Intranet Blog

2010: Year of the Social Intranet

Toby Ward — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 01:29:40 -0800

Is your intranet ‘social’? Or is it antiquated?

Social media on the intranet (Intranet 2.0) are present on about half of all intranets (in the Western World). Once a nice-to-have or a future wish, Intranet 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and other vehicles have become mainstream – although not to all employees.

Despite the low cost of entry, most intranet 2.0 tools are merely experiments, pilots or limited to a very small audience. Social media has only been deployed at the enterprise level in about 25% of organizations (see the results of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey Intranet 2.0 becomes mainstream).

Intranet wikis, for example, are increasingly popular: as of last year, employee wikis were present in 45% of all organizations (regardless of size), but only 17% of organizations had deployed them enterprise wide. The results for intranet blogs are similar: only 13% of organizations had deployed them at the enterprise level.

Many of the experiments and pilots, the department and team level tools will be rolled-out to the rest (or most of the rest) of the enterprise in 2010. Still, more organizations that are sleeping through the social media revolution will jump on the bandwagon. 2010 will be the year of the social intranet.

To confirm or disprove this theory, we’re once again conducting the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey 2010 to learn the latest about what social media organizations are using, are not using, and the reasons for their use (or absence on the intranet).

The following survey takes approximately 10 minutes to complete. Respondents who complete the survey will be eligible to win $400 (a random email address will be drawn from all responses to the survey). All respondents will also receive a full copy of the results at no cost. Please provide your contact information in order to receive the survey results and to be entered into the $400 prize draw.

Take the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey 2010.

ADDITIONAL READING:

To download a free, summarized version of the Intranet 2.0: Social Media Becomes Mainstream on the Corporate Intranet report or please visit:

http://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/download-summary-report-of-intranet-2-0-global-survey

To purchase the full, 44-page Intranet 2.0: Social Media Becomes Mainstream on the Corporate Intranet report of analysis & recommendations please visit:

http://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/purchase-intranet-2-0-global-survey-report

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Corporations can learn from government websites

Toby Ward — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:28:04 -0800

In convening focus groups for a government health portal we (Prescient Digital Media) we built (and would eventually win a Webby Award for) I discovered a few universal truths about websites, one of which we all have to keep learning again and again: people hate advertising.

The focus groups with different consumer segments and demographics kept revealing the same results: not only are web users naturally untrusting of the content they read on the Internet (unless it’s a well known, well-used website), they’re particularly untrusting of websites with advertising. This concern and distrust is enhanced several fold in the case of consumer health information and informatics. In fact, what consumers told us is that not only do they hate ads but they hate anything that resembles an ad – even if it’s a simple promotional box that promotes another piece of free content on the website.

There is one Golden Rule about the web above all others: make it easy as possible to let your users find what they’re looking for (and stay out of their way, or they’ll stay away from you). Governments have little to advertise, they’re not-for-profit. The highly politicized bureaucracies of some (sadly, Canada has become one of those) do impede users with an over abundance of political messages, but more and more are getting the drift and focus on the Golden Rule.

A perfect example of this is the government website for the State of Texas (www.TexasOnline.com); smartly laid out, lots of contextual links for the most popular content, and aside from a small message from the governor, it is advertising free. It’s a superb site that a lot of corporate websites could learn from.

In contrast, the once superb Government of Canada website has been overcome with political messages and press releases – the type of partisan crap that the 99% of web users abhor.

Other very strong government websites:

· USA.gov

· Welsh Assembly Government

· Government of France (I have a love / hate relationship with this site)

While government websites still have a lot to learn from the corporate sector (particularly around the latest technology and social media), there’s a lot the corporate sector can learn from government websites.

Speaking of learning from government websites, tune into to Julian Mills and Prescient Digital Media’s webinar on Government websites: Best Practices for Managing a Government Website Redevelopment Thursday, January 28 (12pm EDT). This is for both government and corporate intranet managers and consultants with a focus on the process and requirements for undertaking a redesign or new website (or technology platforms). This webinar includes a co-presenter and an in-depth case study from the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade (MEDT).

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Intranet predictions for 2010

Toby Ward — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 01:13:48 -0800

1- SharePoint will continue to dominate

All hail the king, SharePoint. SharePoint has become the single biggest, most pervasive intranet platform of all time (present in 50 – 60% of all medium to large-size organizations). While SharePoint is still minimally used for department and team level document sharing and collaboration, more organizations are looking to use it as the enterprise intranet platform.

SharePoint 2010, due to market in late spring, is vastly improved over the former version, MOSS 2007. Many, many organizations will be upgrading to 2010, and begin to use the new platform as the enterprise intranet platform. What’s more, the cost of entry for taking on SharePoint has never been lower as Microsoft SharePoint is “in the cloud” with SharePoint Online (the hosted version of SharePoint). SharePoint online already boasts more than 1,000,000 users, and unlike the previous SharePoint Online the 2010 version of SharePoint Online promises to “near feature parity” (with only small exceptions) to the install version.

SharePoint’s market share will soar with SharePoint 2010.

2- IBM will finally become more aggressive with WebSphere Portal

As dominate and pervasive as SharePoint has become, the market leader is WebSphere Portal (measured in license revenue. Although the implementation and services revenue is undoubtedly much higher than what the anemic Microsoft Consulting Services group can conjure). However, unless you follow the portal market, you would think that SharePoint is not just the leader, but a market killer.

Regardless, of how you measure success, SharePoint is a massive success, and so to is WebSphere Portal, but you would never know it by wading through the surface of most technology news and blogosphere punditry. WebSphere Portal however is arguably a more sophisticated, certainly more mature, product than SharePoint. And while IBM is happy with the WebSphere’s success, there undoubtedly more than just a few ruffled feathers by all the hype and attention SharePoint gets. Never a company to sit idly by, and as innovative as ever (IBM received 4,914 U.S. patents in 2009, the highest for the 17th consecutive year), the IBM marketing machine is not as aggressive as Microsoft’s. Nonetheless, WebSphere is due for a marketing makeover and may get more attention and marketing dollars in 2010.

3- Social media will become mainstream at the enterprise level

Social media on the intranet – collectively referred to as Intranet 2.0 – is now present on about half of all intranets (in the Western World). Once a nice-to-have or a future wish, Intranet 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and other vehicles have become mainstream.

4- KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid

The “kitchen sink” design approach to the intranet home page is standard, but it’s stupid. The more you throw on a page, the more you confuse and distract users. It might work for Amazon.com, which relies on brand and SEO, at the expense of user-friendly design.

People like Google for a reason – it’s dead simple. I’ve had the pleasure to test dozens of intranet home page designs, in many dozens of focus groups. The highest rated and appreciated home pages, are the simple ones. The least popular designs are the busier designs that are best exemplified by IBM and Cisco (very good, and popular intranets, but for highly web-savvy audiences).

I’ve seen a trend towards simpler intranet home pages, just as we’ve seen on the Internet, and the trend will really start to proliferate in 2010.

5- Outsourcing the intranet to the cloud

Although it is only the beginning, some companies will finally begin to realize that professional hosts (ASPs) are better at hosting and security than their IT department.

The “cloud” refers to cloud computing that, at the risk of over-simplifying, is simply hosting – computer, server, software, and other hardware and infrastructure hosting. You’re already a cloud customer, probably many times over (someone is hosting your email, website, blog, etc. In fact, 56% of internet users use webmail services such as Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo! Mail – hosted email in the cloud).

Microsoft is aggressively pushing its cloud services. MS already hosts the gigantic 200,000 user SharePoint intranet for GlaxoSmithKiline (and it estimates that the hosted solution has delivered big ROI and reduced “IT operational costs by roughly 30% “).

Very few organizations have their intranet hosted in the cloud today, but perhaps as many as 5% of medium to large organizations will look to outsource their intranet to the cloud over the next year or so.

6- Death to the portal

Microsoft stopped calling SharePoint a portal solution sometime ago. To Microsoft, and most of the rest of the technology world, SharePoint is a web development platform.

Oracle killed all of its portal solutions. Now there’s just simply “WebCenter Suite.” Ditto with eXo which is no longer eXo Portal, it’s now eXo Platform.

Now the word portal hasn’t disappeared from the marketing literature or the feature sets: all of these platforms and suites still have portal functionality and features. Compared to five years ago, however, there are very few companies left selling portal products. They’ve been gobbled up by other products, other companies, or swallowed by the platform.

The only big name left with a standalone portal product is IBM, with WebSphere Portal. Per my second prediction above, look for IBM to give WebSphere Portal a marketing makeover that might include the dropping of the ‘portal’ name from the product label.

