Intranet Development Plan
Graham Honeywill Amberbuzz Consulting Oy 27th May 2010 Version 0.5
Contents What is an intranet? ..........................................................................................................................................2 Business targets for the intranet .......................................................................................................................2 Individual goal-‐driven scenarios .......................................................................................................................3 The Intranet and Buzz ........................................................................................................................................4 What makes an intranet effec@ve? ...................................................................................................................5
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Intranet Development Plan What is an intranet? If informa@on is the lifeblood of an organiza@on, then the intranet is the circulatory system (shared also by email, IM, public social media groups, corridor discussions, telephones, formal and informal mee@ngs). One objec@ve for the intranet is the exchange of informa0on and internal services between people, suppor@ng the goals of the organiza@on and the individuals and teams within the organiza@on. An addi@onal objec@ve would be to integrate all the individuals in the organiza0on with the needs and services of the customer, bonding the “centrally built” marke@ng and sales development ini@a@ves with the very localized customer and consumer oriented market need and customer desire -‐ forming a virtuous cycle of learning and development. Central to both these objec@ves is “the individual” within the organiza0on -‐ their mo@ves, need, behavior, experiences and capabili@es. The purpose of this paper is to propose a framework for intranet concep@ng and management -‐ based on a balance between business driven targets and a person-‐centric view of goals, resul@ng in requirements and capabili@es.
Business targets for the intranet Do organiza@ons need an intranet? Glad you asked that ques@on, Barry. I would argue that when it comes to internal communica@ons, all organiza@ons, regardless of their size or complexity, share the following business effec0veness targets: •
Providing access to the right informa@on or service as quickly as possible
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Providing ability to create the right informa@on or service as efficiently as possible
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Low cost mass medium for rapid communica@on
These targets form the basis for conven@onal intranets within many organiza@ons. However, in addi@on to the above there are another set of business targets that I refer to as “values and cohesion targets”, related to how people engage with each other across the organiza@on and across the broader value chain with suppliers, customers and end consumers: •
Building the corporate values into the company culture -‐ fostering a “tribal” sense of trust and belonging
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Enhancing and suppor@ng teamwork and process efficiency
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Bringing the customer voice to all employees
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Suppor@ng an environment of rapid learning
These seven business targets, for effec@veness and values/cohesion, form the business case for intranet development and for development of management KPIs.
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Intranet Development Plan Individual goal-driven scenarios However, as with other digital channel development areas, the business dimension described above reflects only half the true value equa@on. The other half comes from the employees -‐ the web visitors, their goals, expecta@ons and experiences. It is cri@cal to understand who these employees are, what they need to achieve and what they experience, based on surveys and interviews and reflected in the form of personas and scenarios. These scenarios can then be used as the basis for an effec@ve service experience design, integra@ng the intranet with other available channels (such as telephone, email and instant messaging). •
Who is the individual?
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What are their primary mo@ve states?
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Tac@cs to find out things
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Tac@cs to learn
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Tac@cs to share
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Tac@cs to feel good
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Tac@cs to develop
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Tac@cs to succeed in teams
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Tac@cs to achieve targets
As with the internet, it is easy to build metrics to monitor the journeys of intranet visitors. However, the interpreta@on of these KPIs is quite different. With an internet the KPIs are use to track the ability to draw people to your web site, retain them there as long as possible and then convert them to a sale or lead. With an intranet, however, the visitors have no op@on but to use the intranet, and when they go there you want them to achieve their goal as quickly as possible. This means that reach and engage KPIs are different between these channels -‐ and at a fundamental level. With the internet your aim is typically to maximize visit dura@on and minimize bounce rate. With the intranet, the reverse tends to apply as you typically want people to find exactly what they need with one click!
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Intranet Development Plan The Intranet and Buzz How do you develop “buzz” within the organiza@on? Buzz? Well, geang people to share ideas, opinions and build a sort of collec@ve enterprise-‐wide engagement and intelligence that embodies rapid learning and knowledge management. The capabili@es of web 2.0 placorms provide new opportuni@es for “virtuous cycles” of behavior and learning that flow across the organiza@on and between process “silos”. The adached diagram is an example of how three otherwise isolated virtuous cycles can integrate to create an enterprise-‐wide engagement environment of shared experiences organiza@on-‐wide rapid learning.
This “buzz” model is the key for integra@ng the otherwise remote customer-‐facing sales teams with the services, support and R&D teams located centrally within an organiza@on and forming the basis for bringing the customer voice across the en@re organiza@on.
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Intranet Development Plan What makes an intranet effective? For an intranet to be effec@ve it must recognize several factors: It must take into account the opera0ng model that it is intended to support. It must: 1.
Consider the various techniques and preferences of people for how they search for informa@on, how they consumer news, how they share
2.
Consider the culture and values of the organiza@on, especially regarding teamwork, how teams work across organiza@onal boundaries, sharing and trust, how easy it is for people to openly share ideas and thoughts across the organiza@on
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Consider the network of capabili@es that comprise the overall informa@on flow of the organiza@on
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Consider the user interface -‐ the desktop/laptop shared resource computer or mobile devices that form the basis for access and input to the intranet and how these capabili@es integrate, for example screen-‐savers as a push message device, instant messaging in status bar
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Understand the services available to be accessed from the intranet, ranging from HR and finance services for employees through to business services shared with customers, shared discussion spaces with consumers and customers and partner portals
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Related to the previous point, understand the rela@onship between the intranet, internet and extranets from the employee’s perspec@ve across common use cases or scenarios
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Understanding the corporate communica@ons policies and informa@on classifica@on framework
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Understanding the metadata framework for document management and storage -‐ as the basis for effec@ve search integrated with a flexible IA
It must deliver an engaging experience suited to all people’s needs 1.
It must provide relevant and personalized experiences for employees, experiences that can be adapted by the employee if they wish, but which anyway recognize the context (geographical and job)
2.
It must encourage and celebrate shared content in the form of vo@ng, recommending, bookmarking
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It must encourage and recognize building people networks. finding experts based on explicit ( job role) or implicit (my shared material or comments) informa@on; sharing status and ideas with friends and colleagues
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It must support the mix between spontaneous idea genera@on and planned innova@on themes -‐ allowing the en@re organiza@on to operate as a “crowd”
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Intranet Development Plan It must recognize six key concepts: •
A home page that con@nuously feeds the “buzz” of the organiza@on. Buzz includes internal news, most recent posts, most recent content updates, industry blogs and news, customer blogs and news
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One click (max) from the home page to the community where an enhanced people-‐finder (phonebook) becomes a central feature of the intranet, integra@ng IM and instant mee@ng tools -‐ and also allowing extension to external teams -‐ partners and customers
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One click (max) to “my own page” -‐ where I can manage my iden@ty and from where I can find my most frequent resources
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Search -‐ sophis@cated to a level where it doesn’t seem like search -‐ just how you find stuff
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an informa@on architecture that mirrors the organiza@on structure, including both formal and informal, matrix and network
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Kudos and engagement -‐ content is informa@on and knowledge -‐ Informa@on and knowledge that is created by people because they want to, feel empowered to and are mo@vated to share.
Finally, the intranet must be supported by people -‐ a communica@ons network of experts, charged with facilita@ng the intranet within their organiza@onal scope, including news, ar@cles, training/learning, best prac@ces etc. The key here is “facilita@on” the role of the communica@ons network it to enable communica0ons between people rather than to communicate on behalf of people.
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