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TORONTO, ON (Two cancelled flights, and a day later I’m finally on my way to New York this morning with 0 hours and 0 minutes sleep…. *yawn*)

There’s a reason why most communications professionals obsess about measurement and ROI – most executives see little value in corporate communications. Most executives, not all, see corporate communications, like the intranet, as a cost center.

It is one of the reasons why I obsess about measurement and ROI; why I wrote a 60-page white paper called Finding ROI: Appraising the Value of Intranet Investments The value of employee communications and the corporate intranet is tremendous, and it can be measured in terms of…

• Cost savings / cost avoidance
• Customer satisfaction
• Employee satisfaction
• Employee retention
• Management satisfaction
• Increased sales / revenue
• Employee productivity

The Watson Wyatt 2005/2006 Communication ROI Study (cost is $45) adds some metrics to the value of corporate communications. Key findings:

• The 2005/2006 study found evidence that communication effectiveness is a leading indicator of financial performance.
• 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.
• Firms that communicate effectively are 4.5 times more likely to report high levels of employee engagement versus firms that communicate less effectively.
• Companies that are highly effective communicators are 20 percent more likely to report lower turnover rates than their peers.
• Two-thirds of the firms with high levels of communication effectiveness are asking their managers to take on a greater share of the communication responsibility, but few are giving them the tools and training to be successful.
• On average, firms within the financial and retail trade sectors rank among the most effective communicators. Health care, basic materials, telecommunications and other service companies rank among the least effective communicators.

Comparing the 2003/2004 and 2005/2006 Studies:

• An 8 percent increase in companies relying on a reactive approach to communication
• A 10 percent increase in companies using formal communication measures
• An 18 percent increase in companies in which communicators play a lead role in managing the content of the intranet  

If you don’t have a comprehensive communications plan – note comprehensive not just a one-pager in some notebook – that focuses particularly on face-to-face people communications supported by a powerful intranet, what is your excuse?

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

TORONTO, ON -  I’m cooling my heals and yet another airport stop waiting on yet another rescheduled flight after Air Canada cancelled yet another of my flights because their was a whiff of a thunderstorm. Why can’t they just wait for it to pass? Why do they have to always cancel my flight (the third in the past month)? And don’t I at least qualify for a free bag of peanuts if you won’t let me into the secret VIP flyers ultra lounge? I wonder what they do in there…? I imagine it’s reminiscent of the little singing and dancing chocolate workers at Wonka’s…

Anyways, I’m attempting to get somewhat caught-up on some reading when I came across a good rant from David Berlind at ZDNet.com.

In “RSS: The new intranet protocol”, Berlind suggests that the wiki could be the new intranet and RSS the new protocol. Berlind’s frustration flows from a well-expressed mini rant on the oft used buzzword “collaboration”…

“Collaboration is often too formal.  In other words, you don't collaborate until someone says, "OK, let's collaborate."  In order to say "Let's collaborate" you need to schedule a meeting with a proprietary group calendaring system.  Letting everyone know that you're about to collaborate requires notification which 99 times out of 100 depends on email.  Then once you start collaborating, a record of that collaboration has to be documented using a proprietary documentation technology (eg: word processors, spreadsheets, or presentation applications).

Even worse, there's another proprietary system (a content management system) for storing, searching for, and retrieving those documents; something that happens in the course of collaboration. Something else that happens in the course of collaboration is someone improves those documents at which point, they must be passed around again for another round of collaboration. Passed around on the proprietary email system using oft-forked threads of e-mail that resulted in out-of-synch document changes. To add insult to injury, the e-mail feedback loop which may or may not have involved revisions was completely out of context of the collaborative activities themselves and required tools that were overkill given the requirements.  

At the end of the day, collaborating involves a bunch of walled gardens of technology that all too often, are retrofitted to the art of collaboration and that end up being manually integrated.  In other words, Sue in the Marketing Department finishes tweaking a new campaign proposal and has to remember to send it to Trevor over in Advertising for his thoughts, and so on.”

He’s right; I like the way Brindel thinks. Collaboration is common place; doing it on line however requires a lot of effort and definition, and the appropriate system to support it.

The same is true of course for knowledge management. Knowledge is shared and managed every day in every organization – it’s just not managed very well. And effective knowledge management is more than just a plug-and-play off-the-shelf software such as document management – effective knowledge management depends on highly collaborative and sharing employees who are supported with the right tools and highly defined processes.

But let’s not confuse the intranet with a wiki. The intranet is all-encompassing; the wiki is just a tool or even an emerging platform. Wiki software is not the new intranet platform. An intranet requires too much integration and networking. The wiki may however evolve into one of the most important employee collaboration tools on the intranet, but it’s hard to imagine it replacing a search engine or a content management system.

At the end of the day, collaborating involves a bunch of walled gardens of technology that all too often, are retrofitted to the art of collaboration and that end up being manually integrated.  In other words, Sue in the Marketing Department finishes tweaking a new campaign proposal and has to remember to send it to Trevor over in Advertising for his thoughts, and so on.