ADDITIONAL READING:

Intranet planning

Intranet 2.0 becomes mainstream

Intranet Blueprint

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Technology, the intranet, and employee productivity

Toby Ward — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:39:22 -0800

Employees shouldn’t waste too much time on the intranet; social media wastes time; the Internet is a productivity drain. These are common refrains and concerns expressed by many executives, albeit the less educated ones, generally of an older generation, nearing or past retirement.

The exact same concerns were made about employee bathroom breaks, mealtimes, telephone use, etc. General Motors, that great stalwart of financial prudence, used to hire people to time employees when they used the bathroom (source: Negotiate This, Herb Cohen, CD Audiobook - Barnes & Noble).

"When speaking to clients the issue of productivity is often a concern,” says Jonas Lood, senior consultant with Prescient Digital Media (intranet consultants / specialists). “I frequently get asked "how do we leverage our intranet to improve information sharing, protect intellectual property while at the same time reducing the cost per employee?"

Every organization wants to maximize profit (cash flow) and ultimately, productivity drives profit; and so does innovation.

“When productivity rates leap, so do enterprise profits. In the past century, we have automated blue-collar work, wringing more products out of every worker hour,” says Susan Feldman, IDC analyst and author of the report, Hidden Costs of Information Work: A Progress Report. “But in an economy that is now more information based than industrial, increasing the productivity of the information worker has become imperative.”

Concerns about productivity, therefore, are real and valid. Although often these concerns are misplaced: if employee compensation and rewards models are all that they should be, and employees are accountable for objectives and goals, then concerns over productivity drain from activities such as using the Internet, or intranet, should abate (if the intranet is in fact a sound system, and not the dog’s breakfast that many still are). In short, the corporate intranet (and use of the Internet for activities such as research) can be a tremendous productivity gain, not a drain.

“As organizations downsize in this year's financial crisis, they will need to streamline and automate information tasks and processes if they are to survive with fewer workers,” adds Feldman (keep in mind, real estate may be rebounding, and the stock markets may be unusually high, but there is still a massive credit crunch, and there are many industries still in recession). “They will need to ferret out instances of duplicated effort, and they will need to invest in software that can speed up processes like ediscovery, categorization, call center support, publishing, and collaboration while reducing manual labor.”

IDC conducted a survey of 706 knowledge workers. IDC asked respondents about:

various information tasks performed by knowledge workers; and
repetitive tasks that might be prime targets for automation or improvement.

On average, IDC estimates the average information worker salary of $75,000 per year. They then took the data that we had gathered on the average number of hours spent on each task and discovered the following about the average information worker respondent:

13 hours per week spent on email (cost: $21,000 per year)
9 hours per week spent searching for information (cost: $14,000 per year)
8 hours per week analyzing information (cost: $13,000 per year)
6.5 hours per week communicating / collaborating with team members (cost: $10,000 per year)
6 hours per week creating content (cost: $10,000 per year)
Nearly 4 hours per week publishing information (cost: $6,000 per year)

The survey and the data are imperfect, but the general picture is well painted and the conclusion very clear: information workers spend a lot of time finding and processing information, at a very high cost. If we can make it easier to find information, employee productivity will rise, and profits will soar.

Fortunately, technology is a productivity driver. And the technology platform that powers this productivity is the corporate intranet.

“Even well tuned intranets can suffer from information fatigue,” says Prescient’s Lood. “A well planned intranet, with a strategy in place that supports the business requirements will take you well on your way in identifying the optimum information and communications channels for your organization."

Moreover, IDC finds that new Intranet 2.0 tools are also a preferred, and powerful technology of choice for driving productivity.

“With Web 2.0 applications creeping into the enterprise — with or without IT approval — it's obvious that ingenious information workers will find tools to help them accomplish their work no matter where those tools come from,” says IDC. “This year's survey on the use and preferences for information worker productivity tools shows that newer tools, particularly instant messaging (but also social networking and blogs), were preferred over more traditional ones like email or team workspaces.”

The most preferred / valued tool according to respondents is instant messaging; followed by the phone, desktop authoring tools (e.g. MS-Word), email, web conferencing, social networking, and blogs. In fact, email is rated only a shade higher than social networking. Many, myself included, often look at email as a frequent productivity drain.

“Information work is costly, but it's also valuable, as long as the time spent working is productive,” says IDC. “Any dent that an organization can make in the hours information workers toil unproductively will have an immediate payoff.”

If your organization is not embracing and investing in technology such as the intranet and the new 2.0 tools then it in fact is threatened by productivity drains (as compared to the competition). The classic concern about productivity drains is well-founded, but misunderstood to the extent that technology is often a gain, not a drain.

ADDITIONAL READING:

Too much useless information

Intranet ROI

Intranet redesign: building a business case

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Global Intranet Trends for 2010

Toby Ward — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 12:00:00 -0800

The Global Intranet Trends for 2010 report, the annual report from Jane McConnell, NetStrategy/JMC, has been released and is fittingly subtitled ‘Towards the workplace web’.

"Towards the workplace web reflects what is happening today in intranets around the world as organizations are positioning the intranet as the entry point into the organization’s ensemble of information, applications, collaboration and communication tools," says Jane, reflecting on the state of intranets amongst the 300 participating organizations.

Of particular note in this year's report, social media and social networking on the intranet is on the rise. This finding is echoed by, and well-documented in the Intranet 2.0 Global Study (download the free version of the Intranet 2.0 Global Study findings report). Additionally, senior management is becoming more engaged and involved in the management of the intranet -- finally! Slowly, my mantra, and that of Jane and many others, is slowly permeating the corporate structure: the best intranets are actively supported by senior management. And guess what? Great intranets deliver superb value including increased sales, revenue, cost savings, employee productivity, employee engagement, etc.

Key Findings in the 2010 Global Intranet Trends report:

Joint intranet ownership model is more prevalent: only 40% of participants have a single owner model
Senior management is more involved: 60% of intranet Steering Committees have a senior management presence (up from 35% in 2007)
Social networking on the rise: 30% of the participants are currently testing or “using in some parts” social networking tools
Social media delivers value: 25-30% of organizations with some form of social media have experienced 3 general benefits: increased employee engagement, more effective knowledge sharing, and better-informed employees
Social media concerns shifting: doubts are considerably lower about the relevance of social media to business needs
Intranets being extended to where people are: the workplace is being extended to where the people are with home intranet access
Mobile intranet access: a few intranets have services for smart phones today; another 25% are planning to extend mobile access

ABOUT THE SURVEY

This is the 4th annual Intranet Trends Report, and the survey population has grown from 100 to 300 organizations since 2006. The organizations range in size from under 1,000 employees to over 100,000 employees and are headquartered primarily in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Topics explored in the survey include positioning of the intranet, strategy and management, business objectives, features of the intranet, social media and measurement.

Read more about the Global Intranet Trends for 2010

Blogs are about content & context, not technology

Toby Ward — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 00:19:52 -0800

It matters little what technology powers a blog. Don’t ask me whether Drupal is better than SharePoint, or if WordPress is better than Blogger. If you ask such a question then you’re likely consigning yourself to failure. If you ask such a question, you best bring in an expert to help you because you’re missing the point: a blog isn’t a technology, it’s a tool (and like most tools, the quality of the end work depends on the ability of the user).

There are a lot of successful blogs that use free, open source software with little or no bells and whistle (e.g. www.RunningAHospital.com Paul Levy (CEO, Beth Israel Hospital). The success behind the blogs starts and ends with the writer, and is exemplified by the content, context and conversation. Specifically, have a look at some of the successful executive blogs highlighted in the webinar “Implementing an executive blog” (below) and be sure to note the 8 ingredients of a great executive blog that were culled by a thorough examination of dozens of executive Internet and intranet blogs.

Implementing An Executive Blog Slideshare

View more presentations from Toby Ward.

ADDITIONAL READING:

8 ingredients of a great executive blog

Intranet 2.0 becomes mainstream (intranet blogs on the rise)

Follow me on Twitter (www.Twitter.com/TobyWard)

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8 ingredients of a great executive blog

Toby Ward — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:49:11 -0800

Most executives are pretty smart, capable people, but many (if not most) get a failing grade for social media, particularly blogs. While there are always exceptions to the rule, there are in fact very few good executive blogs. I’ve read many “leading” or “top 10” executive blogs (based on traffic and word-of-mouth, more than anything) and most are not bad, but few are really great.

Having examined many of these blogs, including other well-known and lesser-known blogs, here is a compilation of 8 key ingredients to a truly great executive blog, with good and bad examples for each:

1- Audience specific content (well-written & subject focused).

· Good example: John Dragoon (CMO, Novell).

· Bad example: Jim Estill (former CEO, SYNNEX).

