Globally local - locally global

Global "Company Net Steering Committee" - way to avoid wasting resources

I've recently come across several cases where companies could have saved money and time if they had a global "Company Net Steering Committee" in place.

By "global" I mean one that has representatives from all parts and key functions of the organisation. By "company net" I mean with a scope encompassing intranet, internet and all online initiatives.

Several global companies have noticed that some solution providers are approaching their different entities around the world trying to sell their solutions on a country basis. In a couple of these cases, a sale is made to the country in spite of the fact that the global group had already purchased the technology.

The problem was twofold:
1. The group did not know that the country had a need
2. The country did not know that the group had already acquired the solution.

Another example is a case where a team from corporate IT had developed an interesting idea and carried it to the point of a proof of concept. When they presented it to a larger forum of intranet managers, they put up a slide intending to be reassuring. The slide explained that their new concept did not affect the intranet, nor the portal, nor the current collaborative solution. However, it did touch on these things. They had intended to define their scope so that the intranet managers would realise that the new "thing" was different and was not intended to overlap with their areas of responsibility, the intranets.

The problem here is that it should have not just overlapped, but also been co-ordinated with the intranet and integrated into the intranet. It should not have been handled as a separate project.

Here, similar to the first case - a twofold reason:
1. Corporate IT team was not fully aware of the intranet scope
2. The intranet managers were not aware of on-going IT initiatives.

Both examples would probably have been handled better if a global Company Net steering group existed. Even a lower level Company Net co-ordination team whose role is to simply update each other on on-going work, needs and ideas could have foreseen the potential conflicts and waste of time and money.

In both cases, all parties had good intentions, believed they were doing what was best for users, and certainly did not intend to waste resources or create user confusion.

User-centric UA and entry page strategies for better findability

A user-friendly, optimised search engine is only one part of the findability "tool set" for an intranet. There is a whole other side that is too often forgotten.
Three additional dimensions contribute to the total findability experience:

• the "User Architecture" or UA
• the customisation and personalisation approaches
• the confidentiality policy

and of course the governance that accompanies all three aspects.

This article deals with the first: The UA, which is my term for how the user perceives the structure of the intranet.
The UA components are (A) the top level categories (level 1 navigation), (B) the entry page design and (C) the global gateway.

A. User Architecture
There are 4 principles around which a user-centric UA can be defined:

1. Define top level categories ( level 1 navigation) in user terms, not in terms of the source of the content. This results in categories defined according to subject or purpose (user populations who have similar needs).
2. Ensure that clear mission statements exist for each : for example, this space provides these things for these people. Or even better, this space lets these people do A, B or C by providing them with X, Y Z.
3. Implement a double-ownership approach, with roles in charge of the spaces and thereby representing user needs, and other roles in charge of content, thereby ensure information and services of high quality and relevance.
4. Distinguish between content created "for us by us" and "for others by us". Departments and functions tend to want to put both in the same space on the intranet, and this is not logical for users.

B. Entry page
Consider the entry page to be a key findability driver with 3 roles:

• Guide the person to understand the structure and navigation of the intranet
• Indicate the range of content and services available
• Be global and relevant at the same time

In order to fulfil the three roles, select your entry page design by understanding three fundamental patterns. These can be blended to some extent, but overall the design must lean one way or the other:

a. Newsy
b. Navigational-based
c. Highly customised (portal style)

The slide below relates types of entry page models with different intranet landscape patterns. (I have described these patterns in previous articles: How intranet and portals landscapes evolve and Global intranets: different challenges, different paths.)

A simple entry page decision spider can be a useful tool when making these decisions, in particular when working together with colleagues in different parts of the organisation. It helps focus the discussion.

C. Global gateway page
Global gateways are more common on internet web sites than on intranets. I have personally rarely seen them done well for internal intranet landscapes. I have seen many intranet site maps (usually automatically generated and either too high level or too detailed to be useful for users). However, a site map is not a gateway page. The gateway references all parts of the whole landscape, not all parts of a single site.

The idea is to have a single page, always available from the top banner, that provides links to all parts of the organisation's intranet landscape. The links may be organised by site, topic, target user population, geography or other criteria. The gateway page is especially useful in an intranet landscape that has lots of diverse sites rather than one where there is already a user logic or portal spirit.

A list of the "dynamic places and services" of the intranet is also helpful. It lists discussion groups, project rooms, notification services, blogs, wikis and so on within the overall intranet landscape. Depending on volume, it can be incorporated into the global gateway or be a second level global page.

