Globally local - locally global

Intranet managers and web monitoring

In the open thread last weekend, Zeb asked the following question:

".... what tools, services, etc are available for companies to track trends such as mentions about their company, their competitors, what's popular and what people are looking for on sites like Facebook, MySpace, Bebo & Twitter."

I gave a brief answer in my post 30-30-30-10 Watch the Trends saying that that it is important for intranet managers to have part of their time focused on external issues.

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In the meantime I sent the question to one of my virtual colleagues with whom I have worked on numerous projects, Anthony Hamelle,VP of linkinfluence. Anthony blogs here (in French) but he is more than fluent in English as you see below in his response to my query.

Anthony's response to Zeb:

"There are two main kinds of online monitoring services out there.

(1) Those that seek to capture and track as much data in as many languages as possible about your brands or topics of interest. They are like smart clippings services and are useful in an e-CRM fashion (hearing everything everywhere and, inasmuch as possible, providing timely answers to everyone).

Some better-known ones are  Radian6 (leading paid-for monitoring service), Sysomos, Attentio, Twitter Search or Google Blogsearch (that latter two being leading free monitoring services ;-)

(2) Those that seek to make sense of the data they track and capture. These tools are akin to market research solutions and services, filtering and organising data so as to reveal interesting trends that help decide upon strategies.

Some better-known ones are linkfluence (disclosure, I am VP of linkfluence), TNS Cymfony or Nielsen Buzzmetrics.

Although almost all providers work with some form of text mining, a line might be drawn between those that provide NLP (natural language processing, i.e. automated sentiment detection) and those that choose to rely on human analysts to interpret the data.

I for one think that NLP is not yet suited for the complexity and the heterogeneous aspect of language on the social web, meaning that human analysts still have to interpret and extract insights from the data..."

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Many thanks to Anthony. Do not hesitate to raise questions to him directly, or via Globally Local here in comments.

Will intranets become scientific?

These are exciting days for intranets!

Studies done by different organizations, in different parts of the world, with different populations and very different survey strategies are finding similar results.

I wrote about how JMC and Nielsen Norman found the same figure when looking at intranet resources: Size of intranet teams: Nielsen Norman and JMC agree. It has happened again with Prescient Digital Media and JMC.

Prescient Digital Media and JMC in synch on social media

Toby Ward, Prescient Digital Media, has published: "Intranet 2.0: Social media becomes mainstream on the corporate intranet."

Toby and I have talked several times over the past year when we have met at different conferences, comparing notes on the results we were seeing in the (1) NetStrategy/JMC Global Intranet Strategies survey and (2) the Prescient Digital Media Intranet 2.0 survey. (I'll refer to the first as JMC and second as PDM from here on.)

First, some background on the two studies

The JMC study is a yearly event (now in its 4th year). It targets intranet managers who must be pre-approved before they can participate. It deals with many intranet issues out of which social media is only one topic. It is a deeper survey, requiring from 45 to 60 minutes to complete. 226 organizations worldwide participated in 2009.

The PDM survey, also conducted on a global scale, was more open in inviting people to report on their 2.0 initiatives. Anyone could participate, but only those who identified themselves received a complimentary copy of the full final report. The survey, as its title suggests, was primarily focused on social media, although a number of questions on other intranet topics were included. It took place between autumn 2008 and spring 2009, and 561 organizations took part. It was a considerably shorter survey.

When looking at the usage of social media tools, the two surveys used different scales:

• PDM - 5 levels of adoption: "no plans and no interest", ""none but considering options", "not yet but have plans", "some, limited use" and "enterprise use".

• JMC - 5 levels of adoption: : "not currently used", "being tested", "used in some parts", "in general use", and "optimised".

Comparing PDM's "enterprise use" with JMC's "in general use" plus "optimised" , we see some tools where the two surveys are amazingly close, and others where the JMC figures are more conservative.

"Old-time 2.0 tools" - nearly identical numbers! 

What I call the "old-time 2.0 tools" got similar results in the two studies. By "old-time", I mean those tools that have been around for years, long before social media and 2.0 became hot. Although they have been put under the 2.0 umbrella by many people, they've been around much longer: instant messaging, podcasts, rss, photo & video sharing and discussion forums.

