Globally local - locally global

Global Intranet Survey recruiting in Russia

The 2009 Global Intranet Survey is being promoted in Russia on the Russian IntranetBlog.

Thank you Natalia Shvetsova, of HCI.ru, a usability consultancy in Moscow.

Natalia also helped recruit in 2008. It's great to have partners like Natalia in parts of the world where the survey is not yet a reference point for intranet managers.

Let's hope 2009 is the beginning of a significant Russian participation in our yearly intranet "meeting point"!

Intranet numbers promise lots of action

50 - The number of organizations who have completed or nearly completed the current 2009 Global Intranet Survey. It went live less than one week ago. How to sign up. More details about the topics.

One of them says "Thought the survey this year was superbly relevant to Intranet environment in 2009. Really looking forward to the report." (Thanks, Peter.)

340  - the number of intranet managers who belong to NetJMC&Co (Linkedin group dedicated to intranet managers)

25  - the number of active discussions inside NetJMC&Co.

280 - the number of followers of IntranetWatch (Twitter group dedicated to intranet related tweets).

2009 Global lntranet Survey goes live! Participate!

The 2009 Global Intranet Survey went live 24 hours ago!
Organizations who pre-registered and participants from last year all received their personalised invitation and link over the last 24 hours. If you didn't, please let me know ASAP.

If you're an intranet manager and would like to join, send me an email. More information here:
http://netjmc.com/survey/sign-up-JMC-global-intranet-survey-2009-2010.html

2009 is going to be a good year: why?
1. Because more organizations pre-enrolled than ever before. (The survey is in its 4th year).
2. And because the pilot site for the survey was tested by nine real intranet managers and two intranet consultants before going live. We got very helpful feedback in a very short time.

Thanks to all you testers for your time, your suggestions, your enthusiasm and your critical eyes.

The survey questions cover a lot of topics, and the Global Intranet Trends for 2010 report will answer the following questions (and others!):

(Note that organizations who participate in the survey will receive a free copy of the Global Intranet Trends for 2010 report. Publication date: second part of October 2009.)

The workplace

• Are intranets catching up with what people need to do their jobs? 
• How are they facilitating doing business? 
• Are they becoming the online workplace for employees or are they primarily communication tools? 
• How do employees access the intranet: from where, what devices 
• How customised are home pages and intranets in general? Is customisation increasing or decreasing?

Collaboration

• How does the online workplace support virtual teams and communities of practice? 
• What solutions are being offered to "mixed teams": employees and external partners? 
• Is real-time conferencing moving to the intranet and web-based solutions? 

Social media 

• To what extent is social media being used internally? What purposes do blogs serve? Wikis? Discussion forums? 
•  Are Twitter-like services being used internally? How? 
• Are enterprises beginning to play with "collective thinking" technologies? Prediction markets for example.
• How do enterprises let employees interact with traditional content: tagging, ranking, commenting?
• What concerns do organizations have with social media?
• How do these concerns evolve after an enterprise has implemented social media? 

Search

•  Is search still a big pain point? 
• What resources are being dedicated to optimising it? 
• What strategies are being put into place?

Ownership, governance, strategy

• Who owns the intranet? What ownership models are in place? 
• What types of strategies are driving the intranet? Are they documented? 
•  What decision-making models are used for development and enhancements of the intranet? 
• Are intranet-related roles integrated into job descriptions? 
•  How high up (or far down!) is the intranet manager in the organisation? 
•  How is the intranet team structured? Are intranet and internet teams being integrated?

Measuring value

•  What indicators are being used to measure the value the intranet brings to an organisation: adoption, usage, satisfaction, workforce coverage, reduction of risk, business value? 
•  How do senior management perceive the intranet? 
• What are the biggest remaining obstacles to overcome?

There are 4 open questions where intranet managers will be giving their views:

1. How will the role of the intranet manager evolve over the next 3 to 4 years?
2. How do you, or don't you, brand your intranet? Is it a utility? Or is it a special place with a special name?
3. How is user-generated information being integrated with information coming from traditional publishing tools?
4. And, last but not least, SharePoint: an invitation to share your experiences, pains and joys.

Get in touch if you'd like to have more information about how you can participate in the survey this year.

Intranets are falling behind what people really need

Link to a video on YouTube done when I spoke at the IntraTeam Event this March in Copenhagen, organized by IntraTeam in Copenhagen.

Next year's IntraTeam Event will be March 2 to 4, 2010.  Thanks Kurt for making this video available.

2009 Intranet Survey Pilot undergoing testing

Update on this year's Global Intranet Strategies Survey:
We launched the pilot version just a few minutes ago. 18 intranet managers from different organizations around the world have volunteered to test it for us over the next 7 days.
After we incorporate their feedback, the final version will go live. This will be just after mid-June. If you're interested in joining, get in touch.

One thing for sure, this year's survey will be the best tested ever! This active pre-survey participation from so many "real" intranet managers is fantastic, and I'm glad they are appropriating the survey and getting actively involved.