Of course, the more granular the gateway is, the more difficult it is to keep it up to date. With the right degree of detail it can be a useful navigational tool for users.

Comments?

It would be interesting to hear from intranet managers to see if people have experience with global gateway pages for their intranet landscapes, and also how their entry page design fits or differs from the patterns I've described.

From flamingo to intranet landscapes - back to work!

Thought you might like to get a feel for the Camargue during migration time...

Photos taken last week in the Camargue by Russell Collins, my husband and creator of  ProvenceBeyond.

Off for a week - sign up for the 2008 intranet survey while I'm gone!

This is a quick note to let you know I am off for a week of bird-watching in the Camargue. So no posts until Friday 2 May.

In the meantime, please go ahead and let me know if you're interested in participating in the 2008 Global Intranet & Portal Strategies survey. Instructions here.

I'll be setting up the schedule and developing the questions over the month of May, with your collaboration I hope!

All types of organisations welcome to participate in Global Intranet & Portal Strategies survey

Quick clarification regarding my post "Searching for Intranet managers in the "most-admired" companies".
The survey is not limited to any type of company. I am using some common lists such as "most admired", "most desirable to work at", and so on to build the participant base around the world.

The first survey (2006) involved 101 organisations around the world. The second edition in 2007 grew to 178.

The charts below give you an indication of the head-quarter location, and the size of the participating organisations  in 2007.

Please get in touch if you'd like to sign up. More information here.

Searching for Intranet managers in the "most-admired" companies

Fortune magazine published their lists of the most admired companies in 2008. Companies are voted to this list by a survey done by Fortune with business people. The companies listed below are among the top 50 in the global list, and I would like to make contact with the intranet or portal managers in these companies to invite them to join the 3rd annual edition of the Intranet & Portal Strategies Survey.

If you work on intranets in one of these companies, and are potentially interested please get in touch. If you know someone who does, could you pass on the message?

For companies who are not familiar with the 2006 and 2007 survey results and reports, I've put some links at the bottom of this post where you can find more information. All participating companies receive a free copy of the Global Intranet Trends Report for the year of their participation.

Anheuser-Busch, Apple , AT&T, Bank of America, BASF, Berkshire Hathaway, Best Buy, BMW, Boeing, Caterpillar, Cisco Systems, Coca-Cola, Continental Airlines, Costco Wholesale, Deere, Dell, DuPont, Exxon Mobil, FedEx, Hewlett-Packard, Honda Motor, Johnson & Johnson, Johnson Controls, L'Oréal, Lowe's, Lufthansa Group, Microsoft, Motorola, Nestlé, Nokia, PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Siemens, Singapore Airlines, Sony, Target, Tesco, Texas Instruments, Toyota Industries, Toyota Motor, United Parcel Service, United Technologies, Verizon Communications, Walgreen, Wal-Mart Stores, Xerox

Links about the Global Intranet & Portal Strategies survey:

Blog posts on survey results on Globally Local

Description and down-loadable samples including tables of contents of 2007 Global Intranet Trends and Global Intranet Analysis reports.

Access to presentations done and articles written based on the 2007 survey results. Includes:
Intranet 2.0 Maturity (presentation from Online Information, London), Why is your intranet not delivering its potential? (VIP, Free Pint Ltd.)

Invitation to join 2008 survey

Enterprise wikis - near the tipping point?

A Globally Local reader,Katja Hilska, has written up in considerable detail, her experience in implementing a wiki approach to the intranet in a government organisation with around 1,000 employees, average age over 40.
It is well worth reading, as are the couple of other comments from readers in response to my post of February 19th - "Wikis versus or wikis plus?"
I quote from Katja Hilska's description, telling why they chose a wiki solution for their new intranet:

"... the idea of a wiki as an intranet actually came from the requirements we wanted the new intranet to have: it should have wide editing rights, it should work as a collaborative tool, it should support easy editing, personalisation and "own pages." Read more from Katja.

Sounds like the requirements an intranet should have always been meeting, but, as we know, do not in most cases.

Language reality checkpoints - moving targets

Language strategies are moving targets, evolving along with your enterprise strategy and business and operational changes. You need to start by asking the right questions, then once you know what you’d like to achieve, see how technology can help you, how much it will cost and what organizational changes are needed. This article proposes some “reality checkpoints” you will find helpful when analyzing your needs.