Instant messaging:
PDM: 29 % "enterprise use"
JMC: 27 % "in general use" plus "optimised"

Podcasts:
PDM: 6 %
JMC: 7 %

RSS:
PDM: 13 %
JMC: 11 %

Photo or video sharing:
PDM: 9 %
JMC: 11 %

Discussion forums:
PDM: 19 %
JMC: 18 %

"Hot" social tools: PDM higher, JMC lower 

"Hot" social media tools make user-generated-content widely available. They open up the enterprise. These tools require special governance, or so many organizations think. In fact, normal, professional code of conduct applies to them, but they still scare us. These are the ones that make management nervous.

Internal blogs:
PDM: 13 % "enterprise use"
JMC: 4 % "in general use" plus "optimised"

Internal wikis:
PDM: 17 %
JMC: 6 %

Social networking:
PDM: 6 %
JMC: 1%

Tagging:
PDM: 9 %
JMC: 4 %

Getting more scientific

It seems logical to me that a survey like Toby's which is directly focused around 2.0 will attract participants who are specifically interested in 2.0. On the other hand, the JMC survey targeted intranet managers in general, regardless of their interest in 2.0.
So, I conclude that the differences on the "hot" social media tools and the similarities on the "old time" 2.0 tools confirm that each survey is coherent within its targeted population.

Question to readers: Will intranet strategy and management become a science one day?
My take is that we are clearly building a more solid basis for analysis and decision-making.

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Note: the 2009 Global Intranet Strategies survey is currently open, and will close at the end of August. If you'd like to participate and get a complimentary copy of the Trends for 2010 report, get in touch. Signup procedure explained here.

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.

Why is enterprise search so hard?

Enterprise search is scary. We've all heard horror stories about how it does not work, how much it cost, and so on. Many of us have experienced this grief firsthand.
Just a couple of days ago, the intranet manager in an organisation I'm working with said to me "I wouldn't count on the search engine. I'll send you the links." That's exactly what he did as we visited his intranet and I identified things I wanted to go back and examine. This organisation is far ahead of many in that their intranet is accessible from outside the official workplace and authorised external people (like me) can get access within 24 hours. That's truly exceptional.
However, when it comes to enterprise search, they, like most organisations are in trouble.

The Global Intranet Trends for 2009 Report states that out of the 226 organisations who participated in the survey... "Only 10 percent are 'very satisfied' although another 40 percent are 'moderately satisfied'. That means half the participating organisations are dissatisfied with their search implementation. The figures are slightly more favourable than in the previous year's survey where 60 percent reported dissatisfaction. However, this situation is thought-provoking for organisations where access to the right information rapidly is a business success factor. " (page 49).

If you want to gain a better understanding of enterprise search, I highly recommend reading "Successful Enterprise Search Management" by Stephen Arnold and Martin White. Both are recognised experts in the field of search, and the cost and few hours required to read their book will bring you a good understanding of what's involved and what's required to succeed. There is more information on the Intranet Focus web site, and as you can see from the table of contents, you'll get a full view of search management from the introduction through to implementation.

Intranet 2.0 - hype, reality, future trends (2008)

The slide set I used at the Melcrum Intranet 2.0 forum in London last June has been viewed 3,131 times since I uploaded it to Slideshare. Nice number - (I like uneven numbers - what does that reveal about me...?).

Entitled "Intranet 2.0 - hype, reality, future trends" the slide set has attracted a lot of viewers. It detail on how 2.0 "stuff" was perceived and used last year.

I'm currently working on the consolidated data from this year's survey and will be publishing the report on November 25th. Social media was a key part of the survey.

At first glance, it seems that some of the 2.0 dust has settled. Enterprises are not experimenting more, but some are beginning to optimise. There are still a lot who say they are unable to find a business case for social media. Others - more rare - find business benefits.
More after 25 November.

