Intranet Blog

Intranet 2.0 sits on the back burner

Toby Ward — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 11:00:00 -0700

As I highlighted last week in Web 2.0 not a priority for CIOs, the adoption rate of social media is surprisingly low given the adoption by every day consumers. Here’s the summary:

14% of organizations use blogs
13% use social tagging software
11% use wikis
72% of CIOs have no plans to use blogs in the next 5 years
74% no plans to use wikis

Last year’s Global Intranet Survey of 177 global intranet managers (medium to large organizations with 5,000 to 100,000 employees) found that Intranet 2.0 adoption is not much better:

Less than 20% of the respondents that have more than 50,000 employees have established 2.0 strategies
None of the respondents with employees in the 5,000 – 50,000 employees have 2.0 strategies
About 30% or less have implemented blogs
About 40% have implemented wikis

While Prescient’s Intranet 2.0 Global Survey is an important one, it is focused solely on Intranet 2.0. Jane McConnell has prepared the 2008 Global Intranet Survey and if you haven’t signed up to participate then don’t hesitate further: your organization needs this information and you need to participate so you can get a copy of the 2008 results as soon as possible (THE DEADLINE IS THIS SUNDAY, AUGUST 31). To participate, send an email to Jane specifying:

organization name
# of employees
website URL
your name
your role or title

Additionally, take the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey and you’ll get a copy of the full results including the good, bad and learned lessons.

Social software that power Intranet 2.0

Toby Ward — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:53:45 -0700

“Looking for greater flexibility and support for more ad hoc processes, employees have responded with a more bottom-up approach, in some cases circumventing official information systems,” say CMS Watch Founder Tony Byrne and contributing analyst Jarod Gingras, the principal authors of The Enterprise Social Software Report 2008.

CMS Watch's social media vendors matrix.

In other words, if your organization hasn’t embraced and standardized social software, your employees will begin installing it and using it without your permission. I know of what client that only found out recently that 15% of their employee base had voluntarily joined a dedicated company Facebook site. At BT, 4,000 employees formed their own “BT Facebook” site. BT took note and in response built their own social networking site called MyBT (see The power of Intranet 2.0).

If your organization hasn’t already developed an Intranet 2.0 plan (social media plan), you would do well to develop one before employees develop their own. This plan ideally contains the business case for moving to Intranet 2.0. Byrne and Gingras cite a number of business benefits to implementing enterprise social software:

Hard benefits:

Reduce expenses
Increase productivity
Increase customer retention

Soft benefits:

Improve internal communication
Improve internal collaboration
Improve employee morale and retention

I cited a number of positive ROI examples, or link to others, in Intranet 2.0: A must-have.

While a plan is a must, an even more difficult task may be the selection of the actual software that will power your Intranet 2.0 – there are now hundreds of solutions on the market. The Enterprise Social Software Report dissects the capabilities of 20 different social software (social media) solutions for Intranet 2.0 (or Web 2.0) including those from:

IBM (Lotus Connections)
SharePoint
Connectbeam
Facebook
Google (Blogger)
MediaWiki
Socialtext
and others

Each of these solutions are reviewed for their business service uses including:

Blog
Wiki
Social Ranking
Project Tracking & Participation
Multimedia
Info Filtering
File Sharing
Web Conferencing
Discussion Forums
Presence / Instant Messaging (IM)
People Finding (e.g. social networking)

All of this is rated according to various Administration & System Services (e.g. security, analytics, etc.) and various corporate scenarios (e.g. Enterprise Collaboration, Project Collaboration, etc.).

Some interesting notes regarding the two big solutions, SharePoint and Lotus Connections / Quickr:

Lotus Connections / Quickr: strong social networking, strong presence and IM tools, excellent integration with Notes and emerging Outlook connectors, and an innovative Blackberry application; “underwhelming blog/wiki” and requires WebSphere Portal for roles and group modules – best for Enterprise Networking; poor for Project Collaboration.
Microsoft SharePoint (MOSS 2007): broad range of third-party plug-ins, lightweight portal services including bundled applications and lightweight document and records management services into social applications, search works well in an all-SharePoint environment; almost all native services are weak compared to competitors, near complete absence of social networking, social tagging & Bookmarking, and surprisingly weak integration with Outlook – best for Project Collaboration (e.g. team sites); poor for Enterprise deployments.