Reality 1: International enterprises have three types of languages: corporate, working and local.
Corporate languages are the official ones, the ones used for press releases for example. Some companies have up to 4 or 5 corporate languages. The working language is the one used horizontally across the enterprise, for example the one used by senior and middle managers for reporting, and by R&D engineers, experts and other managers for collaboration. Local languages are those used by employees in their “home environment” among colleagues in the same physical location.

Reality 2: One country does not equal one local language.
Some countries have more than one language, and many “share” the same language, even if there are significant differences. It’s useful to draw a language map of your enterprise, basing it on “comfortable” or “generic” languages. For example Dutch people are usually very comfortable in English, as are many Scandinavians and eastern Europeans. People in France, Canada, Morocco and other countries mutually use and understand what is in reality a hybrid, generic French.

Reality 3: Different languages are used for different purposes.
Look at the different types of content you have in your intranet: news, strategic messages, HR policies, product and sales information to name a few. Then look at the different users of this information: client-facing employees, internal communities across the company, employees in manufacturing facilities and so on. Build a matrix comparing type of content and usage with type of language (corporate, working or local), then add the dimension of “as is today” and “target” for what you would like to achieve.

Reality 4: Not all content merits the same quality of translation.
Criteria to take into account are: How critical is the content? Is it time-sensitive? Who needs it? Will it change soon? The more critical it is and/or the longer it is valid and/or the more people who need it, the more you can justify doing a high quality translation. If it is of interest to a small group, and/or may change soon and/or is not business critical, it is acceptable to use approximate translations, or let employers use automated translation tools on the intranet to get the general meaning.

You now have a starting point for determining what should be translated into which languages and with what degree of quality.

Reality 5: Localization and translation are different.
Distinguish between adapting content and changing the language. A message from the CEO will not be localized. It will flow from Corporate Communications to employees through carefully controlled translations. However, a new travel policy may be defined and published by HQ, then sent to the business groups who may contextualize it to make it relevant to their organizations, job titles, and so on. It may then be sent to country HR teams who will adapt it based on local travel contexts (distances, air and rail infrastructures) and translate it into the local language. The key here is to make sure your process specifies who is responsible for contextualization and/or translation at each point.

Reality 6: Hot news defies the most well thought-out strategies!
Is it better to get it out in English first, then, publish the corporate language translations as they are done? Or is it better to wait until the item is translated into the relevant languages, then publish worldwide simultaneously? The jury is still out on this one, and companies make different decisions usually depending on the nature and urgency of the announcement.

My overall advice is to set up a cross-company working group to look at these issues within your own enterprise, and to come up with several working hypotheses that you can then analyze from both technology, financial and organizational viewpoints. Be aware that you will probably need to adjust your strategy as your business and operational contexts evolve.

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This post is adapted from an article first published in Intranets Today where I write the column International Intranets. Paid subscription required to access articles ($170 for one year).

Applications open for the 2008 Global Intranet & Portal Strategies Survey

I am taking applications in advance this year from organisations who would like to participate in the 2008 3rd annual Global Intranet & Portal Strategies Survey.

The 2008 survey dates are not yet set, but it will take place approximately between July and September.

178 organisations from around the world participated in 2007, up from 101 in 2006.

What's involved: You'll spend about 45 - 60 minutes filling out an online survey form (designed so that you can do it in several non consecutive sessions).

In exchange, you'll receive a free copy of the final report (Global Intranet Trends). The 2007 reports are described on our web site, and you can download the tables of contents to see the points covered in the Global Intranet Trends and Global Intranet Analysis reports.

You can also download a number of articles written and presentations given over 2007 based on the survey results. Please note that all participation is anonymous, and no organisation is ever identified in the reports.

Qualifications for 2008 participant:

• You may be any type of organisation (from multinational company to government agency to NGO) but you must participate using your organisational email (no gmails, hotmails, etc.).
• You may be any size of organisation, but you must be the person who has some degree of responsibility for the intranet or portal. This is not an end-user survey.

2008 enhancements:

• We will be doing more segmented, comparative analysis based on size and type of organisations than in previous years.
• Specific subjects will be more detailed than previously based on feedback from both participants and readers. Examples: languages, governance, user architecture, social networks.

Signing up:
To sign up for the 2008 survey, just send me an email telling me the name of your organisation, how many employees you have, your web site URL, your name and role or title. Contact details.

And of course, do not hesitate to get in touch if you have comments or suggestions for the 2008 survey. We are open to all suggestions!