Intranet Media Channel debut 4 November - free passes

The first week of November has two major events taking place in the intranet spaces. I'm excited to be part of the IBF initiative "Intranet Media Channel" - which in fact I think of more like an online radio talk show about intranets.
It follows on the heels of the very successful IBF 24 where for 24 hours we travelled around the world looking at intranets live and talking with intranet managers. I gave a short talk then about intranet trends, and will be doing a short piece on a regular basis for the new Intranet Media Channel.
You can read more about it here. IBF is offering free passes for the launch session, so take advantage and sign up.
The main items on the November 4 programme are:

• A live intranet tour by Kellogg's followed by a phone-in Q&A
• Studio guest Shiv Singh from Avenue A Razorfish in New York
• The Intranet Doctor: He’s there to heal your intranet pain!
• A day in the life of intranet manager (Catherine Murphy, Capital One)
• The TechWatch interview with David Sacks from Yammer will look at ‘how to get business value from Twitter’

I'll be doing a short 15 minute "broadcast" around some trends coming out of the current Global Intranet Strategies Survey from Denmark where I'll be for the whole week for the JBoye event, and - by the way - if any of you are there, let me know so we can be sure to arrange to meet up at some point during the week. I open the State of the Intranet track, and am running a tutorial on Making your intranet essential.

What every global company needs: a "Location Finder" like Syngenta's

Among the gold award winners in the 2008 Intranet Innovation Awards organised by Step Two Designs was Syngenta, headquartered in Switzerland. With over 210 locations in more than 90 countries, Syngenta faces the challenges all large global companies have in making it easy for their employees to find information about the different locations.

Many times I've worked on this issue with my clients. The main problem is that a typical intranet landscape will have a multitude of different intranets. Even if there is an over-arching enterprise portal, once you start digging down into the depths, you'll find local information in many different shapes and forms, in a variety of places within the navigation, and to inconsistent degrees of detail.

The Location Finder designed by Syngenta goes a along way in handling this issue, and is practically a mini Syngenta world itself! Employees can see what's going on in different places, get travel and entertainment details if they need to visit the location, and more.

"The Location Finder provides a one-stop shop experience to get to all information about a location. Employees now use this as the main source to prepare for a trip, or to “look in” on what’s happening elsewhere.....The Location Finder provides a rich directory of regions, countries and offices. Beyond the basic listing of office locations, the directory provides opening hours, site maps, hotels and restaurants nearby, travelling recommendations, weather, local news and more."

Full details on all the winners can be found in the 148-page Intranet Innovations 2008 report. (Cost: 189 US $.)

This includes screenshots and detailed information on how the innovations were designed and delivered, along with judges' commentaries and more. You can download the Executive Summary (immediate download, 2.6mb PDF) for an overview of the awards, as well as full details on two of the winners (Scottrade and Janssen-Cilag).

I was honored to be one of the international judges for the Intranet Innovation Awards, and was very impressed by the quality of the dossiers.
As I've said before, the legitimacy of these awards is that they do not pretend to award "the best intranet", which in my experience is a futile exercise. They zoom in on specific features that are outstanding on their own terms.
I encourage all intranet managers to consider entering the awards in 2009. Let me know if you are interested, and I'll put you in touch with the organisers at Step Two Designs. You can of course find more information on their web site.

Intranet managers and money: Talk money in order to get money

Very interesting post by Stephan Schillerwein on the IBF blog following a IBF Global meeting: The recession-proof Intranet.
Stephan lists 3 things any intranet manager should be able to answer about his/her intranet.
I quote:

1. State the current investment level

2. List current Intranet services and deliverables including their benefits to the organisation

3. List additional beneficial intranet services that can be added at low cost to help the organisation improve or cut costs

My own experience is that most intranet managers cannot answer the 3 questions above.
This is confirmed by the 2008 Global Intranet Survey data (collected from June - September 2008, report not yet published.). When asked what knowledge areas are important for an intranet manager, the "money related" points were at the bottom of the list: "Finances, return on investment analysis" and "Business cases".

The full list as rated by the survey participants from high to low:

• User-centered approach, design
• Information architecture (structuring information)
• Organisational dynamics
• Business and business processes
• Tools: e.g. search, content management systems
• Technology trends
• Needs analysis techniques
• Business cases
• Finances, return on investment analysis

I've often felt over the past couple of years that the "user first" mentality, which was sorely lacking in the past, has now become too predominant. We risk losing the attention or, more likely, not capturing the attention in the first place of the top management and decision-makers in the organisation.

Their main concerns are business-related. If we cannot related the intranet directly to business (in the large sense of the activity performed by the organisation), we will never get into the conversation.