2- Current, fresh content (timely).

· Good example: Paul Levy (CEO, Beth Israel Hospital).

· Bad example: Jonathan Schwartz (President & CEO, Sun Microsystems)

3- Easy to navigate (content categories).

· Good example: Bill Marriott (Chairman, Marriott).

· Bad example: Ross Mayfield (CEO, Socialtext)

4- Social media integration (bookmarking, sharing options, Twitter).

· Good example: Matt Blumberg (CEO, Return Path)

· Bad example: Bill Marriott (Chairman, Marriott).

5- Audience engagement (user comments & responding to comments).

· Superb example: Paul Levy (CEO, Beth Israel Hospital).

· Bad example: Jason Calcanis (CEO, Mahalo.com)

6- Clean design (not cluttered with ads and crap).

· Good example: Paul Levy (CEO, Beth Israel Hospital).

· Bad example: Huffington Post (not an executive blog mind you, but so, so terrible)

7- Cross promoting the business (without blatant advertising).

· Good example: Mark Cuban (CEO, Dallas Mavericks et al)

· Bad example: Ray Lutz / GM Fastlane (GM)

8- Text + Multimedia (large blocks of text turn-off readers)

· Good example: Ray Lutz / GM Fastlane (GM)

· Bad example: Mark Cuban (CEO, Dallas Mavericks et al)

ADDITIONAL READING:

Blogs are about content & context, not technology

Intranet 2.0 becomes mainstream (intranet blogs on the rise)

Intranet 2.0 Plan

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Social business is nothing new

Toby Ward — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:08:00 -0800

(SAN JOSE, CA) “Digital work became more social… but work has always been social,” says Thomas Vander Wal, InfoCloud Solutions, addressing the KM World 2009 conference. “Businesses by nature are social – you need to have people in your organization talking to each other.”

Drivers of social media and enterprise 2.0 include:

Office productivity tools are not efficient for collaboration
Social tools augment face-to-face
Volume of information has grown
Gaps in enterprise tools, CMS, and other traditional work tools
Individuals are making a difference
Ease of sharing & connecting with others
Easier knowledge capture

“All of this is similar to e-mail in the 1990s. It was a strange new way of thinking… and now we’re using social tools and saying the same things that we did about email," adds Vander Wal.

“Social software creates a lot of information – many layers of information. We need tools to understand this information and structure for understanding.”

Vander Wal cites the 1–9–90 rule (Charlene Li) that helps understand the ‘who’ in social media: 1% creates the information; 9% curates it; 90% merely are consumers of the information.

SOCIAL MEDIA ON THE INTRANET

“We’re looking at our intranet and it’s an utter mess. Something is really broken here,” says Thomas, emulating a typical intranet client. “Social media helps fill in some of the gaps in the enterprise tools (example: BBC intranet: 115% wiki use in 7 years).”

When comparing Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 Vander Wal has a clever analogy: Web 2.0 is like tunneling through a mountain (it’s tough to sort out the context in the mass of information, and problems are merely small cracks in a large mass); Enterprise 2.0 is like tunneling under water (it’s easier to get started, but problems quickly become massive problems). “Web 2.0 is about numbers of users, Enterprise 2.0 is about % of users (% of employees using social media).”

Vander Wal encourages the need for "social comfort" for employees:

Comfort with others (people to interact & share with)
Comfort with tools
Comfort with subject matter

“It’s been said that walled gardens are bad for the enterprise, but they give comfort to employees,” says Vander Wal, citing Andrew McAfee’s opening keynote at KM World 2009. “What we really want are comfortable walled gardens with permeable walls.”

Follow Thomas on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/VanderWal

Follow Toby on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/TobyWard

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Enterprise 2.0: key ingredients & barriers

Toby Ward — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:57:02 -0800

(SAN JOSE, CA) “Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms by organizations in pursuit of their goals,” says the man who coined the phrase, Andrew McAfee, Principal Research Scientist, Center for Digital Business, MIT Sloan School of Management; Author, Enterprise 2.0.

“A key word is emergent… we’ve always been good at imposing things on people,” adds McAfee, who was addressing the KM World 2009 conference in San Jose. “What we’re now doing is not dictating what people need to do… but instead throwing out a technology blank slate, and letting people fill it in.”

Key ingredients for Enterprise 2.0 success:

Altruism: People want to help (stop obsessing about risks)
Process: Beware of the ‘one best way’ (use tools that let structure appear)
Innovation: Expertise is emergent (build communities that people want to join)
Intelligence: Crowds can be very wise (experiment with collective intelligence)
Benefits: Real, measurable benefits (increased innovation, employee satisfaction)
Impact: Sitting this one out is a bad idea (look at technology with fresh eyes

“I think it’s (Enterprise 2.0) as big a leap forward in the 90s as enterprise-level technology (e.g. ERP),” stresses McAfee. “We’re not going back to business as usual.”

However, McAfee emphasized that failure is common and that it is, in fact, easy to ‘snatch’ defeat from the ‘jaws of victory’ by not avoiding some common barriers:

Declare war on the enterprise (“Its bad marketing to management.”)
Allow walled gardens to flourish (silos kill)
Accentuating the negative (spend less time on the risks)
Try to replace email
Fall in love with features (we don’t want more, keep it simple)
Overuse the word “social”

McAfee concluded his keynote address to KM World 2009 with the following quote from futurist Norbert Weiner in 1954: “The world of the future will be an even more demanding struggle against the limitations of our intelligence, not a comfortable hammock in which we can lie down to be waited upon by our robot slaves.”

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Innovative intranets

Toby Ward — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:43:37 -0800

(SAN JOSE, CA) While an innovative intranet may be cool, and look great, a truly innovative intranet delivers true value and advances an organization's standing in its industry.

The Intranet Innovations 2009 report celebrates the winners of the 2009 Intranet Innovation Awards, produced by Step Two Designs, sharing remarkable ideas from across the globe.

Intranet Innovation Award winner, SabreTown (Sabre's social networking for employees)

Winning entries include intranets from all over the World including:

CRS Australia (Australia)
IDEO (USA), IBM (USA)
SunGard (USA/NZ)
NYK Group (UK)
Sabre (USA)
COWI (Denmark)
ChTPZ (Russia)
Prophet (USA)
AEP (USA).

The Intranet Innovations Awards celebrate new ideas and innovative approaches to the enhancement and delivery of intranets.Now in their third year, the awards have uncovered many innovative ideas from across the globe. Use these ideas to gain senior management support and to deliver an ever-better intranet.

For example, AEP, a US-based electric utility have created an online ideas system that has identified $8 million in savings, $2 million in the first month alone.

With winners across four categories (core functionality, communication and collaboration, frontline delivery and business solutions), there are valuable ideas for every intranet team.

The 198-page Intranet Innovations 2009 report shares the full results of the awards, including screenshots and details of the winning entries.

For more information:

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Intranet design

Toby Ward — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:22:39 -0800

This is the story of a very profitable, successful, large enterprise that spent over $2 million on their intranet. When the intranet launched, it crashed in seconds. It has never gone live again (more than a year later).

Leaving an intranet design to the whim of a designer, a creative agency or any individual not working from a sound blueprint represents poor judgment, management, and is a recipe for disaster.

Sound intranet design follows a process that incorporates:

1- Business requirements (as expressed by management)
2- User requirements (as expressed by employees)
3- Strategic & functional planning
4- Governance
5- Best practices & usability

The process for arriving at the stage where a designer applies color and images to a design concept is one that should be taken seriously, and if done properly, may take a number of weeks. This process is the underlying foundation of a successful intranet design, one that is examined and outlined in the webinar Intranet Design – A Business Approach to a Winning Design.

Intranet Design – A Business Approach to a Winning Design

View more presentations from Toby Ward.

Note: not all 25 intranets profiled during this webinar, but not are available for distribution.

The story of the failed intranet, and the squandering of more than $2 million and years of worker hours, is ultimately a story about a failure in planning. Without sound requirements that drive a thorough intranet blueprint, culminating in the intranet design, your intranet risks failure.

Read More on Intranet Design:
Leading an intranet redesign
Intranet redesign: rolling content inventory
Intranet redesign: building a business case
Building an intranet blueprint

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SharePoint for ECM: 5 big enhancements

Toby Ward — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:05:42 -0700

(LAS VEGAS) Lest you be tingling with excitement about the potential enhancements to your less than spectacular content management system, there are two realities for SharePoint 2010: what is promised, and what is hoped for.

Those working with MOSS 2007 can be forgiven for the vacuous deflating sound from their proverbial balloons – those familiar with 2007 promises that don’t materialize as promised (e.g. People Search); others attending the annual SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas can be forgiven for their rapid inhalation of hot air as there is great reason to be optimistic, even excited.

