Tis the season for prognosticating the future and issuing the annual prediction list for the coming year!

(Intranet job posting below)

Does anyone really care? Does anyone running an intranet actually have so little to do and so much time on their hands that they believe some keyboard jockey (myself included) can predict what they should be worrying about in the upcoming year?

Yeah, I kinda want to know too!

Shiv Singh writes about his top Intranet Trends to Watch for in 2006 in CIO magazine. Singh knows his stuff and is clearly a solid intranet mind, but I honestly don’t agree with him on most accounts. I do however like two or three of his seven prognostications:

1. The Intranet grows up and makes new friends (DISAGREE) 

Singh claims that “As these intranets morph into Swiss army knife-like systems that solve more employee problems, the lines between enterprise applications, department specific tools and employee intranets will blur considerably.” Sadly, most corporate intranets are already far too Swiss army-like. A very small few do it well, but the majority (my guess is about 90%) are a complete mess and it will be painfully obvious to the user that there is not just a fuzzy line separating the intranet home page and a specific application but an ugly colored line with poor navigation and design.

2. Intranet ROI will be pushed to the back burner (DISAGREE)

Once again I have to shed a tear because Intranet ROI has ALWAYS been on the back burner – ROI has never been on the front burner. My ROI study (see ROI Remains Guesswork At Most Companies) of 240 organizations found that only 6% of organizations undertake ongoing, specific measurement of the ROI of their intranet. Occasional measurement is undertaken by only 26% of organizations and 51% either do no measurement, don’t know if they do, or only guess at the ROI. 18% are considering ROI measurements. I’ve worked with dozen of intranet firms and only two or three had done any ROI measurement before I met them. I absolutely guarantee you (I wager $1000 for someone who can prove me wrong) that anything has changed. As pathetic as it sounds, most executives don’t give a rat’s ass about the intranet. They have no clue and don’t care. It’s a cost center. For this reason alone, the need to develop a business case and ROI will become more pervasive and in demand. Though most of the time it will be forgotten, ROI will be measured in more than 6% of organizations in 2006.

3. Expect Intranets to become even more pervasive (DISAGREE)

Many of the statistics that I’ve seen show that more than 90% of large and medium size companies have intranets. Small companies that have launched intranets have skyrocketed in recent years. Intranets are already pervasive and their growth rate is slowing simply because critical mass has already been achieved (note the decline in fortunes of companies such as Intranet.com (recently bought out). Singh’s rationale though is correct  “Expect to see many more dynamic, innovative intranets in the near future, whether they’re servicing the board members of a Fortune 500 company or farmers in a developing country. Also, expect to be challenged to deliver more dynamic and innovative intranet solutions for your employees and business partners.” Definitely; the business wants to deliver more innovation and employees demand it.

4. The user experience matters at last (DISAGREE)

Singh is right: users are demanding a better user experience, “Time and again, employees repeatedly ask that their intranet user experience be as simple, efficient and satisfying as their Google experience.” This however has been happening for years. To satisfy this need most companies are redesigning their intranet every year to two years. So, most already believe the user experience matters, hence the redesigns. However, the execution is weak. It’s bloody awful. The crap I see... Perhaps more than anything Singh believes that it will continue to get better. I hope so.

5. The Ajax revolution hits the intranet (AGREED)

Ajax is hot and IT is catching the fever. “There has been a lot of buzz about Ajax in recent months. Ajax is a loose knit of programming technologies that speeds up the Web experience and brings greater interactivity to websites... Expect to see nifty, task oriented, highly interactive Ajax and flex based applications on your intranet fueling the next wave of user adoption.” I agree. I already have one client (a major credit card company) that has a very cool employee locator map that shows the floors and position of employee desks on each floor. Clicking on the desk pulls up employee contact information and can even direct you to the closest meeting room, and then allow you to book that meeting room – all in seconds!