Granted, the intranet manager role itself is unclear in most organisations. They cannot be all things to all people. But they can make sure that they get someone on their team, or have access to someone in the organisation, who can help them answer the 3 questions above.

(Note: The survey asked 2 questions: the first about "skills" required for intranet managers, and the second about "knowledge areas". More about the first one later.)

Inside Enterprise Search

Reality check

"Enterprise search - seen from the inside" is the title of an article I wrote for the Enterprise Search Sourcebook published by Information Today. Two quotes from the article:

• "You get the search you deserve"
• "Out of the 178 enterprises who participated in the survey nearly 3 out of 5 are “not really satisfied” or “not satisfied at all” with their intranet search. When asked how many people were dedicated to working on supporting and optimizing search, well over half responded “less than one person”. In addition, when asked if they looked at the search logs to better understand what users were searching for, just over 40% admitted they never did this and nearly 30 % did this only when they had time."

Trends
The article just before mine "Enterprise Search: Trends for 2008" is written by Theresa Regli of CMSWatch. She talks about analysing, navigating, uncrowding and socialising search, along with other insights on trends.

Do your homework
I recommend any organisation looking to purchase an enterprise search solution to first read Enterprise Search Report published by CMSWatch. (priced from 975 $US to 2925 $US depending on licence). I've seen so many cases where companies have created major search dilemmas by either having the wrong solution in place or by not realising what's involved in implementing search.

The money invested in this report will be well worth it. I recommend making it required reading for IT, communication and business managers working on search. Hopefully, all three functions are involved, because search is one of those things that is everyone's responsibility to get right.

The Enterprise Search Report should be used selectively. Here's a suggested reading path for your search team:

Pages 1 to 83 - everyone should read

Enterprise Rends for 2008
What is Search and How Does it Work
The Business Case for Enterprise Search
Entreprise Search Requirements (this is not technical) and includes a section on "asking the right questions"

Beginning on page 84, the discussion turns to Enterprise Search Vendors, and the first few pages are helpful for everyone on the team. After that, it is more relevant to team members making the hands-on analysis.

Beginning in page 322 "Advice, Pitfalls and Best Practices", it's important for all the team to read.

Using a team approach with this report is a good way to get everyone on the same page, to ensure that the technical team members approach the search project with users and business in mind, and that the non-technical people learn enough about the technology to understand implications of certain choices.

Reality check soon for 2009
The Global Intranet Strategies survey - currently open if you're interested in participating - has deepened its section on Search, and will provide data that will help us get another reality check in last 2008, early 2009.

(Get in touch if you'd like to participate)

What's hot now for intranet managers - "Global Intranet Survey" Quick Poll results

114 organisations (out of approximately 150 already signed up for the 3rd annual Global Intranet Strategies Survey) participated in a 5-minute Quick Poll. They gave feedback on which topics are the most relevant for them and suggested areas to focus on.

My observations on their feedback:

1. We are getting back to intranet basics - that is to say (a) users finding what what need and (b) raising intranet awareness in general.
The chart below shows the top 10 topics. You'll see that "search & findability" leads all other issues. It's followed by roles and perceptions of the intranet and obstacles holding the intranet back.
These fundamental issues risked getting lost in all the excitement about social media behind the firewall. It is reassuring to see that intranet managers have their feet firmly on the ground!

(click to enlarge chart)

2. User adoption is rising on the radar.
Do you remember that "usability and user-centered design" was the number 1 planned investment in the 2007 survey data? Not surprisingly, we see that "user adoption" becomes the 3rd hottest topic in 2008 if we combine "highly relevant" and "moderately relevant". (chart above)

3.  "Governance" is getting real: people + ownership + content + quality
Intranet managers are rightfully focusing energy on publishing models, ownership and quality;  engaging and motivating part-time content providers; and on how to get people to work together.
Comments from the Quick Poll participants:

"Related to governance, I'd be interested to learn about what kind of intranet publishing models (distributed, hybrid, centralized, other) other organizations employ as well as how they maintain the quality and consistency of the intranet (content audits, standards, etc.)."

"How do we ensure that all content has an owner and how do we engage those content owners to keep their content up to date. This is certainly an issue with us."