Strategic intranet management as a leadership task

That very impressive title was created by Stephen Schillerwein who asked me to participate in the Swiss Intranet Summit in Zurich from 7 to 8 May. Although the conference is primarily in German there will some English-language speakers including myself (speaking on the 8th).

I plan to cover the following points during the 30 minute slot:

What does intranet leadership mean today in organisations where globalisation, 2.0 and new ways of working are impacting what people do and need?

• Strategy documents: scope and impact
• Decision-making bodies: why and how
• Measuring: techniques and indicators

Views from the field and data from the 2007 Global Intranet Strategies Survey of 178 organisations around the world.

Data from the 2007 Global Intranet Survey and the lessons learned and anecdotes contributed (anonymously) by the survey participants offer lots of leads on this subject.

Intranet leadership will hopefully one day be considered a highly strategic job in organisations, one that impacts how the company works, communicates and creates value for their customers.
I'll soon be starting to solicit suggestions about areas to focus on in the 2008 survey, and think that governance and approaches to decision-making will be an area that deserves special attention.

Why IBF 24 and what are the challenges? Interview with Paul Miller

I'll be attending IBF 24 decided to check with with Paul Miller, IBF founder, to see his views on this event, which is both highly visible in the intranet world and carries a certain number of risks. Any worldwide event conducted online has risks, as companies who did "worldwide jams" for the first time several years ago will tell you.

Virtual working is coming into its own now, and companies who have been doing it for a number of years will tell you that the sooner you start, the better. It takes time, motivation and a major culture shift for it to work effectively. It's much more than just learning to use the tools - it's how well you use them and how optimised the overall environment is for using them. By environment I mean the human, social aspects of the new way of working.

I had the opportunity to do a fair amount of work in Finland 6 or 7 years ago and found that my clients there were very sophisticated in their usage of virtual meeting tools. I participated in a number of meetings and workshops that were completely virtual and very effective, sometimes more than had they met in person.

Companies who have not yet experienced this way of working will soon find themselves pulled into experimenting with it. The simple benefits of less personal travelling, better-prepared meetings, and participating in a more environment-friendly way of working will make it worthwhile for many. A word of caution, however: virtual meetings don't work for all purposes and they don't work by themselves.

In the meantime, here's what Paul has to say. Feel free to comment and ask questions here on this blog. Even better, share some of your own experiences about virtual meetings.
If you want more informatiIBF 24 web site, click herek here for details on timing and cost for participants.

JMC: What made you decide to organise IBF 24?

PM: I believe that face to face public meetings and conferences are exhausted as a format for sharing intranet insights and best practice. I also believe that we are at an early development stage in terms of using and exploiting online collaboration and meeting tools. IBF 24 also felt innovative and different.

JMC: In your opinion, what are the top 2 or 3 benefits someone will get from participating in this event?

PM: A unique insight into multiple intranets live, in a way that you could not experience at a typical conference. A carbon neutral way of learning and connecting and a chance to connect globally with an advanced intranet group without leaving your desk.

JMC: What are your success criteria - or rather - how will you know if IBF 24 has been a success?

PM: At least several hundred people attending at any one time during the 24 hour period. A sense of excitement and innovation during the event. A good deal of feedback from attendees that this was not simply an alternative to a face to face conference, but a new distinctive conference format.

JMC: Will people who understand English but are not native speakers be able to "follow the action"?

PM: I hope so. We will have people attending throughout the world including many countries in Asia and so we plan to pace the communication for a non English speaking audience.

JMC: What do you think are the biggest challenges facing intranet managers in global organisations today?

PM: Biggest challenges would be:
integrating a myriad of different applications and systems into a unified user experience behind the firewall.
dealing with the increasing demands that organisations place on what are still relatively small intranet teams.
integrating and harnessing Web 2.0 applications in a way that is both useful and manageable for the organisation.

JMC: Any last comments you'd like to make?

PM: I would say that IBF 24 is an experiment. We are at the early stages of learning how to meet and connect online, whereas the face to face meeting format has been in existence for several hundred years. We need to experiment, be patient and see what is possible. Fortunately, these tools are developing just at a time when the carbon impact of wasted time and wasted travel is rising up all our agendas.

International community of practice for online media - J.Boye

Tomorrow I'll be talking to the members of the intranet section of the community of practice for online media organised by J.Boye. The session will take place in Vienna, and group a select number of international company intranet managers. There is also a section for internet managers who will be in Vienna at the same time. You can contact Peter Erik Bang Nissen  at info@jboye.dk for more information.