Nonetheless, I’ve been both impressed and underwhelmed with what I’ve seen, but more time is needed for Microsoft to complete the beta testing and final refinements before 2010 ships to customers in the spring of 2010. When I asked SharePoint chief Tom Rizzo to explain how he thought the content management functionality compared with other market leaders, Rizzo – speaking as a proud, if not slightly defensive father – instead turned the question back on me: “I challenge all of the other vendors to offer as comprehensive a platform as SharePoint – nothing comes close.” Touché!

Here are five of the biggest impact, promised improvements to enterprise content management (ECM) that I’ve seen with my own two eyes, and even used (albeit with mixed success as the ‘lab’ demos are not all working as promised, and a demo is in fact just a demo):

1- Publishing platform – the entire publishing platform is, in essence, a wiki. You can choose to lock down wiki or public authoring rights, extend them to some, or extend them to all. However, it is possible to create sites as wikis. The wikis come with complete version control, history and permissions, and the rich editor or “ribbon” functionality (as seen in Word 200).

2- Web content management (WCM) – communications professionals rejoice: publishing news and other static content just got a lot easier. The new publishing includes the new “ribbon” user tool that opens when you click on a page or a document, or you simply hit the edit button at the top of a page. Instead of opening a content ‘template’ the new publishing features in-context editing: click on whatever piece of content you want to “edit”, and edit right there on the page (just as you would a wiki). New image tools allow for better control and manipulation of photos, and you no longer have to make the extra step of uploading a photo to a document library before you input it into the page – you can now pull images right from your hard drive, or a website URL.

3- Records management (RM) – Microsoft has invested a lot of money in improving RM in 2010. Among the many features that have impressed, users or administrators (or someone else that has permission to do so) are able to lock down a document in a document library, as a record. And with a right click, can send that document to a Record Center with confirmation. Additional Life Cycle controls have been added.

4- Digital asset management (DAM) – yes, SP 2010 actually includes DAM – you no longer have to use a third-party option to professionally manage images, video and other multimedia.

5- Taxonomy & meta data – perhaps the single, most impressive upgrade or enhancement to SharePoint is the addition of true taxonomy and meta data controls. All content now comes with a Managed Meta Data Service Term set that can be inherited from the global taxonomy (site collection), can be built upon or controlled by an administrator, or open to all users (or a combination). In other words, when content is created, be it a page, document, wiki, meta data can be added on the spot, as determined by the publisher or limited to a pre-determined set or tree of terms that is locked down. End readers and users can ‘tag’ the content as well with term tags, ratings (1-5 starts) and “I like it.” What is most encouraging about the use of meta data is that it can be “forced” or a “mandatory field” for all content (we all know that most organizations have options to input meta tags on content, but most content authors ignore it if given the choice).

Other taxonomy features:

· Term ‘nesting” or “threading”(think of the tree with parent & children categories)

· “Fill-in” choices as an option in locked-down taxonomies

· Different taxonomies at different levels: site collections, sites, libraries, etc.

· Managed meta data service can be consumed by multiple farms

· Multilingual taxonomy support (taxonomies using multiple languages)

· Taxonomy workflow (invite specific people to contribute or review the taxonomy)

· View and filter documents by term:

o Geography

o Product Category

o Vertical Industry

o Content Type

o Deal Size

o Folders

o Etc.

While not all of these promised improvements were working in the hands-on labs in my time spent using MOSS 2010, this is in-fact only the beta version (in fact, one of the MS officials helping me through the hands-on labs told me that some of the tutorials are in fact still alpha versions. In fact, the first time I used the new wiki I was convinced it was the 2007 version as I could see not a single improvement to it). There is still some 6 or 7 months still to pass before Microsoft has to work out all the bugs, kinks, and refinements (planned release to existing MOSS 2007 customers is at the end of April, though I would not expect something for installation much before the summer; new customers will have to wait even longer).

Finally, it’s worth noting that MOSS is a massively complex, and powerful system. It’s to be expected that some of the promised functionality may not work for some time, or without serious additional development and customization. In fact, any organization considering an upgrade may do well to wait until after the first service pack, or simply trial the new SharePoint Online which will have close to feature parity with the installed, on premises version.

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Introducing SharePoint 2010: learnings from SPC09

Toby Ward — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 13:03:35 -0700

(LAS VEGAS, NV) If there was one, overarching message delivered by CEO Steve Ballmer in his keynote unveiling Microsoft SharePoint 2010 (at the annual SharePoint Conference in Las Vegas): SharePoint is no longer just an intranet solution, it’s been architected for all forms of web scenarios.

“SharePoint is one of my favorite Microsoft products…. It’s true,” says Ballmer. “SharePoint, in my estimation, is kind of magical. I don’t think there’s anything like it in the market. It has become a platform for a whole big set of scenarios that were served by niche (products).”

New scenarios include all of the typical intranet scenarios, but all the Internet scenarios they can attack. To drive the point home, Ballmer cited many companies already using MOSS 2007 for their public website including:

· Kraft Foods (consolidated 200 websites to a single platform saving $2 million per year)

· Volvo (36 languages, 70 countries)

· Pfizer

· Library of Congress

· Hawaiian Airlines

· Kroger

· Conservation International

However, it remains to be seen whether the improvements to MOSS’s web content management will be sufficient to quell the traditional content publishing and management concerns of marketing and communications managers who operate external websites. The new UI for web content management is a marked improvement – in-context editing deploying the ‘ribbon’ UI introduced in Office 2007.

Ballmer announced that MOSS 2010 will public beta test this November (no specific date was delivered). The MS chief also spent a lot of time talking about “the cloud” and was even so bold as to state that “SharePoint is in the center of the cloud.”

“It’s all in the cloud–we certainly agree with that,” said Ballmer, who stressed that SharePoint Online has more than 1 million online users (and 7,000 partners) -- including the massive GlaxoSmithKline intranet with 200,000 users. “SharePoint is more capable, more extensible, more Internet & cloud focused. It’s an amazing product.”

NEW FEATURES / TOOLS:

· “Ribbon” interface (in-context editing)

· "Visual web parts” (“no more hard-coding of web parts”)

· Supports development / design on Vista & Windows 7

· Access services (publish Access dbases through SP)

· New sandboxed solutions

· Integrated rich media & Silverlight

· Improved Visual Studio & SQL

· Upgrades from 2007 will include a complete migration of an existing home page design / UI to 2010

· Improved social computing (blogs, wikis, tagging, ratings, etc)

· Improved search algorithms and FAST Search integration

· New site scenarios for:

o Pricing analysis

o Hiring processes

o Citizen management (citizen portals)

o Project tracking

o Sales reporting

o Conference planning

o Delivery scheduling

o Compliance review sites

SOCIAL COMPUTING

“We needed to facilitate this next generation of social computing,” stated Ballmer, though not convincingly, when asked about the improvements on social media – a notorious weakness of the MOSS 2007 platform. “We’ve done this with My Sites, mashing-up, etc. I think we’ve moved towards 3.0.”

Improvements to the highly criticized social computing of MOSS include:

Better blogs, wikis, calendars
Co-authoring
Content tagging
Tag clouds
Ratings
Bookmarks
MySites “Smart Profiles” and feeds
Browse colleagues and experts
“Share This Site.”

“There isn’t an enterprise on the planet that doesn’t want to embrace social computing, but they worry about how to do it,” explained Ballmer. “If we can show a path to CEOs and CIOs that we can let people interact with each other the way they want to (and still protect privacy and security) then they will embrace social computing.”

CONTENT MANAGEMENT

Improvements to ECM include:

· Document management: The ceiling limit on a document library moves to 10 million, and within a site collection, to hundreds of millions of documents; no longer will you have to right click to bring up the actions / options of a document, the ribbon hosts all of the options / actions the user needs

· Taxonomy management: you will be able to have consistent content types taxonomy across server farms (applied at the document level)

· Pictures: photos no longer have to be in an SP library, but can be uploaded from your hard drive

· The addition of true Digital Asset Management

GOVERNANCE

Perhaps the biggest criticism or flaw of SharePoint has been the issue of governance, which Microsoft has only addressed half-heartedly, as reflected in Tom Rizzo’s comments: “There’s a lot we’re doing on governance, but its only 20% software, and 80% process,” says Rizzo, Senior Director, SharePoint. “We’ve invested a lot in best practices, centers of excellence. We’ll continue to invest, but I think we’re still need near the beginning, than the end.” In other words, governance is more the client’s responsibility than Microsoft’s.

