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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!

 

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

(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.

 

Four principal types of information communications are captured and delivered via the intranet:

 

•         Those required by law

-   Health safety, regulation, …

•         HR Related

-    Benefits, compensation, career, social, …

•         Business Related

-   News, competitive arena, knowledge-share, …

•         Informal

-   Watercooler, coffee break, “grapevine”, ….

 

Effectively communicating this information (including tacit knowledge) requires a number key elements. Successful employee communications is…

 

•         Straightforward

•         Succinct

•         Targeted

•         Personalized

•         Memorable

•         Realistic

•         Integrated

•         Measurable

 

But what do employees really want to know? Information priorities include (source: Hewitt):

 

•         Company goals

•         Company financial results

•         Company news

•         Products and services

•         The competition

•         Industry trends and news

•         Employee recognition, rewards & benefits

•         How I can help the company reach its goals

 

Segmenting and organizing content by type and employee demographic should be a goal of any intranet, as illustrated on the Manulife Financial employee portal home page.

 

 

Prior to accessing the intranet, employees choose their preferred content language and their corporate position and geographic location via a self-select preference selector (menu). Content is served-up based on those employee preferences.

 

For the intranet, there are three key points worth reinforcing for employee communications:

 

1. Planning – the essential requisite
2. Leadership sets the tone
3. Engaging employees

Successful intranets have a well-defined plan that accounts for employee needs and preferences and engages the target audience. As well, successful intranets are championed by senior management such as Cisco President John Chambers who has his own intranet home page with information on the corporate vision and his own blog-like entries called “on my mind.”

 

To establish an effective intranet plan, I recommend Prescient Digital Media’s intranet

 methodology; a project methodology built and refined after years of practice and work with dozens of clients including many Fortune 500 corporations:

 

 

The risk of failure remains high for those organizations that don’t follow an effective methodology in developing a thorough intranet plan. Gartner estimates that many IT projects exceed budgets and schedules by significant amounts: one third of projects exceed budgets and schedules by almost 100% in small to mid-size companies. Many, many other projects exceed budgets by 25-75% or more. Is a 50% cost overrun acceptable to your organization?

 

Death is often slow, but not without extracting significant time, money and jobs. One prominent financial services company purchased an intranet platform, a content management system, for $1.5M. The solution limited the number of publishers, the number of pages published, and couldn’t support same-day publishing. Worst of all, the company that supported the product went bankrupt, leaving the client with no support. One year after implementation, a $1.5M solution was scrapped. The company failed to do the proper assessment and plan.

 

A thorough assessment will eliminate a great deal of uncertainty and risk while securing buy-in from multiple stakeholders. The assessment fulfills three primary goals:

 

1.      identify the needs and requirements of users

2.     identify business stakeholder needs and requirements (and addresses the issue of ‘politics’ by engaging everyone who has a stake)

3.   identify industry best practices

 

Finally, Web 2.0 is redefining how we executive employee communications and the use of the intranet. Web 2.0 applications that have enjoyed success on the Internet are now delivering value on the intranet including:

 

•         Blogs

•         Wikis

•         Podcasts

•         RSS

•         Social bookmarking

 

For more on Web 2.0 tools see:

 

Blogging the intranet

Wiki the intranet    

Social bookmarking on the intranet

Podcasting the intranet at IBM

 

Develop and deliver content and tools that engage employees and meet their expectations while meeting the needs and requirements of the business as a whole – particularly the big three stakeholders in HR, Communications and IT. Mix in some best practices and you’ll have a winning communications program and a high-octane intranet that delivers measurable value and satisfied employees.

 

RELATED READING:

Top 5 killer intranet mistakes

Five Winning Intranet Characteristics

Nexus of Intranet Success

ON A PERSONAL NOTE: I always enjoy my trips to Chicago. It's such a great city that is one of the very best in the world for how it uses and designs its public spaces -- particularly the lakefront which is really spectacular (Toronto and New York could learn a thing or two). Many thanks to Lee Hornick for the fine meal at Maggiano's and for the fine company from Robin Hicks from AON Consulting in North Carolina. A *wave* to the new friends and colleagues (and old ones two) that I met at the conference. Oh by the way, I had lunch with my client and friend Sharon McIntosh from Pepsi at Blackbird. Sharon knows how to pick a winner. What a great restaurant -- voted in the Top 50 best restaurants in America -- and very reasonably priced.

On another note I'm very glad to see Ghana advancing to the second round in the World Cup -- what a talented and fun team to watch. Brazil is definitely the team to beat (with big kudos to Spain, Argentina and Germany) but I'd be wary of the talented group of footies from the African horn.

Finally, a special welcome to some of Prescient's new clients including the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute (and long-time IABC colleage Jennifer Fergusion), the Canadian Institute for Health Information (Susan Anderson) and Vancouver Coastal Health (Ron Nielsen). Yes, it appears Prescient is doing a lot of work for healthcare clients!! 

© 2006 Toby Ward - Prescient Digital Media

Anyone been glued to the World Cup action? I've been doing so when I can...

"Employees love to watch their footie, but streaming content directly to their PCs could choke some systems. We ask the experts to offer their suggestions for dealing with the future challenges posed by video in the enterprise," reads Will the World Cup bring down your IT network? (ITBusiness.ca)

Most of you have either recently undertaken or plan to undertake in the near future an intranet home page redesign. Hence, the focus of redesign over the past week. 

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 how intranet experts Prescient Digital Media approach intranet redesigns: The Intranet Plan Intranet Blueprint © 2008 The Intranet Portal Blueprint © 2008 Intranet Evaluation Value and Return on Investment CMS Blueprint © 2008