It's more and more relevant to handle "online" issues in the same forum as teams are becoming merged, at least for some of their activities. Companies are looking at using the same tools - at least for some functions.

Here is a snapshot of the page from the 2007 Global Intranet Trends report called "the reality of the company net".

Intranet and managing customer complaints - good for productivity and company culture

An article has been published about Siemens Building Technology: "Siemens BT Improves Global Productivity, Corporate Culture with Internal HR Complaints Tracking" that shows how managing customer complaints on the intranet (using a specific application) not only increases productivity but helps form the company culture. (Although the article is written by the software solution provider, it is not too commercial in style.)

Quotes from the article:

"In a company as distributed, dynamic and expansive as BT, employee productivity and corporate excellence hinge on effective internal communications. "In any large organization, there’s a gap between who wants to know something and who knows it," said John O’Sullivan, Program Manager for Complaints Management. "There’s a lot of internal movement, and when those with specific knowledge move to another position, they often create a missing link in the knowledge chain."

"Before, we just heard about complaints, but couldn’t measure or formally address them. Maybe everyone was experiencing the same problems but not communicating them globally," O’Sullivan said. "i-Sight makes it really transparent to see complaints, to understand them and measure them."

"Complaint management is an efficiency driver," he said. "We’re changing the culture and philosophy toward complaints, putting the focus on complaints as an opportunity to improve."

Search survey link up again, sorry for the inconvenience

The search survey link I referred to in my post was down, but is up and running again.
I hope the Enterprise search summit survey did not lose too many potential participants!

Take part in the Enterprise Summit Search survey - only 4 minutes

I'll be participating in the Enterprise Search Summit in New York May 19 - 21, and would like to invite you to take 3 or 4 minutes to fill out a survey being conducted by Sue Feldman, research VP, content technologies at IDC, and Michelle Manafy, editor of EContent magazine, the Enterprise Search Sourcebook, and conference programmer for the Enterprise Search Summit.
Follow this link to the survey questions.

It will provide interesting input that will be presented in New York at the Summit and on the Enterprise Search Center. For those of you who won't be there, I'll blog what I hear there so you'll get the feedback in exchange for your time. If you decide to take the survey and want to send me an email, I'll make sure you get a summary of the results.

IBF 24 - a first in the global intranet space

I'd like to point out an innovative event that will take place for 24 hours starting the 18th of June: IBF 24.
Organised by the Intranet Benchmark Forum, it is the first time to my knowledge that such an exercise has been attempted in the global intranet space.
I'll be interviewing Paul Miller, CEO of IBF shortly and publishing the dialogue here. In the meantime, check out the link above, consider signing up and stay tuned for more.

Communicating with employees who are not connected to the intranet

Glen contributed some real data to the discussion about "Spam from corporate communication" and the follow-up post: "Effective internal communication benchmarks"

"Our read rate or click rate is around 6%-10% depending on the subject. Articles about human interest get the most hits. Articles about security and technology are much lower. We employee about 130,000 employees. We publish about 6 articles a day and publish them to the homepage of our intranet."

It is great to see some real figures. Thank you Glen.
6 articles a day is a lot. I wonder how many companies manage to produce several articles in a week?

I did a case study on La Poste (French postal services) for my web site over 6 years ago, and learned about their dedicated team of internal journalists whose only job was producing articles on subjects related to the activities of La Poste.

They also produced short summaries that could be printed on large sheets of paper and posted in the distribution offices around France, letting the employees "on the road" see the news in the morning when they came in to pick up their mail bags. There were new news posters every day. The HQ-based team made it a rule to provide regular content, at daily intervals.

Technology has advanced since then, and companies are doing things ranging from employee radio (a large bank in France is experimenting with this), videos in places where people collect, external web sites (Arcelormittal's webTV is an example), screen-savers for office-based people and same content short messages on TVs around the factories, and so on.

Of course, many organisations now let employees access the intranet from outside the enterprise,  from home for example, so the number of "non-connected" employees is becoming more difficult to assess.
However, how many people will come home after work, and turn on their computers to see the news from their company? Not many I bet. Unless of course they need it for something else, such as work instructions for the next day (airline personnel, bus-drivers, etc.).

Making the intranet the primary tool for distribution of news only makes sense if practically everyone can access the intranet. Otherwise, there must be parallel methods. Sounds obvious, but not all enterprises practice this approach. Print publications are usually glossier and less frquent. Then tend to serve to communicate more in-depth information / stories.

How many organisation have daily communication of company news to employees who do not have easy access to the intranet? And what are the methods?