SHAREPOINT CONFERENCE STATISTICS:

· 7.5 miles of network cable

· 7,400 participants (up from 3,800) – 94% growth

· 297 world class speakers

· 70 countries

· 165 sponsors

· 300+ hours

· 240 sessions

· 45+ hours of hands-on labas

· 18 customer sessions (Delloite)

· 2 SharePoint marriages

· Biggest Beach Party ever by Mandalay with Huey Lewis & The News

Follow my SharePoint conference updates on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TobyWard

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Intranet governance begets intranet success

Toby Ward — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:29:31 -0700

As is the case with most websites or intranets it is simply impossible to achieve any long-lasting success without a clearly defined ownership and management structure. Intranet governance provides clarity and rules: namely the titles, roles and responsibilities of its owners, managers, stakeholders and contributors. However, at the heart of a successful model, is a powerful executive with purse strings, supported by a solid intranet team.

Here are some of the most frequently asked questions regarding governance and a successful intranet, culled from the Q&A of my webinar on Intranet Governance (the highest attended webinar to date) last month:

Q- How do you define what a great intranet is?

A – A great intranet:

operates from a thorough, well defined plan;
is managed by a rigorous governance model supported by a powerful senior executive and a solid management team;
has a reasonable budget for both technical and content development;
features solid, purposeful content and tools that actively support the day-to-day work of employees; and
delivers a solid return on investment in the form of cost savings / cost avoidance and increased sales.

Down the complete Good to Great Intranet Matrix (a guide for evolving your intranet from good to great).

Q - What is the governance model that fits companies who have made the move to social media on their intranet?

A – Governance depends on the culture, company and the management and stakeholders involved. Social media MUST have governance though it should fall under the central intranet governance unless the social media tools are purely separate and owned separately from the intranet / portal home.

A successful social media governance model requires:

A defined owner with clout
Defined roles & responsibilities for all
Policies (rules) for contributing content
Terms of use

Q - Can you talk to setting up a steering committee in more detail, especially when all stakeholders feel that it is their intranet?

A – Follow a proper intranet assessment to ensure that all key intranet stakeholders (managers and executives with a full, partial or perceived ownership stake in the intranet or its major sections and tools) have a formal opportunity to provide input and to itemize their key requirements. From assessment you move into intranet planning that actively engages these key stakeholders and culminates in the development of one of four key intranet governance models that all (or at least most) agree to adopt for their own.

They key is building consensus. If the stakeholder environment is particularly fractured and not given to teamwork, or have competing priorities, then a third-party, non-partisan can help facilitate the process and break down the political barriers.

Intranet in the cloud

Toby Ward — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 23:36:50 -0700

You’ve probably seen the term, or heard it bantered about by geeks, or maybe your head is in it; you may not fully understand the term “cloud” or “SasS” (software as a service) or perhaps just think its another catchy marketing acronym like MOSS (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server).

The “cloud” refers to cloud computing that, at the risk of over-simplifying, is simply hosting: computer, server, software, and other hardware and infrastructure hosting. You’re already a cloud customer, probably many times over (someone is hosting your email, website, blog, etc). In fact, 56% of Internet users use webmail services such as Hotmail, Gmail, or Yahoo! Mail (hosted email in the cloud).

In short, hosting is provided as a service over the Internet. SaaS is simply hosted software that could include your website content management system, search engine, CRM (Salesforce.com), etc. The cloud is merely a metaphor based loosely on those computer network diagrams that so cleverly depict little computers with wires running between each other, servers, firewalls, etc.

I was recently pressed on the subject of a “hosted intranet” and why an organization shouldn’t outsource their intranet to “the cloud.” God forbid we let professionals who know what they’re doing maintain our second-rate, after-though, cost-center of an intranet!

It is baffling to me that the intranet isn’t hosted externally for more organizations. Well, I’m well versed with clueless executives with knee-jerk reactions around “security”, privacy, and “the way things have always been done” but I guess I’m naive to have faith that more would start to embrace the 21st century. If these dolts can Facebook then surely there’s hope, right?

The biggest obstacle blocking the migration of more intranets to the cloud is culture and fear of the ‘unknown’. If the host has proper security does it matter if it’s hosted elsewhere? We do our banking online now, we can’t access the intranet over the Internet?! Most of our benefits and compensation systems are now hosted elsewhere in the cloud – we’re talking about people’s pay, insurance and benefits!

In fact, if it costs me less money and I don't have to worry about the maintenance then you better believe I choose hosted – and I have told clients the same, let someone else host your intranet. It's one of the reasons the "cloud" is expanding so fast. It would be 10 times the size if people would just get beyond the knee-jerk reaction to have everything in-house where it costs more, and probably enjoys less security than the top of the line firewalls that many hosts employ.

The downside to avoiding the cloud can be far more expensive: I have one client (identity protected) who spent well more than $2 million on a new intranet design and platform and it crashed in the first few minutes, never to go live again because the organization didn’t have the proper infrastructure. One-and-one-half years later, the intranet is still not live. This would never have happened had it been turned over to a host. Instead, millions of dollars have been lost, and countless thousands of employee hours.

Has your organization embraced the cloud, or are you wasting valuable time and skills on hosting and maintenance?

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Top 5 intranet KPIs

Toby Ward — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:35:53 -0700

In many ways, websites and intranets are like telephone systems – they assist us in accomplishing mission-critical work all the time but their true value is rarely measured.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Most people and organizations inherently know and understand the value of the telephone and don’t require a detailed ROI balance sheet before buying a phone. Like the telephone, most organizations inherently understand the value of an intranet, but don’t truly measure its value beyond HITS.

Failure to measure your intranet’s performance above and beyond simple analytics (e.g. HITS and page views) is a failure of responsibility (particularly in this economy where most organizations are looking cut costs wherever they find them).

Here are five noteworthy key performance indicators (KPIs) that you need to adopt:

Sales – if you’re intranet is not helping your organization increase sales, then you’re missing out. It’s far too easy to accomplish with a little planning and execution. Among the benefits:

Provide the sales team with better information, more efficiently
Solicit and reward employee leads & referrals

Additional reading:

Intranet Insider World Tour: Sodexho USA

User satisfaction – more important than what employees are reading, and how often / much, is their satisfaction with the intranet. How happy are they? In particular, user satisfaction with:

Design
Content
Navigation
Tools
Search

Among the satisfaction metrics BT tracks on their intranet (see Satisfied BT Intranet users « Mark Morrell):

83% satisfied with the intranet (down 3%)
42% extremely/very satisfied with the intranet (down 3%)
6% are dissatisfied with the intranet (up 2%)
79% satisfied with BT Homepage (new design) the corporate intranet portal (down 3%)
43% extremely/very satisfied the BT Homepage (down 5%)
3% dissatisfied with BT Homepage (no change)

Productivity – the intranet can significantly boost employee productivity and their ability to find information and tools to complete their work. Among the productivity metrics that Microsoft, IBM and BT track:

33% of Microsoft employee survey participants (33%) agree completely that the Microsoft intranet (MSWeb) saves them time
27% agree completely that MSWeb has helped to improve their productivity (8 or 9 on a nine-point scale)
80% IBM employees visit w3 (the intranet) at least once per day
68% view the intranet as crucial to their jobs
52% are more satisfied to be an IBM employee because of information obtained on w3
48% agree the BT Intranet improves everyday working life
57% agree the BT Intranet saves me time in my working day
59% agree the BT Intranet helps me to be more efficient in my job

Additional reading:

Intranet 2.0 case study: BT

Leading intranet case study: IBM’s W3

Stakeholder satisfaction – a far more critical and discerning audience are those managers and executives (stakeholders) that have a hand in or ownership of the intranet. Our intranet consultants (Prescient Digital Media) have solicited and surveyed stakeholders for their opinions and ratings of the for more than 100 intranet clients. Why? It’s not just about making users happy, but also making management happy.

Additional reading:

Creating A Measurable Intranet Strategy Prescient Digital Media (PPT with case study from PNC Bank)

Cost savings – why have an intranet if it’s not saving your organization money? Improved communications and HR are nice, soft benefits, but if the intranet is delivering those benefits, then it’s probably delivering cost savings that you just haven’t measured. Everything from paper, software, technology, administration, distribution / delivery, and travel costs to just about anything under the sun. There are hundreds of areas to save money with your intranet.

Additional reading:

Finding ROI: Measuring Intranet Investments (free white paper)

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Intranet Assessment

Toby Ward — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:26:15 -0700

An intranet or website is more than a project or a piece of technology; it’s a mission-critical business system and a significant investment that requires proper planning.

Many intranets begin without a plan; many are redesigned without a plan. An intranet is far too expensive to leave to guess work, intuition, or a single-minded purpose such as communications or HR. In order to truly realize the full value of the investment the intranet must have a proper plan that accounts for all aspects of the business – including HR, IT, communications, operations, finance, etc. A proper plan begins with a thorough assessment.