"A key pressure for me is getting business buy in, funding and ensuring people aren't working on their own "thing" in silos thus undermining efforts the Intranet team make."

"I would like to learn whether large organizations have in place programs or mechanisms by which to improve the overall quality of their intranet. Distributed authorship has taken off with content management systems - what are organizations doing to equip these 'part time webmasters' with the skills they need to create effective online communications? Who has editorial oversight for the whole intranet? Does this person or group have the authority needed to enforce standards? Do organizations even have standards? If yes, what format do they take, and what sort of success have organizations seen with their standards programs?"

4. "Intranet manager" is beginning to be perceived as a profession.
Both the 2006 and 2007 survey data showed that intranet managers in many organisations feel there is a low perception of the value of their role. The 2008 survey will attempt to provide a partial answer to what profile and skills are required to do the intranet manager job well.

"What are the top skills required, what are the barriers to entering/leaving the industry, what type of people are best suited to being intranet managers."

5. The value of customisation and personalisability is still being questioned.
The 2006 and 2007 survey data indicated that both customisation and personalisability are increasing. In addition, 2007 showed that organisations in Classes 1 and 2 had higher degrees of role-based customisation and personalisability in their intranets.  Yet...how far should you go?

"We also wonder about the degree one should customize the intranet. How many roles are good to handle and make sense. Does it work to let the author decide who is the target group of his information? Or should their be represantatives of the target group who decide? And after all, how much personalization makes sense? You often read, that most employees don't personalize their homepage. Is it worth the effort for the intranet team?"

6. Social media concerns are primarily on behaviour, not tools.
The buzz is decreasing and now intranet managers are looking at how organisations are managing their social media  implementations. For example, how do you encourage user adoption? How do you manage in highly regulated environments?

"On one hand people are requesting Web 2.0 features - and on the other hand it is very difficult to get people away from e-mail and shared drives."

"Regarding social networking, what is the general attitude of organisations to the use of social networking by employees on company time. My company blocks all social networking sites and I am interested to know if employees who are allowed to access these sites abuse the privilege."   

"You've indicated that you might focus on employee directories / profile pages / org charts -- please do, this is highly relevant and is a killer app that is often poorly done. With the new social media aspects to this -- seeing who is a colleague of your colleagues -- it's a timely subject for a lot of focus."

7. Defining priorities and keeping up the momentum is a major challenge.
Where are people spending energy and money? And how do they change the mind set from "an intranet project" to "a dynamic work tool"?

"Given that so many things regarding the intranet are important, where will companies focus their limited time and money?

"Breaking down projects is always an issue. It's easy to create a strategy, to develop requirements, to prioritize and to implement a first step - but what happens then? How do you create and maintain awareness of the big intranet picture in order to avoid repeating questions like "Are we there yet?", "We did already sponsor a project last year, why do you again need some money?", "Is it still not finished?" -> the image of intranets needs to be transformed from a static one-time-project (been there, done that) to a growing, living and permanently changing tool for daily work."

Total of 114 organisations of all sizes  participated in the Quick Poll.

 

Intranet-readiness - 3 classes of organisations

I define "intranet-readiness" as follows: the intranet is ready to support people, the organisation and the business of the organisation.

The findings from the 2007 Global Intranet Strategies Survey enabled me to define 3 classes of organisations.

1. Class 1 where the intranet is ready today. It is already the "way of working" for people.
2. Class 2 - Intranet-readiness is 1 or 2 years away (as stated in July-August 2007) therefore now - one year later - probably 1 year away.
3. Class 3 - Intranet-readiness is 3 to 5 years away.

Among the findings from the 2007 data (covered in the reports published and presentations given in Q4 2007 and Q1 2008):

• Class 1 is more likely to have a 2.0 strategy.
• The way organisations regulate choice of tools and policies for collaboration tends to be different depending on the Class. In Class 1, tool choice is highly regulated and usage policies are more common, but there is less control over who can create collaborative spaces.
• Class 1 organisations have a much lower dissatisfaction rate with the enterprise search implementation.
• They are also the ones who allocate more resources to search (although not enough), analyse the search logs more frequently (again not enough), and offer more user controls and more flexible search results pages.