Effective internal communication benchmarks?

My previous note on "Spam from Corporate Communications" triggered some comments and questions from around the world.

Rachel McAlpine picked up on it and I put a comment on her blog "Content that makes people happy" saying that 90% of the time people want local news. That's what they find relevant. But that the trick is getting the other 10 % right.

Of course, the percentage varies, and also depends on what you consider "common" and what you consider "local" or "specific". Those are words full of meaning to most people, and can set off long discussions!

I received an email from a senior content manager who said he was struggling with the issues I raised and says " I find it difficult to measure the effectiveness of our communications and channels. While we have internal benchmarks, I would like to measure our effectiveness against external companies. I am curious if you have, or are aware of any bench mark studies. I would be interested in click rates, effectiveness of the communication and contribution to our strategic priorities."

I was also recently asked by an intranet manager in a global company if I had any idea what "click rate" or "watch rate!" to expect when a new corporate video is published. In their case, the videos are published both on the web site and the intranet, as well as being project from screens in the lobby and around the organisation. Good strategy, but that makes it nearly impossible to know how many employees have actually seen it.

The short answer is No, I don't have any benchmark studies and would love to know if anyone out there does. Please share them with us here or send me an email.

However, I do have some suggestions as to how to keep employees informed and feeling involved:

1. Be sure to include at least one question about your intranet in your annual employee "climate" survey. This lets you build from a baseline.
2. Consider doing a short online survey to find out whether or not people know the strategic orientations of the company, and where they get that information. See if it is from internal sources (managers, newsletters, intranets, colleagues, etc.) or external (press clippings, TV, ..)
3. Do regular quick polls on your intranet to assess user opinions about different subjects including strategy.
4. Do not forget to include employee usage of your web site (in addition to the intranet itself) when you consider how employees get corporate information and messages.

If you are really brave, do "candid camera" or "live news" style interviews one day in the canteen, by walking around with a mike and a video camera asking people to tell you what the company strategy is in their opinion. Then publish it on the intranet.
I'm half joking. You might get some really interesting answers, or you might get fired!

Spam from corporate communications?

One of the speakers today at IntraTeam event in Copenhagen told us that a group of users in his company had complained to him about the spam they got on their company emails. He asked them what kind of spam it was so that he could try to adjust the filters, and they said it's from Corporate Communications.

This is the second firsthand anecdote I have heard recently where intranet users have complained about "spam from corporate communications". In the first case, a few months ago, it was an IT person who told me that the number of "deleted without being read emails" from corporate communications to employees was in the high 80-90%. A figure like this should make people stop and think about what their "all" email policies are.

It should also make us all think about how blogs with RSS feeds can ease this situation for users. People can then subscribe to what interests them. Of course, then the problem is that maybe people won't subscribe to the feeds from corporate...!

That then raises a more fundamental issue of what type of news really does interest everyone in an organisation? In most cases, at least in large global companies, there is very little news that really speaks to "all employees". Which of course brings us around to how to customise, and what is the right balance between mandatory and optional news items on a portal page.

What is common and who decides....two basic open questions for many companies.

These questions are subject to much debate - sometimes quite emotional, and touch on organisational politics, fundamental beliefs about the nature of human beings, and even philosophical views on the value of individual freedom versus what is good for the larger group.

Intranet innovation awards 2008 launched today from Copenhagen, IntraTeam event

The 2008 Intranet Innovation Awards were officially launched on stage today by James Robertson, Step Two Designs, creator of the awards. I have the privilege of being one of the judges this year, and of being in the audience today in Copenhagen.

What is unique about these awards is that they recognise individual improvements to intranets and do not attempt to do the impossible: say that one intranet is better than another overall.

SimCorp intranet has a friendly face and a big smile

I'm in Copenhagen where I gave a keynote talk today on "Global intranet trends in how organisations are creating value with their intranets". (Reference: Global Intranet Trends report.)

This blog article is composed of notes from a presentation given by Gale Langseth of SimCorp at IntraTeam Event in Copenhagen today - March 5th

(Disclaimer: what follows is a quick summary of the points in Gale's presentation that struck me, not a comprehensive summary of her talk.)

My Site versus employee information page

• Employees can use MySite as a dashboard. "It is not just "fluffy"." Tasks, calendar, other indicators.
• Employee information page is separate from MySite: identify information, photo, with choice of showing or not private information. ("hide" function activated to comply with legal requirements in some countries).

