online service that allows you to create your own applications such as a blog tool, photo sharing tool, or ratings site – either from scratch or from ‘cloning’ another application already created on the Ning network. There are a couple of other options too.

Ning is the new pet of Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen. I’m not entirely floored by this site or the clone tools but I’m very intrigued about the potential and possibilities. Though I think the potential for the intranet is far less limited given that Ning is an ASP model that will depend on advertising revenue. In the meantime, I think Ning will more appeal to the My Space audience which is typically a lot lower than IntranetBlog.com’s audience.

RELATED READING:

Social bookmarking the intranet

Merril Lynch recently completed a survey of 100 CIOs in the United States and Europe on Internet readiness.

Asking them to rate on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being ‘finished’), the CIO's where asked how far each respective company had progressed in implementing its Internet strategy.

The average response: 6.5. That’s 65% complete.

While not a priority for the vast majority of companies my guess is that if the same question was asked about the intranet the rating would be far less – perhaps a three or a four.

A good way to take this temperature reading at your organization is to ask all of your intranet stakeholders (key stakeholders, owners or content publishers that influence the future of the intranet).

Read more on Rating your intranet readiness (my article on Communitelligence.com)

Bill Gates announced at the CEO Summit the latest and greatest intranet offers namely Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows Live Search.

• Windows Live Search has  the ability to search by:
• file shares
• SharePoint sites
• Websites
• exchange public folders
• lotus notes databases
• customer repositories

The last two options are fascinating. Microsoft knows that a lot of companies use Lotus Notes and not SharePoint. But MS wants a piece of the Lotus pie.

Customer repositories mean customer databases and CRM systems. The MS octopus tentacles are reaching further

For example, new capabilities in Windows Live Search will provide a single point of entry and user interface to unify multiple search solutions. In addition, enhancements to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 will enable people to quickly connect with other people or subject matter experts and will add options that make search capabilities available to customers that might not be able to implement a full collaboration or portal solution.

Live Search

Rich filtering and customizable controls allow users to personalize their Live Search.

For example, through a single UI, information workers will actually be able to choose when and where to search based on multiple toolbars and query refinement options. Using natural search terms, Windows Live Search can return results in whatever way makes most sense to each information worker – inline, grouped by category, etc. Powerful previews and visualizations of the data can then help people more quickly determine what action to take.

 

To illustrate, a sales representative trying to find information about a customer she plans to visit could gather the needed data by accessing Office SharePoint Server 2007, initiating a search and pulling business data from a Siebel application in addition to gathering data off her desktop using Windows Desktop Search. However, the same search could be performed from within Windows Live Search to produce all of the relevant desktop, e-mail, intranet and Internet results. Furthermore, when the sales representative clicks through the results, she will see they are actually displayed from that same window. Windows Live Search displays full results without navigating away or opening additional applications.

According to IDC estimates, the expense of not finding the information needed costs an organization employing 1,000 knowledge workers is about US$5.3 million per year. While several major vendors have invested heavily in search across the Internet, computer desktops and company intranets, the search is ultimately over once the content is found.

Microsoft doesn’t view search as a standalone activity or the end goal, but rather a means to a greater purpose of finding the information a person needs to accomplish a specific task. The fact is, merely searching for and finding information isn’t useful by itself. People must be able to create, find, use and share information. More specifically:

• Create: Give people the software tools to capture and report about their knowledge and projects.
• Find: Improve individual and organizational productivity by quickly, seamlessly and securely connecting people to relevant information and expertise.
• Use: Enable people to easily organize and manage information so they can effectively analyze and apply the data to create or do something new.
• Share: Achieve greater business success by allowing people to clearly communicate and quickly share information with other people.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, People and Expertise Location

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 will unify information management capabilities such as portals and collaboration, enterprise content management and forms, enterprise project management, and business intelligence. In addition to helping people share information, enterprise search is also a core area of investment with enhancements in relevancy, security and scalability. The upcoming release will provide powerful new information access and management tools through the Business Data Catalog, which allows people to search for structured data in line of business applications like SAP and Siebel.

One of the key technical challenges that companies face today is identifying individuals with key undocumented relationships or expertise and tapping into it. The U.S. will soon face the largest wave of exiting information workers as the baby boomers begin their retirement years. In fact, it has been estimated that in the next seven years as many as 25 million employees will exit the workforce. When they leave, the information and relationships that they’ve built over their careers leaves with them.

Office SharePoint Server 2007 adds a new dedicated Search Center tab for searching for people. This allows customers to connect with others in new ways by grouping people search results by "social distance." In addition, by leveraging the power of Active Directory, information workers can refine their people searches by department and job title.

A new add-on called Knowledge Network for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, expected to be available with the 2007 Microsoft Office system later this year, will further extend people and expertise search capabilities. Knowledge Network for SharePoint Server 2007 creates an automated profile that each user reviews before publishing to a server, making it easy to identify people by their undocumented knowledge and relationships.

For instance, to find someone in an organization with a specific skill, a person could enter search terms such as “C# programmer” and then refine the search by job title and department to find the appropriate levels of expertise. Information workers can even initiate a "brokered" introduction that leverages relationships across the organization to connect with other people by using the "Find People Who Know this Person" feature. The results then show the shortest path to a person by ‘social distance.’

Watch the Bill Gates webcast of this announcement: http://www.microsoft.com/events/executives/billgates.mspx