In short, Lotus is a better enterprise solution; SharePoint is a better project or team solution.

Regardless, 20 different products are reviewed in detail (from 10 – 25 pages per product review) and it’s a worthwhile read if you are looking at implementing social media or Intranet 2.0 software. Buy CMS Watch’s Enterprise Social Media Report 2008 (they offer a 30-day, 100% money-back guarantee).

If you’re looking to move to Intranet 2.0, but don’t exactly know how, then have a look at our Intranet 2.0 Blueprint service, or call me at 416.986.2226.

ADDITIONAL READING:

Intranet 2.0: A must-have

Enterprise 2.0 vs. Intranet 2.0

Embracing Enterprise 2.0

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Intranet 2.0: A must-have

Toby Ward — Thu, 29 May 2008 23:42:00 -0700

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

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

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

According to a web survey by the Software Information & Industry Association, only 41% of participants are using social media, but 35% plan to use it. While the survey is not scientifically significant for all organizations in all industries and is biased towards the audience that participated, the numbers are pretty close to the mark. As it relates to large organizations, the numbers echo other recent study findings from CIO and Forrester. However, the adoption numbers are far smaller in small and medium size organizations.

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

Engagement
Retention
Productivity
Cost Reduction
Time-to-market

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

INTRANET 2.0 CASE STUDIES

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11 INTRANET 2.0 SOLUTIONS TO WATCH:

WorkLight
WorkBook
ConnectBeam
SocialText
Google Gadgets
Lotus Connections
Quickr
SharePoint
SelectMinds
Cogenz
ThoughtFarmer

READ THE ENTERPRISE 2.0 VERSION WITH WEB CASE STUDY EXAMPLES:

Enterprise 2.0: A must have

The pros and cons of SharePoint

Toby Ward — Mon, 19 May 2008 11:57:37 -0700

SharePoint continues to be at the center of much of the intranet buzz – regardless of the water cooler, conference or country.

Shawn Shell, CEO of Consejo, and author of CMS Watch’s The SharePoint Report 2008 from CMS Watch, accurately summarizes SharePoint in one telling quote during his SharePoint presentation at Enterprise 3: “SharePoint does a lot of things, but it does very few things very well.”

I have maintained for sometime that SharePoint is an excellent intranet platform for departments, or small to medium-size enterprises. We in fact use it for our intranet at Prescient Digital Media (disclosure: we are fully technology-neutral with no partnerships nor reselling agreements with any technology vendor including Microsoft). But I don’t think that Sharepoint (MOSS 2007) is an appropriate enterprise intranet for medium to large organizations that need more robust content management, document management, and application integration. Nonetheless, SharePoint does have its strengths, and weaknesses, regardless of the client organization.

In no particular order, here are some of Shawn’s insights on SharePoint (and his company Consejo works almost exclusively on SharePoint implementations):

PROS:

Biggest strength: collaboration features and forcing compliance with information management policies.

OTHER STRENGTHS:

Blogs are built into every My Site
Wikis are out of the box
Reports – the ability to display and work with data from an Xcel worksheet.
Simple to use out-of-the-box
Search is very fast
Contributing content is simple
Direct integration with Office (XP to 2007)
Most functionality “exposed” through web services (e.g. all content can be subscribed to via RSS)
Mobile views via a PDA or phone is out-of-the-box
Alerts and workflow (though limited to email notification)
WSRP and SAP integration is included

I would add that if you’re an enterprise Microsoft customer, you can get MOSS for very cheap if not free (but the licensing typically represents 10-30% of the total cost). As well, simple out-of-the-box SharePoint management needs little to no training.

CONS:

Biggest weakness: Records management and digital asset management (non existent).