Prescient has a five-phased approach or methodology that our Intranet consultants use to creating highly effective intranets and portals. The first phase of this methodology is the Assessment phase, where the business and functional requirements of the intranet or website are determined and documented.

Prescient's unique intranet project methodology

Despite the traditional focus on technology and integration, the most critical phases are the initial ones: Assessment and Planning. At the heart of an intranet's success is the strength of the plan that governs it, and a successful plan begins with a website or intranet assessment.

ASSESSMENT

Before undertaking any website plan or build, an extensive needs or business requirements assessment is necessary to identify, develop, prioritize, and document goals and current practices.

The assessment should include stakeholder interviews and input, as well as user research, and possibly stakeholder workshops. When building a leading-edge website, a detailed strategic blueprint can be crafted with the acquired data and knowledge including:

Creative
Information architecture
Technology
ROI plans

It is recommended that any organization consider engaging a third-party or consultant to conduct the assessment. While the cost may be prohibitive for organizations with tight budgets, a third-party may be more successful in gathering sensitive opinions and feedback as a third-party, unlike stakeholders, have no personal attachment or stake in the intranet and do not have any political agendas.

It is important to gather the needs and requirements of stakeholder and users, at the risk of failure; a representative sampling of user opinions is crucial to gathering an accurate reading on user needs and requirements.

Engaging Users, Identifying Needs

The first two phases, assessment followed by planning, are perhaps the two most important phases: without undertaking rigorous and thorough assessment and planning stages, the subsequent three phases will not realize their potential. The purpose of the assessment is to identify the organization’s needs and requirements. Steps in the assessment phase should include:

Current state site evaluation
Business requirements interviews
User surveys
User focus groups
Review of existing research (surveys, etc.)
Benchmarking (best practices)
Usability testing

Business and needs assessment

The assessment serves two important needs: it documents the needs and requirements of the user population, for the purpose of answering those needs.Before undertaking any site or portal design or redesign, regardless of the size of the project, a requirements assessment is necessary to identify, develop, prioritize, and document goals and current practices. As mentioned above, each engagement begins with an assessment that concretely identifies and documents the project’s goals and objectives, aligns those objectives with those of the sponsoring department and the enterprise as a whole, as well as documents the needs and requirements of the user audience and stakeholders.

Armed with the acquired data and knowledge, a detailed strategic blueprint – including creative, information architecture, and ROI plans – can be crafted to build a leading edge site. Individual modules in the Assessment Phase may include Stakeholder Engagement, User Research Review, User Survey, User Focus Groups, Benchmarking (sometimes conducted in the Planning Phase) and the delivery of the Key Findings Report.

FREE WEBINAR:

Online registration is now open for Intranet Governance: How to Run An Intranet

(Sept 23, 12pm EDT)

ADDITIONAL READING:

Intranet Evaluation

The Intranet Plan

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Intranet Governance: Ownership, Management & Policy

Toby Ward — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 19:09:34 -0700

Who should own the intranet? Communications? IT? HR? All of them? You may be shocked to learn that many companies don’t know the answer; in fact, many organizations can’t clearly answer with any confidence whom is the present intranet owner.

As is the case with most intranets it is simply impossible to achieve any long-lasting success without a clearly defined ownership and management structure. Far from being a buzz word or jargon, intranet governance provides clarity and rules: namely the titles, roles and responsibilities of its owners, managers, stakeholders and contributors.

Sample governance model – large-sized financial services firm

(Source: Prescient Digital Media)

Simply put, governance defines an intranet’s ownership and management model and structure including the:

Management team
Roles & responsibilities of contributors
Decision making process
Policies & standards

Like the content of your website or intranet, planning and governance is technology agnostic; whether it’s SharePoint, IBM or another portal or content management system, the necessity for and the approach to governance is the same. Given its technology neutral status in governance is largely applicable to any technology platform.

POLITICS

Politics and the issues of control, ownership and standards go hand-in-hand with intranet management and perhaps these issues, more than any other, have driven the requirement for planning and defined governance models. Sadly, very few organizations actually have a well-defined governance model, and many of those have spent hundreds-of-thousands to millions of dollars on their website or intranet – amounting to extraordinary investments left to chance and execution on a whim.

According to the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey:

Only 47% of organizations have a defined governance model (32% have 6,000 employees or more; 11% have 30,000 employees or more);
Of the tools and platforms being used by survey participants, a whopping 47% are using SharePoint (MOSS 2007) in some shape or form.

Politics will kill your intranet. Without a well defined governance model (and should your intranet survive the naturally occurring politics of competing priorities amongst various stakeholders – communications, IT, human resources, various business units, etc.) then the value the intranet or portal delivers will be severely hampered.

OWNERSHIP

“If you don’t have structure, you’re going to constantly run into politics,” said Terry Lister, Partner and Leader of IBM Canada’s Business Consulting Services. “Without a governance structure with standards, different silos try to do something in parallel (their own thing) and it costs more… and will lessen the user experience.”

Much of the problem lies in the immaturity of this nascent intranet technology. With the rational consolidation of intranet sites and services under a central site or portal, disparate departments and stakeholders such as corporate communications, human resources, IT and varying business units now must cooperate under a lone umbrella with a single intranet home page. Along with this ‘forced’ cooperation comes the predictable politics and competition for ownership of the intranet (and competition for valued home page real estate).

The problem lies with the traditional growth and evolution of the intranet. Initially, when intranets first came online in the early to mid-1990s, they were nothing more than a web brochure (a.k.a. ‘brochureware’) that sat on a small server under the desk of a Web developer who served as designer, writer and Webmaster.

GOVERNANCE MODELS

I categorize intranet governance by four broad approaches or models:

Decentralized (no single owner; do-what-you-like)
Centralized a single owner or department controls it all; highly bureaucratic; common in small organizations)
Collaborative (shared ownership via committee)
Hybrid, centralized (single owner, with collaborative accountability, decentralized content ownership)

COLLABORATIVE GOVERNANCE

The most common governance model in recent years, in medium to large-size organizations, has been the collaborative model. The collaborative model is most often focused on a cross-representative steering committee representing the major functional stakeholders:

Communications
Human Resources
Operations
Information Technology
Business units / departments

This model is most successful when the committee is championed by one or two key executives, often the CIO, the head of Communications, or HR. Instead of no owner, or one single owner, a collaborative team governs the intranet through the application of policies, standards and templates. This committee is typically responsible for the direction, vision, prioritization of projects, and future evolution.

About two-thirds of medium to large-size organizations have some form of collaborative governance and some form of intranet ‘steering committee’ or council. They typical committee has 6-10 individuals (mostly from IT, HR & communications) and is focused on:

Mandate and vision
Business objectives
Policies and standardization
Project prioritization
Trouble-shooting and conflict resolution

HYBRID, CENTRALIZED GOVERNANCE

The hybrid, centralized governance model is one that combines elements of all three previous models:

Centralized ownership
Centralized policy making and future development decision-making
Centralized technology and content management platforms
Decentralized content publishing and ownership
Decentralized application ownership / management

The hybrid model is very closely aligned to the collaborative model, with two significant exceptions: there is often a supporting steering committee, but it falls under a single intranet owner (or co-owners); and the role of IT is usually reduced from a collaborative owner to a committee member without ownership, but rather a support or enabler role for the business owner (often communications or HR). So while the collaborative model has a committee as the end intranet owner, the hybrid model puts the committee under an owner (though sometimes this business owner is in fact IT).

FREE WEBINAR

Learn more about intranet governance during the free, one-hour webinar on September 23 (12pm EST). Contact us directly to secure an advanced spot on the webinar.

ADDITIONAL READING

Intranet Governance

The Politics of Intranet Ownership

Collaborative Intranet Governance (Intranet Politics Part II)

Intranet management is plural

Why is the intranet so political?

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Social Media Becoming Mainstream on Corporate Intranet

Toby Ward — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 11:53:06 -0700

I recently received a copy of the Intranet Global Survey from Toby Ward, CEO of Prescient Digital Media. The headlight quote was encouraging, “Employees want to work for progressive and innovative organizations, and expect 2.0 environments from employers of choice.” The study included input from 561 organizations of all sizes from across the globe and the results reveal rapid adoption of social media on the corporate intranet in the past year.

The breakdown of specific types of social media on intranets include:

47% have wikis (10% have no plans or interest)
45% have blogs (11% have no plans or interest)
46% have discussion forums (9% have no plans or interest)
37% have RSS (12% have no plans or interest)
23% have podcasts (30% have no plans or interest)
9% have social networking (20% with no plans or interest)

I am not sure which is better the high numbers who have already adopted or the low numbers with no plans or interests. The study concluded that an organization without Intranet 2.0 tools, or plans to use them, risks being out-flanked by their competition.