Jakob Nielsen is a smart guy. The godfather of web usability knows his stuff. You only need to read his column (www.useit.com) to know that he knows he’s smart. He tends to where it on his sleeve, but he’s earned it – and I enjoy reading it.

As far as usability goes, he’s the king. He’s trying to be a real intranet guru, but he really has not proved he can move beyond usability. He over-emphasizes usability – which is an important aspect, but not the most important.

In my years of working on intranets, I have calculated the value of usability at about 15% of an intranet’s value – with content and planning & resources (governance, process, publishing, funding, staffing, etc.) representing 30% each.

Usability however has its place and Dr. Nielsen has written a great piece on standard deviation and the number of users to test when doing usability testing (see Quantitative Studies: How Many Users to Test?). In short, Nielsen says that testing “20 users typically offers a reasonably tight confidence interval.”

Read the rest of my article Usability overkillat my Intranet Insider blog at Communitelligence.com.

RELATED READING:

When to use what research tools

Leading an intranet redesign

Nexus of Intranet Success

ON A PERSONAL NOTE:  I celebrated my 7^th anniversary with my darling wife today! (That’s 13 years together now; 2 kids; 3 houses; and far too many air miles and not enough champagne!). We sipped Verve Cliqout next to the creek at sunset…  funny how anniversaries slow down as you age up with celebration in close proximity to yet more and more kids!).

Speaking of kids… my five-year old Rachel just graduated from pre-school and will be starting kindergarten in September (French bilingual kindergarten). *Sniff* they grow-up so fast! Congratulations sweetheart!

Why is the Ukraine in the final eight at the World Cup? How is that they’ve had such an easy schedule and teams like Mexico and Czech Republic drew such a tough schedule? Man, great goal by Beckham…. Heart-breaking to see the Aussies go down like that with 4 seconds remaining… I’ve never seen a team such as Italy so undeserving of their position, year after year. I’m not predicting that Ghana will upset Brazil, but if anyone can do it they can do it (though I wouldn’t rule out Argentina or Spain…).

A hearty welcome to our new clients at Prescient Digital Media: Alberta Family Health Practice and the Air Canada Pilot’s Association – welcome aboard!

(Chicago, IL – Conference Board, Improving Employee Benefits conference) Despite the power and value of the intranet, the ultimate communications tool remains face-to-face communications. Employees want and demand face-to-face time. The intranet however is a powerful runner-up.

At the heart of your intranet is the employee – your target audience and most important stakeholder. Organizations that have effective employee communications reap the rewards with better…

·         morale

·         collaboration

·         organization loyalty

·         faith in management

·         productivity

Effective communications requires two-way, synchronous communications – not just messages pushed on a one-way street from the top floor executive offices.

Atomic Energy of Canada engages employees on their intranet home page by using a daily (or weekly) quick poll and via an interactive question box to company executives. Executive Online allows any employee to submit a question or comment to any senior executive via a home page input box with a drop down list of all the company’s executives.

Why are so many companies in a position to redesign their intranet? Well, it’s time. The corporate intranet, in most organizations, has changed very little in the past five or six years. Meanwhile, the available technology and platforms – such as content management systems and portals and self-service applications – have evolved considerably. In addition, the intranet, like the business it represents, is in constant flux and evolution. A redesign forces the necessary change and process revisions to keep pace with the business and the market.

A redesign should be driven by business needs and a business case that details the needs, requirements and value of a redesign.  

Part of the process, prior to any designing or redesigning the look-and-feel, is addressing the little monster known as content. The monster requires feeding and likely has been well fed. As such, a number of key questions must be answered:

• What content from the old site needs to be migrated as is?
• What content has to be edited and updated?
• What content has to be forgotten and deleted? 

One client undertook an intranet content audit and was able to rid themselves of 70% of their content. Yes, 70%. Run that through the ROI calculator for your redesign business case!

In Rolling content inventory Louis Rosenfeld espouses the need to not look at site content just simply once, as a simple snap shot in time, but to continually examine content as the intranet rapidly expands and evolves. 

“When you've got hundreds or thousands of distributed subsites and other pockets of content, you simply won't not know what's out there. If you send a spider on a content reconnaissance mission, you'll still likely be overwhelmed by the volume of content that turns up. And even if you can send, as one past client put it, an "army of monkeys" to swarm over and survey your content, well, that's not good either. No measure of simians can deal with the jungle truth that your content is a moving target. Any snapshot you take of it will be instantly out of date. And in your efforts to grab a comprehensive view of your content environment, you will surely go insane. 

That's why I'm increasingly recommending pursuing a rolling content inventory. Instead of a snapshot, as all those silly IA books suggest, inventory your content on an ongoing basis. Put another way, a content inventory is an process, not a deliverable. Put yet another way, content inventory shouldn't be something that you allocate the first two weeks of your redesign to; allocate 10% or 15% of your job to it instead.”

Read more about Rolling content inventory.

(Tip of the hat to James Robertson).