Governance structure

• Content management organisation includes a very strong link to the "strategy group"
• Intranet manager is in the middle, the link between the strategy group and the Knowledge managers in the different lines of business
• Content managers under the Knowledge managers, acting in part as the eyes and ears on the ground - bringing issues to the attention of the knowledge managers and the intranet manager

On-going challenges: keeping content up to date
From content contributor viewpoint, "what's in it for me?"

Part of the solution: Smilie Faces

• Smilie faces are displayed on each portal
• They range from a big smile to a very angry faced based on the percentage of content on that portal that is up to date
• 90 - 100, steps of 10% down to "below 60%"
• The innovative feature here is that the smilie face is "per portal", not per piece of content
• The SimCorp intranet has an overall average of 91 %
• You can see which portals have issues because they have fallen under the requirement of minimum 80%

A few questions and answers

Q: Is SimLink (the intranet) the entry point into all the company's systems?
A: Yes. There is no other way in.

Q: How did you get people to adopt this new way of thinking?
A: Part of the answer was hiring a single person - me - to be responsible. The challenge is always the people in the subsidiaries. The awareness was build (and is being built) on lots of communication and talking together. "
It's a question of continuing education: this can support you in your daily work and by the way, help you to share knowledge too."

Q: How do content producers feel about the quality rating being so visible?
A: There are very few rules and regulations about our intranet, but we have two. That's part of the rules of the game

• Every person must have their photo
• Every site must have the quality rating (the smilie face)

Facebook filling a gap in company intranets

I wrote a note following the JMC Breakfast at UNESCO with Florence Devouard and Stephen Roberts (UNESCO):
Questions from intranet managers where I published 6 questions raised by the intranet managers during the breakfast.
I invited responses from readers, and heard from one - thanks Samuel for your contributions (bottom of page).

I will respond to these questions one per post and include Samuel's response to each question. I've separated them out into 6 posts because each one is a subject on its own. Please join the discussion and tell us what you think.

Previous questions: (1) Wikis versus the intranet or wikis plus the intranet? (2) Extreme personalisation - how far? (3) Intranet on cell phones.

Question 4 out of 6. Facebook

Question from the intranet manager: How should a company position Facebook vis a vis the company intranet?

Samuel's response:

Good question! Andrew McAfee has some interesting posts on this topic. I like the idea of Facebook being an Intranet. It’s really user focused. But where do you leave the corporate news and Whoiswho in Facebook? Or don’t we need them then?

My response:

I know several large, global companies that have created networks on Facebook. These networks are open only to employees of the company. Other companies have apparently let their employees create official groups on Facebook that anyone can join. The cases I know have done it using the company name and logo, but they let anyone in. Another company I know created a group on Facebook, but you must get approved by the administrator of the group before you can join.

My personal opinion is that in many of these cases (in all the ones I refer to above and know personally) Facebook is being used because the intranets of the companies are too rigid, only designated people can publish content, there is no easy way to locate people in the company if you do not already know their names. In other words, the intranet/portal landscape is weak and Facebook is filling the gap.

A number of companies are including "my site" or "my page" concepts in their intranets where individual users are free to present themselves, put their favorite links, build networks, etc. much like Facebook. This can definitely help build communities and let people find other people in groups that are geographically dispersed.

Risks to be managed

However, the questions that need to be answered for both corporate "my page" projects and closed groups on Facebook are:

1. What types of content can be put on these pages? Can people publish documents and other content they've produced, start discussions on professional or related topics? If so, how can this knowledge be made available to others if it is dispersed out on individuals' pages?
I would not count on the search engine in most cases.

2. In the case of open networks that anyone can join, is there a risk of subjects being talked about that present confidentiality risks?

3. If there is content on these pages that is relevant to the company, what happens when/if the person leaves, or simply closes down his/her page?

My recommendations:

1. Build the capacity of letting people have individual pages within your intranet.

2. Develop guidelines as to what the role of these pages is. It's more a question of saying that the scope should not include certain types of information, such as project-related than to actually prescribe what should be there. Leave a lot of space for creativity!

3. If you do not have this capacity internally, start a group on Facebook but limit it to members of your company (people with your domain's email).

4. Or, create a network that would let you include partners and other "outsiders", but make it a requirement to go through the administrator of the group.

One thing for sure: if people cannot do this internally, they will eventually do it through an external tool. If this has already happened, get involved, participate in or at least observe the group, but above all don't ignore it and hope it will go away.