Let's take a look at how the 3 classes differ in terms of context, size and other characteristics:

• Classes 2 and 3 have had significantly more organisational changes and restructuring than Class 1. (nearly 20 points more likely)
• The main difference is in intranet sponsor changes where it is more than twice as likely in Classes 2 and 3 than in Class 1.
• It is more likely that Classes 2 and 3 will consider "communication & common culture" to be the top strategy driver for their intranets than Class 1 organisations for whom the top driver tends to be "productivity and efficiency".
• 80% of senior management in Class 1 consider the intranet to be "business critical" or "very useful", compared to just under 40% in Class 2 and under 20% in Class 3.
• There is a much higher degree of integration of business and employee applications in Class 1 than the others.

You can find charts and details on the slides in this downloadable document : "

Intranet-readiness: 3 classes".

Get in touch if you have any questions or comments on these findings.
Applications are open for the 2008 Global Intranet Strategies Survey which will start at the end of June. All participants receive a free copy of the survey report in exchange for their time. (Participation requires from 45 to 60 minutes of time.)

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!

Highlights from the 2007 Global Intranet Survey Reports - just published

  Intranet = the way of working now or very soon

• The intranet already is “the way of working” or will be in 1 or 2 years for over half the organisations in the survey population. Half say that today employees would be disturbed in their work if the intranet “went down” for 1 to 2 hours, with the figure reaching 3 out of 4 if it “went down” for 24 hours.
• Yet only 1 out of 5 of the organisations say their senior management considers the intranet to be business critical. However this is up nearly 5 points from 2006! So things are improving.

Users come first - at last!

• Focus on users is at the top of the list of investments.
• Usability is a key strategy driver and user-centred design & usability, cited by 3 out of 5 organisations, will be the top investment area for the next 2 years.

Search is suffering

• Nowadays when “search rules” on the internet, it is disappointing that nearly 3 out of 5 organisations are “not really satisfied” or “not satisfied at all” with their intranet search.
• However, most  do not make the necessary effort to optimise search. Well over half have “less than one person” who works on supporting and optimising search. Very few have taxonomies, and not nearly enough do analysis on the search logs.

2.0 is making headway

• 2.0 tools and technologies are being tested by a majority of organisations and visibly integrated into the intranet by many.
• Organisations where the intranet already is or will soon become “the way of working” are more involved in 2.0 than the others. 4 out of 5 compared to 3 out of 5 in the full survey population).   
• 1 out of 3 of these organisations are bringing the topic to the forefront, as shown by the fact that they are starting or have established an official 2.0 strategy. 

Fears for an "underground" intranet unfounded

• Wikis and blogs do not constitute an “underground intranet” as many people feared would happen.
• Over half of the 2.0 population plan to or have already integrated them into the intranet navigation, also making them searchable with the intranet search tool.

Major obstacles still lie with senior management

The top 3 obstacles according to 2 out of 5 organisations considered to be “a serious obstacle that holds us back” are:

1. Intranet not seen as a priority
2. Lack of awareness of the potential role of the intranet
3. Lack of ownership at a senior level

About the 2007 Global Intranet Survey

178 companies and organisations around the world participated in the second annual Global Intranet & Portal Strategies Survey. They include 45 % headquartered in Europe, 43 % in North America, 10 % in Asia-Pacific and 2 % in other parts of the world. 72 % are in the private sector, 20 % in the public sector, 4 % are associations, and 4 % are extraterritorial world bodies  and NGOs.

Over half the organisations have more than 15,000 employees, including 13 % with over 100,000 employees. All areas of activity are represented from services to goods, basic materials, technology and many others.

Reports available
You can read about the Global Intranet Trends and the Global Intranet Analysis Reports on my web site at netjmc.com/survey. They are available for purchase online. You can read details, download the tables of contents and sample pages for both reports and link to the purchase platform from the NetJMC web site - survey section.
You can download a 1-page description of the reports here: Download Global-Intranet-Reports.pdf (pdf document)

KMWorld & Intranets - Global Intranet Survey Highlights

I presented highlights from the Global Intranet & Portal Strategies survey I conducted from June to August, 2007  in the  intranet track of KMWorld & Intranets today. A lot of interest from the audience, and a number of new participants ready to roll in 2008. This year the survey population was 178 companies, compared to 101 last year. Good progression, and it looks like 2008 will go quite a bit higher.