Read Bill Ives' complete column from (New Study Finds Social Media Becoming Mainstream on Corporate Intranet)

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Intranet Report Podcast: Intranet 2.0 findings & learnings (July 2009)

Toby Ward — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:22:09 -0700

The Intranet Report Podcast by Toby Ward from Prescient Digital Media. This podcast is 4 minutes long.

This month I discuss the findings of the Intranet 2.0 Global Study. Specifically:

The proliferation levels of blogs, wikis & social networking on the corporate intranet
Using intranet 2.0 to increase employee engagement
The corollary between intranet 2.0 investment and user satisfaction
Social networking on the corporate intranet.

LISTEN NOW TO THE INTRANET 2.0 PODCAST: or click on the play button below.

Powered by Podbean.com

PLAYBACK URL: http://prescient.podbean.com/2009/07/29/intranet-20-global-study-findings-learnings/

Intranet 2.0 increases employee engagement

Toby Ward — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 18:52:38 -0700

Employee engagement is the top priority and the organizational coup de grace for many HR practitioners in both the private and public sectors. However, corporate communications plays one of the most important catalytic roles in determining employee engagement, and the intranet is increasingly the most important catalyst in heightening engagement levels, which in-turn improves HR metrics such as employee recruitment and retention (even customer service).

Read my full article Intranet 2.0 Increases Employee Engagement (Insidedge newsletter)

Follow me on Twitter

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Intranet 2.0: The investment vs satisfaction corollary

Toby Ward — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:48:58 -0700

Like anything, you get what you pay for. However, that doesn't mean a social media or Intranet 2.0 solution can't be an inexpensive solution, but it does require proper planning & governance, and usually some customization.

According to the results of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey (561 organizations of all sizes from across the planet), 46% of those with 2.0 tools have spent nothing or very little on the solution:

46% have spent $10,000 or less
35% have spent between $10,000 and $100,00; 19% have spent $100,000 or more

It should probably come as no surprise then that satisfaction levels with 2.0 tools is also quite low:

Satisfaction rates with executives is dangerously poor: 38% of executives rate the 2.0 tools as poor or very poor; a lowly 23% rate them as good or very good
Employee satisfaction is almost poor: 35% of organizations say employee satisfaction with the 2.0 tools is poor or very poor; only 27% rate the tools as good or very good
Only 29% of organizations rate the tool functionality as good or very good; 24% rate them as poor or very poor

In short, organizations are spending very little on their 2.0 initiatives, and the satisfaction levels are correspondingly low. Investment doesn't necessarily deliver satisfaction, but a look into the technologies used reveals some further insight. The vast majority of organizations with 2.0 tools use free, open source solutions or those bundled with a platform solution like SharePoint:

48% of organizations use SharePoint
20% of organizations use Facebook
17% of organizations use MediaWiki
16% of organizations use WordPress

There isn't a single, dedicated 2.0 licensed solution used by more than 13% of organizations. The vast majority use free, open source with the exception of SharePoint which sports 2.0 tools that leave very little to be desired (although the social media components in SharePoint 2010 are supposed to be spectacular, and represent a heavy portion of the investment in the SharePoint upgrade).

Two lessons are worth noting:

1 - Vanilla solutions will deliver vanilla results (without customization tailored to the target audience.

2 - Change management is tantamount to success. These tools require promotion, education, and communications. If you build it they will not come necessarily, employees need to be instructed accordingly.

ALSO READ:

Intranet 2.0 Becomes Mandatory

THE INTRANET 2.0 GLOBAL SURVEY:

The findings of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey are highlighted in the report "Intranet 2.0: social media becomes mainstream on the corporate intranet."

To download a free, summarized version of the Intranet 2.0 report please visit:

http://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/download-summary-report-of-intranet-2-0-global-survey

To purchase the full, 44-page Intranet 2.0 report of analysis & recommendations please visit: http://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/purchase-intranet-2-0-global-survey-report

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Intranet 2.0 Becomes Mandatory Webinar

Toby Ward — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:07:17 -0700

Latest presentation on Intranet 2.0 with new data, examples & insights. A sneak preview of next week's webinar Intranet 2.0 Becomes Mandatory.

Intranet 2.0 Becomes Mandatory

View more presentations from Toby Ward.

Reserve a spot on the free webinar, Intranet 2.0 Becomes Mandatory.

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What every intranet team should know

Toby Ward — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:04:10 -0700

Step Two's James Robertson has released a handy new paperback book, “What every intranet team should know for only.”

This is the definitive ‘quick start’ guide to intranets, providing intranet teams with a to-the-point overview of how to plan, design, manage and grow intranets.

A beautifully printed A5-sized 110-page book, this volume covers key topics for every intranet team:

Six phases of intranet evolution
- 1: The intranet is born
- 2: Rapid organic growth
- 3: Repeated redesigns
- 4: Intranet usability
- 5: Useful, not just usable
- 6: Business tool
Four purposes of the intranet
How to find out what staff need
How to design the intranet
How to deliver great content
The role of the intranet team
How to plan intranet improvements

Few teams have time to read a weighty tome on intranets, and what is needed is a clear ‘map’ for delivering a successful intranet. Drawing on experience from intranet teams across the globe, every page of this book provides key insights, ideas, models and methodologies.

“What every intranet team should know” is perfect for a first-time intranet manager, an inexperienced contributor, or for someone who is just plain stuck or frustrated with the lack of direction for their intranet. The book is a short read, and a good value at only $US89 – a great bang-for-the buck, how-to resource for intranet managers and consultants.

“This is, quite deliberately, a slim volume,” says author James Robertson. “We have distilled our knowledge to a few key concepts, to get you kick-started on the journey to a remarkable intranet.”

Review & purchase What every intranet team should know for only US$89.

FREE WEBINAR:

Intranet 2.0 becomes mandatory Open Webinar (July 21, 2009, 12 pm EDT)

Once a nice-to-have or a future wish, Intranet 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and other vehicles have become mainstream, and are present in nearly 50% of organizations (regardless of size) in the Western World.

This open, free webinar will review the findings of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey and offer attendees a chance to learn why 2.0 has become an imperative, and what to consider / plan when implementing these social media tools.

Reserver your spot for Intranet 2.0 becomes mandatory Open Webinar

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Innovate or die

Toby Ward — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:34:45 -0700

If you're not innovating, you're dying. Death may be slow, and take a few years, but it will come.

Don't take my word for it, or the findings of the Intranet 2.0 Global study, take management guru Peter Drucker's word, or any of the leading business gurus of the last century. Those that don't take innovation seriously, are cast aside or merged into others. Most of the S&P 500 in 1970 don't exist anymore (they're assets & intellectual property gobbled up long ago by another, bigger, faster competitor).

Here are some social media numbers, not in the Intranet 2.0 Global stud y, to consider:

About 90% of adults under the age of 40 are on Facebook (higher in Canada & Northern Europe, a little lower in the US)
39% of employees under the age of 25 would consider leaving their job if their company banned tools such as Facebook

How can a company survive without attracting and keeping the next generation of employees? How can a company ignore the 2.0 revolution -- a revolution that has permanently changed the Internet, which permanently changed business as we know it -- while the competition embraces it? According to the Intranet 2.0 Global stud y about 50% of organizations have deployed social media (blogs, wikis, social networking) on the corporate intranet. Those that have not, are missing out on the party.

The biggest catalyst for innovation is the c-level suite. And the biggest barrier to innovation is the c-level suite. The Intranet 2.0 Global Study found that the biggest barrier blocking the adoption of social media for employees is the "lack of executive support." The arms of executives are needed to fully embrace the 2.0 revolution.There's no better way to get an executive's attention by saying "the competition is doing it and if we don't we risk losing out." Point to some of the case study examples I've documented on this site (e.g. Sabre, BT, Placemaking, Janssen-Cilag and others) as proof, and cross-reference those against the adoption rates and findings in the study.

I wrote that "an organization without a 2.0 strategy risks being left behind, or outright failure (though death may be slow)." Once consultant responded that I was using "scare tactics" when writing about the necessity of 2.0 and social media. Are Peter Drucker's words "scare tactics"? Warren Buffett has echoed these same sentiments; as do employees who want to work for progressive and innovative organizations, and expect 2.0 environments from employers of choice.

The question is not whether or not an intranet or 2.0 is important to companies, the question is your company part of the revolution or being left behind?