The pre-survey Quick Poll already brought in feedback from 165 intranet managers worldwide, so looks like we're going to have a good year. By the way, this will make the 4th annual edition of the survey. We started in 2006. Things in the intranet world have changed pretty dramatically in that short time, but that's a good subject for another day!

How far down the ladder is the intranet manager?

As you saw from my previous post, raising senior management awareness of the role of the intranet is a key priority for lots of enterprises.
In preparation for this year's Global Intranet Strategies survey, I did some preliminary pre-survey research with the members of the NetJMC & Co Linkedin group of intranet managers and asked them where they were placed in their organizations.

How far from the top of your organization is the first fulltime intranet person or team? In other words, how many levels under the CEO or top position?

"3 levels down from the CEO" was the most frequent response.
In my calculations to get this figure, I considered the CEO to be level 0, then counted down using the information in the answers. A number of people shared the reporting line in detail.
A couple people responded saying 2 levels down, saying that their manager reports directly to the CEO. Several more ranged from 4 to 6 levels down, but the majority were at 3.

Of course the interpretation of this depends on how hierarchical or flat the organization is. Three levels under the CEO may be quite high, or not very high at all!

I will nuance this question in the survey itself by asking participants to tell us how many levels exist in their organization, then at what level the first fulltime intranet person or team is placed.

Question to the readers of this blog, especially those who work in large organizations:
Do you actually know how many hierarchical levels exist in your enterprise? Is this a question that is relatively easy to answer?

Pre-survey Quick Poll results: Is the intranet becoming a workplace?

The 5-minute Quick Poll for 2009 gave intranet managers the opportunity to vote on the topics they would most like to see explored in the 2009 Global Intranet Strategies Survey. Managers from 165 different organizations around the world indicated which subjects on a list of 20 were "highly relevant", "moderately relevant" or "less relevant at this time".

The top 5 priorities all lean towards work and business this year...

1. "Collaboration, communities, virtual teams: tools & technologies, governance" is the topic that leads by far this year. It came in at 71 percent of the organizations rating it as "highly relevant", a 10 point lead over the other topics.
2. "Positioning and role of the intranet in the online workplace" is a strategic issue, and not at all obvious for most organizations. It's not surprising this came number 2 on the top priorities. 
3. "Senior management awareness, participation & support" is still an on-going issue, and is in position 3 on the list of "highly relevant" topics. 
4. "Obstacles holding back the intranet from achieving its potential" is in 4th position. This topic has been part of the survey for the last 3 years and analysis based comparing obstacles faced by organizations with intranets in Stages 1, 2 and 3 has provided a number of leads as to what to deal with and when as the intranet advances through the different stages. 
5. "Measurement & evaluation: ROI (hard & soft), techniques, indicators" is in position 5 on the list. Interestingly, it did not even make the top 10 topics.

The two charts below show the topics ranked in decreasing order of relevance.(I've listed the full topic description as it appeared on the Quick Poll at the end of this post.)

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Flashback to one year ago...

Last June, 114 organizations participated in the 2008 Quick Poll which preceded the 2008 Global Intranet Strategies Survey.
The two main different items in the top 5 topics a year ago are items 1 and 4 below:

1. Search & findability: user features, resources, satisfaction
2. Roles of the intranet/portal as perceived by employees & management 
3. Obstacles holding back the intranet from achieving its potential. 
4. Web 2.0 tools & features: usages, issues 
5. Single point of entry: integration of applications, other enterprise information resources. 
6. (same rating as point 5) Finding people: directories, expertise locators

What's next?

Many thanks to all of you who participated in the Quick Poll. The survey itself will open in June.
I also thank the 50 organizations (out of the total 165)  who responded to the open question where we asked for other ideas, comments and suggestions for topics. I'll share this feedback in a separate post. Stay tuned.

This year's survey results are going to be full of surprises, in my opinion!

As always, I'd love to hear from you if you have comments about the charts and data in this post. 

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P.S.  Full description of topics as they appeared on the Quick Poll

Remember, these are topics, not the questions themselves!

• Collaboration, communities, virtual teams: tools & technologies, governance
• Positioning & role of the intranet/portal in the online workspace: entry point, separate system, purpose
• Senior management awareness, participation, support
• Obstacles holding back the intranet from achieving its potential
• Measurement & evaluation: ROI (hard & soft), techniques, indicators
• Home or entry page: type of content, customization
• Integration of applications: core business, secondary process support, enterprise systems
• Strategic steering group: role, members
• Information sources for employee data: which ones, how used, how kept up to date
• Social media: types, usages, benefits, concerns, governance
• Place of the intranet/portal team in the organization (function/department, level 49 %)
• Availability of the intranet to all employees: when, where, how (smartphone, home access, solutions for non office-based workforce)   
• Customisation & personalisation: how much, criteria, individual control   
• User-generated information: integration with information from traditional editorial process   
• Moderation and management of content in collaborative and social media spaces   
• Social networks, personal pages, social tagging   
• Solutions/tools for virtual teams made up of employees and external partners   
• Relation/impact of external social networking tools (e.g. Facebook) on the internal online workplace   
• Current economic crisis: impact on intranet, focus areas in 2009 and 2010   
• Sustainable development (“Green program”): impact or relation with intranet/portal   

Intranet basics from a user viewpoint

Ciba Solutions runs an unusual survey for end-users of intranets. It runs non-stop, and organizations are encouraged to share the link with their employees and to monitor the feedback in real time on the internet. The survey is always available online, letting intranet managers decide when the most useful time might be for using it.