An intranet is not a website. When properly executed, it’s a business system – a   microcosm of the entire organization. Technology is only a supporting component. The success of an intranet has more to do with people in process.

Understanding the role of people and the employees begins at the top of the organization. In Leading an intranet redesign I espoused the importance of having an executive champion. Like a political campaign, an intranet redesign requires the support and vote of those that count – particularly senior management.

Truth be known, when it comes to execution of the site information architecture, layout and site design, your target audience is far more important. Employees determine the ultimate success of your intranet.

If you build it they will not come. It’s not enough just to build it; you must build a system that is engaging, intuitive and bestows tangible value for the employee. If it is not enticing and easy to use, then your intranet is doomed to die a slow death until the next redesign.

EMPLOYEE REQUIREMENTS

Employee requirements and input must be built into the blueprint of the intranet long before any attempt at redesign an intranet or portal’s ‘look-and-feel.’

Engaging employees for feedback on their opinions and feedback can be simple to complex; qualitative to quantitative. My personal preference is a combination of user survey and focus groups. However, one-on-one interviews, usability testing, and feedback tracking all have their own value.

Below is a table I constructed some months ago for comparing the pros and cons and differences of using different research tools:

In short, there are both qualitative and quantitative tools for engaging employee users. If it is in fact a full redesign, then usability testing serves limited value. Usability testing is best employed when testing a working prototype prior to going live. A combination of survey and focus groups allows both quantitative and qualitative measurement.

For a complete comparison of employee research techniques please read When to use what research tools.

BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS

Not to be forgotten in the process of building a business case and a blueprint for your redesign is the needs and requirements of the business itself.

To be continued…

READ PART I: Leading an intranet redesign

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

Google is making it easier to search for U.S. government information on the Internet – and inside government on the intranet.

Google has launched Google U.S. Government Search (http://usgov.google.com), a new search product that will make it easier to find U.S. government information and keep up to date on government news.

With Google U.S. Government Search, millions of U.S. government employees, various contractor organizations, as well as the general public can easily search across content on official federal, state and local government sites from a single search box. They can also keep current on government-related news with constantly updated content from government and commercial news sources, including the White House, Department of Defense, The Washington Post, and Google News.

Google U.S. Government Search allows people to customize the layout of the page and add content to the site from an easily searchable directory that includes information on government and general topics such as sports, business and technology. News from other websites can be added using RSS feeds (technology that makes it easy to subscribe to content).

Google U.S. Government Search is the newest Google search product for government agencies. Google's enterprise group already counts hundreds of government agencies as customers for Google enterprise search and geospatial products.

To expand Google's ability to serve federal government customers, Google also recently added Mike Bradshaw, as head of federal sales. Bradshaw, who has more than 20 years experience selling technology to federal agencies, will be located in Google's office in Herndon, Va., where he will focus on helping federal agencies benefit from Google enterprise products, such as the Google Search Appliance, Google Mini, Google Earth Enterprise and Google Maps for Enterprise.

ADDITIONAL READING:

Google Goes Federal with New Search Site

Google Mini for intranet

Will Microsoft rival Google for intranet search?

The number one employee complaint about the intranet is “I can’t find anything.” Or it’s the related cousin complaint, “The search engine sucks.”

Both problems relate to ineffective information architecture. An ineffective information architecture leads to confusion and frustration and an over-reliance on the search engine to magically solve all problems. Over course, if content is not well-stored (e.g. properly tagged, labeled, categorized, etc.) then the search engine will also fail. But most users would prefer to navigate a site’s content categories and home page links. Search is more of a crutch.

“Information architecture (IA) is essential to a successful site,” says Cathy McKnight, a consultant with Toronto-based Prescient Digital Media.

“An IA provides the blueprint to follow before you dive in and pull your site together. It is the science of figuring out what you want your site to do, what information you want it to provide and how people are going navigate to that information. It is so important, that IA gurus join The Information Architecture Association to share in each other’s guru-ness.”

Cathy offers some great insight and suggestions in Information Architecture - the science of site layout Content in the Web 2.0 World

Never build or redesign an intranet without understanding best practices. Understanding what your competition does is even better. If you're building a case for a redesign, then your senior management will demand to know why (see Leading an intranet redesign).

A good source of case studies and best practices is the Web itself from sites like this. Conferences can also be good; so too are intranet consultants (but they’re a little more expensive). An even better place for leading and in-depth case studies is the Intranet Insider’s World Tour webinar series.

Previous webinars on the Insider’s look at leading intranets include IBM, Sodexho and most recently General Motors. Next webinar is HP.

HP’s intranet portal, hpNOW, was launched in 1997, serving primarily as an archive for Employee Communication's electronic newsletter and for selected articles from the company's print publication. Over time, online communications became more and more critical to communications at HP, eventually reducing the electronic newsletter to a push reminder to visit the site and serving as the replacement of the worldwide employee print publication, when it was discontinued in 2001.

Read more about the Communitelligence.com Intranet Insider’s World Tour featuring HP.