About the Intranet 2.0 Survey

The findings of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey are highlighted in the report "Intranet 2.0: social media becomes mainstream on the corporate intranet." 561 organizations took part in the survey.To download a free, summarized version of the Intranet 2.0 report and survey findings, please visit:

http://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/download-summary-report-of-intranet-2-0-global-survey

To purchase the full, 44-page Intranet 2.0 report and full survey findings, analysis and recommendations, please visit:

http://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/purchase-intranet-2-0-global-survey-report

The latest update of the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) is now available from the WIC blog site. Since April 1^st, over 5200 intranet users from 16 organisations have participated in the WIC.

Some of the findings include:

The overall average perception of intranet value is: 2.77 out of 4 (69.0%)

If we only look at those responses where people:

Complete common work tasks such as applying for leave or booking travel more than once a day, the average valueincreases to 3.06 (76.5%)
Spend less than 1 minute a day on the intranet: 1.54 (38.5%)
Spend between 1-2 hours each day on the intranet: 3.13 (78.3%)
Strongly agree with the statement 'I can find the information I need on the intranet' 3.24 (81.0%)
Use the intranet to publish content more than once a day: 3.07 (76.8%)
Disagree with the statement 'Pages on the intranet load quickly': 2.61 (65.3%)

For more information about the WIC or to register for the WIC, check out the CIBA Solutions web site. Please let me know if you have any questions.

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Adopt Intranet 2.0 or risk failure

Toby Ward — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:41:47 -0700

An organization without a 2.0 strategy risks being left behind, or outright failure (though death may be slow). Employees want to work for progressive and innovative organizations, and expect 2.0 environments from employers of choice.

561 organizations of all sizes from across the planet participated in the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey and the results reveal rapid adoption of social media on the corporate intranet in the past year.

Intranet blogs, wikis and discussion forums are quite pervasive, while other less common tools such as podcasts and mashups remain an after-thought at most organizations:

47% have intranet wikis (17% enterprise deployment); 10% have no plans or interest
45% have intranet blogs (13% enterprise deployment); 11% have no plans or interest
46% have intranet discussion forums (19% enterprise use); 9% have no plans or interest
46% have intranet instant messaging (29% enterprise use); 21% have no plans or interest
19% have intranet social networking (6% enterprise use); 20% have no plans or interest

Microsoft dominance

Microsoft is leading the 2.0 charge and dominating all competition. For those organizations that have deployed 2.0 tools inside the firewall, about half of all organizations have SharePoint (in some shape or form):

48% of organizations use SharePoint
20% of organizations use Facebook,17% of organizations use MediaWiki,16% of organizations use WordPress

Cost of Intranet 2.0

Intranet 2.0 is cheap. Of those organizations that have implemented 2.0 tools, almost half have spent $10,000 or less on these tools:

46% have spent $10,000 or less
35% have spent between $10,000 and $100,000,19% have spent $100,000 or more

Poor execution

Sadly though, despite the low cost of entry and ease of technology, satisfaction levels with Intranet 2.0 tools are dangerously low:

Only 29% of organizations rate the tool functionality as good or very good; 24% rate them as poor or very poor
Satisfaction rates with executives is dangerously low: only 23% of executives rate the 2.0 tools as good or very good; 38% rate them as poor or very poor

To download a free, summarized version of the report please visit:

http://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/download-summary-report-of-intranet-2-0-global-survey

To purchase the full, 44-page report of analysis & recommendations please visit: http://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/purchase-intranet-2-0-global-survey-report

-- 30 --

For more information please contact:

Toby Ward, CEO

Prescient Digital Media

416.926.8800

toby@prescientdigital.com

About the Intranet 2.0 Survey

561 organizations took the survey:

36% come from the U.S; 24% from Europe; 11% from Canada; 11% from Australia / New Zealand; 10% from UK
61% have more than 1,000 employees; 32% have 6,000 or more employees; 39% have less than 1000 employees
53% of organizations have had an intranet for 7 or more years; 17% of organizations have had an intranet for 2 years or less
13% of the organizations are government; 13% from technology; 12% from financial services; 6% from healthcare
The survey was led by Toby Ward, President, Prescient Digital Media

About Prescient Digital Media

Prescient Digital Media is a group of senior intranet and Internet consultants that provide strategic Internet and intranet consulting, planning and communications services to organizations of all sizes. Our clients include: Amgen, Covidien, CBC, CIBC, HSBC, Liberty Mutual, Manulife Financial, Mastercard, Nintendo, Pepsi, RBC Financial Group, TD, and more than 100 others. Prescient’s focus includes the assessment, planning, technology selection, content and launch of intranets, websites, and web-based tools. For more information please contact Prescient Digital Media through the website at www.PrescientDigital.com or phone 416.926.8800.

Additional reading

Intranet articles & case studies – www.IntanetBlog.com

Join the Intranet Global Forum on Facebook – www.Facebook.com/group.php?gid=2723005032

View our presentations on intranets on our SlideShare channel – www.slideshare.net/prescient

Watch Toby discussing the future of intranets – www.YouTube.com/watch?v=kaTMOTpRVQk

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Intranet Trends & the 2009 Global Intranet Strategies Survey

Toby Ward — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:49:15 -0700

(NEW YORK, NY) Jane McConnell's 2009 Global Intranet Stategies Survey is now live (until the end of August). This is the 4th annual survey; last year 226 organizations participated. The survey has become the reference for knowing what is happening in intranets. Participants will receive a complimentary copy of the "Global Intranet Trends for 2010" which will be published in the second part of October.

See the topics covered in this year's survey.

Among the learnings last year:

C-level executives now participate on the intranet steering committees of half of the respondent companies that have a steering committee (about 1/3 of the respondent companies have a steering committee; roughly 1/6th of the total respondents therefore have a senior executive actively involved)
Only 45% have networks or communities of practice for content contributors
Only 36% of the organizations have “clearly designated business owners for content”
only 1% stage 1 intranets have wikis in general use (optimized); 35% are testing intranets (n some parts)
10% of stage 3 intranets have wikis in general use (optimized); 74% are testing intranets (in some parts)
2% of stage 3 intranets have wikis in general use (optimized); 30% are testing intranets (in some parts)

Here's what other readers of the report have said:

"Great survey, really got me thinking about the Intranet and portal. Just answering the questions felt beneficial - so I really, really cannot wait for the report!"
"Not only this is a moment when we pause and realize what we do, but it's also food for thoughts, research and projects." from a 3-time participant
"With the help of my colleagues we have completed the survey. We all found it very interesting and it has also provided us with some helpful self-analysis questions. It will be interesting to see the consolidated information."

Sign-up to parcipate in the 2009 survey and receive a free copy of the in-depth research report.

Additionally, if you want a focus on social media and intranets (Intranet 2.0) download Summary Report of Intranet 2.0 Global Survey.

ADDITIONAL READING ON INTRANET TRENDS:

Intranet trends

Intranet statistics

Learning from the best intranets

Selling an intranet redesign

A Measurable Internet Strategy & Intranet 2.0

Toby Ward — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 13:10:07 -0700

How long is a piece of string? How deep is half a hole?

"These philosophical riddles leap to mind when approaching the subject of a measurable Internet strategy," writes Prescient Digital Media GM Carm Porco in this month's Intranet Insight. "As with the two aforementioned riddles, I have seen numerous clients struggle to find the answers when defining success for their web endeavors. Organizations typically have not defined what success looks like and have no measurable goals or key performance indicators (KPI's) in place.

Read Creating a measurable internet strategy >>

Additionally, here's a sneak preview of my presentation "New Dimensions in the Era of Web 2.0 (Intranet 2.0)" at the Conference Board in Manhattan on Friday, June 24, 2009.

New Dimensions In Web 2.0: Intranet 2.0 & Employee Engagement

View more OpenOffice presentations from Toby Ward.

Note the findings of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey. If you're a participant, links to the final results datasheet and full, 44-page analysis report "Intranet 2.0: Social Media becomes mainstream on the corporate intranet" should be in your Inbox.

Only participants get the final results datasheet, but a Summary Report of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey Results can be downloaded from the Prescient Digital Media home page. Non-participants of the survey can purchase the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey Report for $79.95.

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Website strategy

Toby Ward — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 11:09:44 -0700

I spend a lot of time talking about intranet planning and straregyAn all too common complaint from web managers is that their website does not enjoy the support from executives it deserves.

But is lack of support the fault of the executives who fail to grasp internet value, or the web manager who fails to talk their talk and present the website value in a concise, impactful way that will motivate executives to support the web?

The fault lies squarely with the web manager, according to a practical, helpful white paper “Best Practices for Creating a Web Strategy: What Web Managers Need to Know,” produced by J. Boye, a vendor-neutral analyst firm.

Website strategy best practices