OTHER WEAKNESSES:

The wiki piece is a little weak (“The rumor is that the wiki and blog components were very late additions… they work very well, but the functionality is considerably lower than what you would expect from an enterprise deployment.”)
Sharepoint does not support AJAX (though there are work-arounds, MS will not support AJAX)
Customization can be expensive and complex (and limited)
Content management (“It’s very average content management… its not very fabulous.”)
Analytics are very, very simple
Non-Active Directory authentication capabilities
Social networking built into MySites
Search returns documents and people
WSRP and SAP integration is not terribly strong, but it works.

I would add the following weaknesses: immature technology, weak templates, and a reputation for weak service and training.

Shawn’s recommendations when considering or implementing SharePoint:

Understand information quantities and needs
Don’t just throw collaboration tools out there (he cited one client with “out-of-control” team sites and SharePoint sprawl)
Establish & enforce standards for use
Establish and closely monitor metrics for content creation
Continually evaluate and adjust approach to match reality

Enforce workspace use metrics
Notify of non-use after 60 days
Four notifications
Delete after fourth notification

Use workflow to suspend assets
Re-map and migrate intranet sites into Sharepoint
Use Search to Capture Outlying Sites
Create a controlled vocabulary (taxonomy and meta data)
Measure and measure again
Track search requests against workgroup assets

Shawn’s advice of what not to do:

Enforcing standards inappropriate for collaborative environment (ditch the Big Brother persona)
Repeat monolithic hierarchy (reduce the red tape)
Exclude active participants / authors
Ignore advantages of “competing” tools (e.g. Lotus SameTime)
Search results must be validated and in context

By the way… the next version of Sharepoint will be released in 2010 along with Office version 14 (MS is superstitiously skipping version 13).

ADDITONAL READING:

Sharepoint to be the new Windows?

Why you should or shouldn’t choose Microsoft Sharepoint

Download the new Sharepoint; Vendor perception versus reality

JUST FOR FUN:

Here's a young kid who is a master impersonator (killer, really) who uses his celebrity voices when reading from the SharePoint marketing material:

http://www.spike.com/video/2869058?cmpnid=716&pt=sr&refsite=7103

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Enterprise intranet wikis

Toby Ward — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 17:02:36 -0700

IBM and Cisco are infested with them. Even smaller companies are finding huge value in the form of impressive cost savings, and faster time to market. But most organizations are still puzzled on how to proceed with enterprise wikis.

“Wikis often grow out of hand very quickly and consequently many employees simply ignore them. Enterprises also face the risk of an explosive information growth far beyond their capacity to manage that information”, said analyst and MD, Janus Boye, author of a report, Wiki in the Enterprise.

“If you don’t create guidelines and processes for managing the wiki, the gap between information and capacity is a risk to the enterprise as it translates into the right information not being found and the potential creation of redundant information.”

Most corporations do not have a wiki. And most aren’t planning to have them either (just yet). A recent Forrester study found that only 51% of Global 2000 companies plan to invest in Web 2.0 in the coming year. But only between 20% of small companies, and only about 30% of medium corporations plan on buying Web 2.0 tools (for a summary, see Intranet portal solutions die, evolve & move to Web 2.0).

But almost no one had a wiki three years ago. So in truth, wikis have exploded and are multiplying like rabbits. Boye, an independent analyst focusing on online media and an expert on enterprise portal solutions, has found that wikis are increasingly gaining foothold in the enterprise due to it promises of simplicity. Yet, wikis introduce complex challenges for organisations, on a strategic level as well as on the level of actual content creation.

At Cisco, the first wiki appeared a few years ago, when an engineer installed one on the server under his desk. “He told a PM, who then told other PMs and it spread like wildfire,” says Michael Lenz, Senior Manager, User Experience, at Cisco Corporate Communications. “Literally, day over day, the increase is amazing… any number I gave you today would be useless tomorrow or next week. There are tens-of-thousands of wikis… and the number of wikis about equals the number of employees (65,000).”

Read my complete article Enterprise intranet wikis.

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