6.     Blogs come and go but RSS will remain (DISAGREE – AGREE)

Blogs are huge and they are exploding on the intranet – and they’re here to stay (see Blogging the intranet and Study: Intranet blogging on the rise  and McDonald’s beefs-up intranet blogs). Some blogs will disappear, for certain. But for every one that disappears there will probably be 3 or 4 new blogs. I absolutely agree that RSS will not only remain but also explode. In fact, it’s because of RSS that blogs will continue to explode.

7.      Wikis gain prominence and get integrated (AGREE)

Definitely – bang on. “Many smaller, less structured companies have embraced wikis as their intranet technology platform. For these organizations with flatter, less formal hierarchies, the self correcting mechanisms of a wiki create the right balance of empowering the employees to share and preventing things from spinning out of control.” (See Wiki The Intranet and Investment banker uses wiki for employee collaboration)

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JOB POSTING:

IT Analyst at Suncor Energy Inc (https://www.linkedin.com/e/G3u7dinv_6UcuabuGfVpNCuq_IIYgagk369Uvzl/vjb/33658/bjob/)

(Send your intranet job ops to me as comments or via our website at www.PrescientDigital.com)

At one time, in the late 90s, IBM had 10,000+ intranet sites. No, not pages, 10-THOUSAND intranet sites (representing millions of pages). I call that gross intranet sprawl.

What’s a megalithic corporation to do with 10 grand rebel sites? Shut ‘em down.

Of course, they weren’t so crass to start hacking and slashing every site. Though by establishing a centralized platform, a set of enforceable policies, and a measure of political campaigning and time, IBM eventually rationalized more than 6,000 intranet sites. The campaign saved IBM $9-billion (BILLION!).

Most intranet owners cooperated willingly. And why wouldn’t they? If the corporation provides a central platform, an easy-to-use publishing tool, indexing from the central search engine and technical hosting, why wouldn’t renegade site owners jump at the opportunity to close their intranet site? They would; they did. Some of course were reluctant and a less subtle form of persuasion was needed in the end.

“Driving the consolidation of sites was difficult,” said IBM’s Liam Cleaver, a key manager of IBM’s intranet portal W3, in our recent webminar, Intranet World Tour with IBM. “We owned little and controlled less. “But we (the portal team) do own the URL w3.ibm.com and groups want to have that root in their URL. To be part of that they have to adhere to standards and we have the authority to shoot down sites. We don’t like to play cop but prefer carrot and stick approach that sells the value.”

Close the rebel site, migrate the content, relinquish the hassle, pocket the money.

Well, easier said then done. Believe me, by jove, it isn’t easy. It takes an open pit mine full of gumption, political fortitude and a double reinforced iron gut. If you’ve got brass kahunas to try it, the rewards can be high.

Here are the ingredients needed to attempt a site rationalization program:

• A forceful and tactful executive champion that is, with few exceptions, a C-level chief.

• A united and strong central steering committee or council that widely represents core business services and business units.

• A strong business case with anticipated and measured return on investment (dollars and cents sell business cases).

• A robust central intranet portal and supporting technology.

• An engaged and participatory IT department (no more excuses about understaffing and bigger priorities).

• A set of enforceable intranet standards and polices (development policy, editorial policy, etc.) that spell out the rules, roles and responsibilities of all.

• A central content management system and publishing tool that stores and indexes all content with standardized page and document templates.
• A decentralized content publishing model where content authors and owners write, publish and manage their own content via the central CMS while adhering to the aforementioned polices and standardized templates.

Start small and seek out friends for some easy wins. Rationalize a few sites. Talk about the program benefits and success for the content owners and the publishers. Sell, sell, sell. Once the carrot looses its shine and ceases being effective, then pull out the big stick.

Whatever you call it, rationalization, cooperation or adoption, the path to success will be fraught with politics. Intranets are political footballs and politics will almost always be an intranet manager’s top challenge, in most organizations. This is a natural outcome of the many divergent groups with different minds and ways of looking at the world forced to work together in a cooperative environment and a common platform. Communications sees the world far differently than IT. Marketing approaches business far differently than HR. So friction is natural. Hence the need for a strong champion, a cohesive steering committee, and an armful of polices (legislation) to support the process.