You are welcome to download the slides I used. They are mainly charts, as they were just visual support for extensive verbal commentary. I think (hope!) you'll find them relevant to your case. I'll be blogging more about the results in future posts, but here's a starting point: netjmc >documents > 2007 Global Intranet Survey Highlights. Let me know if you have any questions or comments.

You can read more about the reports, and download the tables of contents from the netjmc web site in the survey section. I'll soon be posting sample pages, and making them available for purchase by mid November.

Intranets Tomorrow - much more than today

A copy of the presentation I have at Intranets.Today, Wed. 23 May in Frankfort on "Intranets Tomorrow - a glimpse into the future" can be downloaded from my web site.
I'll summarise my keypoints in a few days - but the point of the slide you see here is that intranets tomorrow will be much more comprehensive than those we know today.

If you read German you can enjoy the fantastic work of the German blogger Frank Hamm during the 2-day conference. Real-time at it's best!

Peter Schütt (IBM Deutschland) who gave the first keynote.

Jane McConnell (NetStrategy/JMC) - myself, who gave the second keynote.

You'll find the blog entries on Injelea thanks to Frank Hamm

New study on globalization focuses on languages

Byte Level Research and Marketing Sherpa have published the "Website Globalisation Report 2007".

It concentrates on language issues primarily and provides some interesting statistics. I have not read it yet, and will blog my comments once I've gone over it in detail. The topic is highly relevant to intranet managers even though the language context, criteria and approaches are quite different compared to web sites.

In the meantime, you might want to download a copy as it is free until April 11th.

Download link. Please note the report is referred to the the article "New research..." near the middle of the page, and not the Ecommerce benchmark Guide at the top of the page.

Technorati Tags: globalisation, globalization, localisation, localization

Enterprise 2.0 - to be or not to be? Depends on how you approach it...

Andrew McFee of the Harvard Business School, author of the blog Impact of IT on Businesses and Their Leaders, has produced a list  "enterprise 2.0 infrastructures" in his post  from March 21st: "Uses for a Newborn Baby". 
Andrew's list :
1. For collaborative document production.
2. To build an encyclopedia.   
3. As a 'war room' for fast-changing situations.
4. For knowledge broadcast.   
5. For broadcast search.   
6. For 'crowdsourcing".
7. To express collective judgement.

Numbers 3, 5, 6 and 7 are especially strong concepts and well-described on Andrew's post. I especially appreciate number 3- an original way to describe a need that many organisations have but for which they have no obvious solution.

Shortly after, Tom Davenport posted "Why Enterprise 2.0 Won't Transform Organizations" on the Harvard Business Online site.  Tom says

"Most of the barriers that prevent knowledge from flowing freely in organizations – power differentials, lack of trust, missing incentives, unsupportive cultures, and the general busyness of employees today – won't be addressed or substantially changed by technology alone. For a set of technologies to bring about such changes, they would have to be truly magical, and Enterprise 2.0 tools fall short of magic."

Then Andrew responded from his post of March 25th "I STILL agree with Tom, and yet..." where the discussion continues.

The different posts between these two thought-leaders are "must reads" if you are thinking about how the "2.0" technologies will impact your intranet. Be sure to check out their earlier postings:  "E2.0 Evangelists" and "I agree with Tom, and yet..."

My views on the subject:

You can drive organisational change through meeting user and business needs and 2.0 will sometimes be the best way forward.
I have devised the following  5-step process for organisations considering 2.0. The order of the steps and the function-based approach  lower the risks of failure or stagnation.

Step 1: Start with an understanding of user, organisational and business needs. Then determine if  the intranet and/or portal is currently meeting these needs. If not, which needs are NOT being met?

Step 2: Then, analyse and transform these unmet needs into a list of functions required. Do not use references to tools such as blogs, wikis, .... Instead find out if people need to: publish  polished content, collaborate on documents, collect feedback from colleagues around the world, track progress on a project, build a glossary, find experts on a subject,  identify other people working on the same subject, etc. .
Investigate the response time needed for each: real-time, a day or two, several days.