What's interesting about this survey is that it lets you compare your end-user feedback to a larger pool of intranet users. (Organizations are not identified in the reports. ) Data stays in the pool for 15 months, after which it is considered no longer relevant and is removed.

The questions are very generic, dealing with issues such as finding information, contact details about other employees, product information, "how to" info for new-comers. It also asks common questions such as page loading time, access through mobile devices. It asks respondents to rate the importance of a list of items in "contributing to a valuable intranet".

The first 30 organizations who participate will get a free "comparison" report showing how their intranet compares to others. Otherwise, the report will cost $290. You can also get a 4-page individual analysis for $200. According to the home page dated 12 May, 13 organizations have used this survey so far.

I asked Andrew Wright of Ciba Solutions what observations he's been able to make so far based on his first analysis of approximately 500 users from 6 different organizations:
His response was: (I quote)

• The questions related to the interactivity of the intranet (ie. The Web 2.0/Collaboration related questions, blogs, wikis, etc) have received low scores from all organisations indicating to me that Web 2.0 is yet to catch on with typical end users.
• Using the intranet as a staff directory still appears to be its main use, though news is coming a close second.
• Using the intranet to actually ‘do work stuff’ is pretty low.
• End users are generally finding the intranet to be ‘very useful’.
• The biggest area for improvement making information easier to find (search & navigation).

I'm very curious to see how this survey service evolves, and whether or not intranet managers find it a useful tool for getting user feedback. Some may feel it is not specific enough to their own cases. My take on this survey is that it is not intended to measure whether or not your intranet is fulfilling a specific strategy or purpose. What's interesting is that the questions are so basic they can be considered "what every intranet should do". It's sometimes easy to get caught up in offering new services to users, and forgetting to improve some of the basics.

Andrew's comments above fall into line with some of the high level conclusions drawn by our Global Intranet Strategies Survey which is conducted with intranet managers and is now entering the 4th year.
We've seen that:

• Intranets used as work tools is a fast growing trend, but not yet the case for the majority of participating organizations. (Organizations with intranets in Stage 3 have reached this point - but that's just over 20 % of the 2008 survey participants)
• At least half the organizations have major issues with search. (50 % dissatisfied.)
• Even 40 % of the organizations with intranets in Stage 1 (still far from being a work tool) say that if their intranet went down for 1 or 2 hours, employees would be disrupted in their work. This must mean they are considered "very useful". (This compares to 90 % in Stage 3).

Ref: Highlights from the 2008 survey, including descriptions of the 3 stages.

Intranets & business impact

I have uploaded the presentation in the long version that I had planned to give at the J.Boye Philadelphia 09 conference. I was unable to travel and delivered a shorter version remotely.
Here is the original slidedeck. Ask me any questions you have and I'll be glad to answer them here or by email if you prefer.

Intranets & Business Impact by JMC

View more presentations from Jane Mcconnell.

Is the intranet ecosystem in synch with intranet managers?

- - - - - - - Intranet manager poll - - - - - - -
As you may know, I ran brainstorming sessions in NetJMC&Co and Intranet Professionals (Linkedin groups) to find out what topics intranet managers want me to explore in this year's Global Intranet Strategies Survey.
Based on this qualitative input, I'm now running a quantitative checkpoint with a 5-minute Quick Poll to help me prioritise the topics.

In the Quick Poll, I ask intranet managers to rate the relevance of 20 topic areas to their current intranet issues and challenges. I did the same last year, and the data was very helpful for prioritising questions for last year's Global Intranet Strategies Survey.

I've taken an early look at the first results and already seen a few significant changes in priorities since last year's poll. I'll publish the results here in mid-May. (The survey itself will open in June and close early September).

If you're an intranet manager and have not yet been in touch, and would like to participate in the intranet manager poll, get in touch. (organizational email address please; no gmails, hotmails). This does not commit you to participating in the full survey in June. If you want to sign up for the full survey, you'll find more information here.

- - - - - - - Intranet ecosystem parallel poll - - - - - - -

Just for fun, this year I'm running a parallel survey with the same list of topics, and asking consultants in the "intranet marketplace" to rate them in relevancy. I'll then compare the results with the intranet manager ratings. We'll see how our views converge, or not! The results of the both polls will be published simultaneously.

If you are a consultant, agency or vendor in the intranet space and have not yet been invited to participate, please get in touch, tell me who you are (use your organizational email address please; no gmails, hotmails, etc.) and I'll send you the appropriate link.
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The Quick Poll only takes 5 minutes. It opened Wednesday 29 April and will close Wednesday May 13. Last year, a total of 114 intranet managers participated in the Quick Poll. So far, since Wednesday, 118 intranet managers have participated in this year's poll.

Stay tuned....