“I've had the opportunity to work closely with both developers and end-users during these system adoptions and have always noticed a subtle but very real threat to the outcome,” writes intranet journalist Paul Chin in his latest column, Lil' Orphan Intranet: Adopting an Ownerless System. “It isn't a technical threat, it's a social threat. IT may feel some animosity, justified or not, toward renegade developers...  Users, however, should never have to bear the brunt of this frustration.”

There’s the rub. The intranet must serve the audience: the users, your employees. Measured ROI and cash saved is important. Without the support and use by employees, however, that ROI will never be realized. The buck stops with the users who are tired of the frustrating experience that the intranet has become. A rationalization program will save money, but it will also save the sanity of frustrated users who are tired of complaining, “I can never find anything!”

RELATED ITEMS:

Intranet sprawl and renegade development  

Xerox Demonstrates Intranet Success

Protecting your goods

Top 5 killer intranet mistakes

Ruling by committee

Killer intranet mistakes #4 and #5

Intranet Design Wars

Intranet kingdom remains an unknown quantity

Podcasting has started to crossover to the intranet. Once again, IBM is showing its corporate leadership and innovation by using podcasts for employees using podcasts to further build its internal communications arsenal. As Stacy Cowley of IDG News Service has discovered (IBM employees play with podcasting – thanks to Fredrik Wacka @ CorporateBlogging.com) the technology giant of 325,000 employees is using podcasting to lower their phone bills.

“In August, IBM made its first official foray into podcasting by launching a series of programs called "IBM and the Future of...," featuring its scientists and other staffers discussing topics like driving, shopping, banking and urban planning. Postcasts are audio files designed to be played on PCs or portable music devices like iPods; listeners can use software to subscribe for automatic downloads of new podcasts in series that interest them.

IBM, based in Armonk, New York, had occasionally posted internal podcasts before on its intranet, but its new "Future" series prompted the company to extend its podcasting support. IBM drafted a podcasting policy similar to the corporate blogging policy it adopted last year, and quietly released a tool for uploading audio files and syndicating them via RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Then it sat back to see what IBM staffers would create.

"People have just gone ahead and experimented," said Ben Edwards, IBM's manager of investor communications and the organizer of its "Future" series. "There are some very interesting models emerging."

One of Edwards' favorite creations is a weekly status update from IBM's supply chain organization. The group previously scheduled a weekly conference call with all the employees it needed to coordinate with -- a conference that involved as many as 7,000 people. Now, supply-chain executives upload a weekly podcast, which staffers can listen to when they want. "It's dramatically cheaper," Edwards said. "Plus you don't have thousands of people organizing their schedules around this weekly call."

I am continually amazed by IBM’s progressive leadership in the area of employee communications and technology. No need to tell me that it is easy for IBM being such a big company, with heaps of technology and endless coffers – that is not the reason. Podcasts, blogs, wikis, these are all low cost, easy to use tools. Any company can do it and yet few actually do. It does not matter that all employees are using podcasts or blogs nor does it matter that even a majority of staff pay any attention to these tools. They are being used by some and are delivering value.

RELATED ITEMS:

Intranet World Tour: IBM leads the World (discussion below)

Leading intranet case study: IBM’s W3

Value in podcasting?

Corporate communications grows up

TORONTO, ON - I love the wiki concept. Wikis hold a lot of power and promise. A wiki however cannot substitute for an entire intranet.

My colleague Shel Holtz takes issue, and with good reason, with SocialText CEO Ross Mayfield (makers of the leading wiki software) who has suggested that all intranets could become wikis (see The future of intranets). Mayfield makes his comments on the Blogspotting show of Stephen Baker, a BusinessWeek reporter and blogger (seeRossMayfield interview).

Look lets not confuse a social communications tool with a business ecosystem. I’m sure I need not redefine what an intranet. A wiki can be used for many things including creating policies, dialogues, knowledge networks, etc. But a wiki is a tool, and only a tool. For professional communicators and business managers, it is but only one tool that should be considered in a larger mix of options.

