There are a number of reasons why a corporation or a not-for-profit should adopt Intranet 2.0 tools.  Enhancing communications and collaboration with employees, and improving employee investment and retention are primary considerations. But there’s another more pressing need: snooze or lose.

While the intranet still plays poor cousin to the all-important website, intranet 2.0 cannot play backseat to any organization looking to differentiate itself from the competition.

“You really have no choice,” says Steve Krol, EVP of Professional Services with Lyons Consulting Group, which has worked with the likes of AON, Porsche and even Playboy. “Social media represents a full-fledge media /communication channel that will evolve with or without you. It’s another accepted form of communications that people want.

2.0 TURNS MAINSTREAM

BENEFITS

While there are many benefits that most organizations can reap from employing Enteprise 2.0 tools, Krol cites five over-arching employee benefits:  

• Engagement
• Retention
• Productivity
• Cost Reduction
• Time-to-market

While the softer more ethereal benefits such as “engagement” and “productivity” will not excite too many accountants, there are plenty of case studies that demonstrate real return on investment (ROI) including costs savings and increased revenue.

INTRANET 2.0 CASE STUDIES

T. Rowe Price adds 1,500 workers to work in its call center for each tax season (for approximately 3 months). Training these workers is large, involved exercise, but imperfect. Price’s corporate trainers got smart and transferred the entire training program to a wiki. Price encouraged new employees to take notes during the sessions and then add notes, comments and recommendations to the wiki. As a result, the company estimates that it saves one to two minutes per call at $20 per minute (the net result is in the millions of dollars).

BlueShirt Nation (BSN) is a secure and private social networking site for more than 100,000 Best Buy employees. Established by Best Buy as a means of engaging employees for ideas for innovation and improving the business, the online community encourages discussion about whatever they want to talk about (e.g. pets, sports, etc.).

“In general, they talk about how to make Best Buy a better place,” says founder and sponsor Gary Koelling. “Improve on the things we don't do well, share the things that we do do well, talk about and express the culture that we have, talk about customers- both good and bad.”

Some control was sacrificed to help increase the engagement which among other things encouraged employees to participate in a video contest that promoted their 401k retirement campaign. Employees were encouraged to upload their own videos to the site as part of the contest (see a sample at Best Buy Using Social Media for Employee Engagement). Out of 140,000 Best Buy employees (almost all young), BSN helped increase the number of employees signing up for 401(k) accounts by 30%, and no doubt has contributed to a significant increase in employee retention in a tight staffing market.

At Placemaking, the entire intranet is built on a wiki platform (Intranet case study: Intrawest Placemaking). A Placemaking project manager using the intranet (wiki) created a page about a method of finishing concrete floors that creates an appearance better than tile at a substantially lower cost – saving the company $500,000 and reducing the project timeline. Other project managers in Florida and Nevada posted comments to the page, asking further questions and adding comments. In response, Hartigan posted photos of the finished job and addressed their comments. The other construction managers planned on using this valuable knowledge in future projects, potentially saving the company millions of dollars.

Adopting an intranet wiki or blog however should not be done without the requisite planning and change management. Here are a number of suggestions for proceeding:

• Listen - Understand and monitor the social web to see what is being said about you, and ask your customers / employees what they want.
• Monitor - Ensure you’re aware of which community websites (e.g. YouTube) your audience and competitors are using
• Benchmark - Understand the ingredients of a good blog, wiki or podcast; watch and cherry-pick from the leaders
• Leadership – Senior management must set the tone; your executives must be leading the dialogue and controlling the message
• Plan - Planning is an essential requisite for success; develop a plan that is based on a thorough assessment and contains key performance indicators (KPIs)
• Governance – very tool needs an owner and a policy (terms of use)
• Technology - choose your vendors carefully based on business requirements & needs
• Refresh – keep your content and tools relevant and fresh, and ensure they cross-promote your latest products and services
• Measure - Document the link between social media and the business and develop a set of performance metrics with baselines that are regularly measured
• Engage – gather constant feedback and act quickly on necessary changes

Finally, consider an Enterprise 2.0 undertaking as “evolution not revolution” – there’s no need to solve the world on your first attempt; test and pilot solutions and enhance as necessary before trying to conquer the world.

10 INTRANET 2.0 SOLUTIONS TO WATCH:

• SocialCast
• Yammer
• ConnectBeam
• SocialText
• Google Gadgets
• Lotus Connections
• Quickr
• SharePoint
• Confluence
• ThoughtFarmer