If you haven't yet written your "e-behaviour" guidelines or business conduct and communication policies, you need to do it. And if you have them but they don't yet deal with employee activities online (internally on the intranet, email, etc.) and externally on the web and in social networking sites, now is the time to add this dimension.

The State of Affairs in Global Intranets - sneak preview

Thursday evening (French time) I'll be presenting through LiveMeeting to a group of global intranet managers in Philadelphia where IBF Global is holding an IBF Global Member Meeting.

I've done many presentations on the data I collected in the second part of 2007 during the Global Intranet Strategies Survey, and this time I took a special look at how the very large companies are doing as a specific segment. The people coming to the session in Philadelphia are practically all from organisations with over 100, 000 employees.

One company that purchased the Global Intranet Analysis report had requested that I run a couple questions through the "very large" filter to tell them the percentage of organisations with portals, and those using true portal software. The figure was surprisingly low. (FYI: When you purchase a copy of the Analysis Report or the Trends Report, you can ask me pecific questions by email that are not covered in the reports and, when possible, I look up the answers and send them back to you.)

Anyway, my data shows that very large global organisations have some issues like all other companies (challenges with search, for example), but have some remarkable differences.

An example is the first slide here that shows that the strategy drivers are stronger. The numbers in red indicate the number of percentage points higher the "very high" responses are for the companies over 100,000 employees compared to the full survey population.

The second chart here shows that the very large organisations also measure more than the others.

Intranet on cell phones? Some of us yesterday, most of us tomorrow

I wrote a note following the JMC Breakfast at UNESCO with Florence Devouard and Stephen Roberts (UNESCO):
Questions from intranet managers where I published 6 questions raised by the intranet managers during the breakfast.
I invited responses from readers, and heard from one - thanks Samuel for your contributions (bottom of page).

I will respond to these questions one per post and include Samuel's response to each question. I've separated them out into 6 posts because each one is a subject on its own. Please join the discussion and tell us what you think.

Subject 3: Accessing the intranet on your cell phone

Question from an intranet manager: "Are there many intranets today that employees can access using their cell phones?"
Another way of phrasing it: How mobile is the intranet and can it really be available when and where we want it?

Samuel's response:

Wow, interesting question. I don’t know. I do know that some companies allow employees to import and sync their corporate WhoisWho to their mobile phone/pda/blackberry (so with all the stuff on it, not only contactinfo, but also expertise, social network, etc)

My response:
The Global Intranet Strategies Survey 2007 showed us some interesting figures:

• 7 % of the 178 participating companies had half or more of their employees who could access the intranet via a mobile, handheld device. This includes 2 % who said all or almost all employees could do this.
• The percentage reaches 17 % when you look at the companies where the intranet is the way of working today, and 21 % when you look at the technology sector, where the contrary would have been surprising.
• Based on size of organisation, 10 % of the over 100K employees say half or more of the employees can access the intranet from mobile devices. This size group is far ahead of the other sizes.

Anecdote - had the opportunity to work with a global company in Northern Europe back in 1999 and again around 2003, and I remember the managers telling me how they looked things up on their intranets on their Nokia communicator PDAs while travelling by train to and from work. So some people have been doing it for a long time!

Remember that you can purchase a copy of the Global Intranet Trends Report or the Global Intranet Analysis Report on line. If you would like a hard copy of the Trends Report, get in touch and I'll send you a link to the site where it is available as a printed document.

The day of "2.0 - the user-centric intranet" - not here yet!

I'll be in Denmark in just over a week keynoting the IntraTeam Intranet event. Conference organiser Kurt Kragh Sorensen chose the theme of "Create value with your intranet". I dropped him an email today to tell him what a pleasure it is to participate in an event where Intranet 2.0 is NOT the main topic.

Too many conferences are copping out these days (I mean taking the easy, popular approach, audience-guaranteed) by defining their theme around 2.0. Don't get me wrong. 2.0 is important. But there are so many other important intranet issues also.

2.0 brings in the crowds today. 2.0 is here to stay. But what a refreshing breath of air to get back to the basics. Of course, 2.0 helps create value....and I'm pleased to be leading the Open space discussion the second day on "Intranet future" where I'm sure we'll talk about it a lot. There is also a session on prediction markets which is about as 2.0 as you can get!

Hope to see some of you there. And I'm looking forward to seeing my good virtual colleagues, James and Martin, also keynoting.

The day someone can organise a conference around intranet 2.0 and value, and have a program built from case studies (rather than vendors or consultants) will be the day that 2.0 disappears as a concept and becomes one of the keys to the user-centric intranet.