“Whatever shape they take, intranets are, at their core, the Internet captured behind the firewall,” writes Holtz. “That definition embraced the suite of TCP/IP protocols... also allows the intranet to perform all manner of functions, from communication to collaboration, from streamlined online work processes to the archiving of static information in a hierarchical, navigable format. No single platform can contain all of the purposes a class-A intranet can fulfill.”

Bang on. What else does an intranet or portal offer that a wiki can never?

• Employee directory
• Self-service applications such as HR tools
• Personalized portals
• Dynamically generated content
• Advanced security, controls and workflow

No, I love wikis, but this social communictions phenom will never substitue a complete intranet or portal. Nor should it.

RELATED INFORMATION:

Wiki The Intranet

Investment banker uses wiki for employee collaboration

Selecting a wiki

GET STRATEGIC:

Sins and salvation

CHICAGO, ILL - Wikipedia.com is a perfect illustration of the power of a well executed wiki. Anyone with a browser can write an article or edit any article of anyone else. With 825,000 articles and tens of thousands of volunteer contributors, Wikipedia is now the largest wiki on the Internet and it’s extraordinarily easy to use – more simple than MS-Word.

A wiki can also deliver powerful value inside on the intranet. At my company, Prescient Digital Media, we’ve set up wikis for discussing and finalizing our company values and our investing in people strategy.

Ziff Davis, one of the largest publishers of technology magazines in the World, uses a wiki to speed-up software development producing huge savings. 1UP.com, the gaming division of Ziff Davis, uses a wiki product made by Socialtext. According to the customer testimonial on the Socialtext website, the development wiki has created a far more efficient environment for working together which has greatly reduced the reliance on e-mail, as well as the associated lag time. 1UP.com measures the savings to date as a result of the wiki at than $1 million dollars.

So how do you go about setting up a wiki of your own? Here are eight easy steps:

1-     Determine your subject matter (e.g. intranets)

2-     Define your target audience (e.g. intranet managers and consultants)

3-     Establish objectives and measurable goals (e.g. 1,000 viewers per day)

4-     Determine the required feature set and functionality of your wiki (page history, RSS, etc.)

5-     Select the most appropriate technology (e.g. SocialText, Confluence, etc.)

6-     Set-up the wiki and arrange hosting (e.g. ServerIntellect, Q9, etc.)

7-     Begin writing

8-     Invite other contributors

Most of you either have experience with steps 1-4 and 6-8, but selecting the technology might leave some question marks. After all, there are now dozens of wiki software vendors on the market.

There is however a great new website – a wiki unto itself – that is an excellent tool for sourcing which is the best wiki technology for your needs. Better yet, even neophytes with little or no wiki experience can make a very informed decision about the best technology for their project using Wikimatrix.org.

Select one or more different wiki vendors and hit the compare button to see an itemized table comparing the functionality and feature sets of those solutions you are considering. If you have no idea which vendors to start with then just play with the tool and select a few to get a feel for the technology.

Some of the popular vendors include:

• SocialText
• WriteBoard
• Confluence
• JotSpot

In selecting a wiki you’ll want to know and document many requirements and functionality including those that are often considered the most important:  

• Price
• Customer support
• WSIWYG editor
• RSS and Atom feeds
• Page history
• Change summary
• Comments and quotes
• Statistics (most popular pages)
• Operating system
• Database storage
• Security and encryption

If hiring a consultant to help you implement a large scale wiki is not an option then I’d suggest first experimenting with one of the free or open source products. Learn what you can and then find a permanent solution. If properly executed, a wiki can be a powerful collaboration tool for both employees and/or customers.

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On the flight here to Chicago, IL (speaking at the 2005 Annual Ragan Web Content Management Conference – workshop + keynote) I thought of a great wiki idea... a travel wiki where consumers can post the latest prices for flights, hotels, cars, etc. as well as write collaborative reviews about their experiences.... anyone come across such a wiki yet? I’ve come across wiki travel guides based on geographic setting focused on site seeing, etc., but nothing focused on travel prices and experiences.