Step 3: Look at the tools in place and see if they can provide these functions.
When doing this, take a careful look at the degree of technical expertise required to use the current tools, and don't forget that occasional users need more intuitive interfaces than daily users. The official full-time content producers for the intranet can learn and use a moderately complex tool, whereas the ordinary business manager who needs to share an idea, meeting minutes, respond to someone else's idea,  etc. a few times a month will need a tool with a simple, intuitive interface.
If the tools in place meet the needs, use them.

Step 4: If you need new 2.0-based  tools, start small and fast
Set up and run pilots quickly with groups of motivated users. Do not escalate the pilots into enterprise-wide operations. Gain some experience and then extend the user base by responding to other needs.

Step 5: Integrate and communicate
Once you have several new "spaces" or "services" operational, and assuming your intranet is reasonably well-designed and used, find a way to link them to the intranet. More important,  have the intranet link to them. Integrating them as soon as possible to existing, relevant intranet sites or portals will make them part of the enterprise IT landscape.

Then communicate. Use your paper publications to do short success stories. Include them in the "What's new on the intranet" section of the intranet.

Work with visible business needs
If you are able to identify  and address high profile business issues, the benefits will become visible quickly. If your new space or service is a "nice to have", it will probably not trigger a lot of interest.

When something new is happening, we all need to find words to label it. The 2.0 label is a good example. However, the  2.0 buzz does more damage than good in large organisations.  People get hung up on understanding the definitions then comparing it to the 2.0 things they see on the internet  rather than focusing on the new functionalities it brings to people and organisations.  When 2.0 is used to meet user and business needs, it will be integrated naturally into the enterprise.

The 3-question quick test before implementing a new technology
You can ask your self the following 3 questions before deciding to go further with a 2.0 idea for your organisation.
The answer must be 'yes' to 1 or more of the 3 questions. If you can demonstrate 3 out of 3, you are on strong ground.

These questions may also be a simple way to formulate the value of 2.0 when you need to explain/justify/prove ROI to senior management.

1. Does it let people perform an action  they could NOT do previously? (= new function)
2. Does it let people do something faster or cheaper than previously? (= easier to use, cheaper to implement and maintain)
3. Does it bring an added value? (= tangible or intangible benefits previously not attainable)

The  2006 Global Intranet Strategies survey (2006 survey) showed that very few large organisations have implemented an Enterprise 2.0 strategy. In addition to the specific questions about 2.0 (graph can be seen here) there was the following open question:

"Part of the “Web 2.0” philosophy is to make readers into contributors, and to make it easy for everyone to be active on the web. Have you implemented any specific initiatives in this direction on your intranet? Do you plan to do so?

Over 70 % of the respondents answered (73 out of 101), offering comments about their own 2.0 plans. The comments fall roughly into 4 categories:
A - have official 2.0 plans,
B - reasons why they do not intend to move in the 2.0 direction
C -  explanations of why they would like to but can't
D - comments on how there are other ways to encourage and facilitate employees' involvement without 2.0.

Three organisations fell into category A:

• "Yes, we plan to redesign our intranet based on the web 2.0 philosophy. We plan to present this new concept to senior management in September/October this year."
• "Our new intranet will implement Web 2.0"
• "2.0 is at the heart of our 2007 Intranet project"

The 2007 survey design is in progress, and the 2.0 section will be more detailed this year. Stay tuned...

Technorati Tags: intranet 2.0, intranet strategy, intranet2.0

Intranet Innovation Awards - a refreshing new approach

The well-known intranet consultancy Step Two, based physically in Australia but active around the world,  is organising the Intranet Innovation Awards. (NetStrategy/JMC is participating as a member of the international panel of supporting organisations.) Note that James Robertson who writes the intranet industry reference blog Column Two, is managing director of Step Two, and the key thinker behind the Intranet Innovation Awards.

The awards will be given to recognise "new ideas and innovative approaches to the design and delivery of intranets". Step Two specifics that "The goal is to find these ideas (whether large or small), and to share them with the wider community."

This new competition is unique in that it does not deal with intranets as a whole, but rather specific functions, services, concepts within an intranet that bring value to the organisation or to the users.

The reason I am very pleased to support this award is that  I have always felt that prizes awarded to individual intranets as a whole are highly misleading.  The ones I am familiar with are usually the result of political decisions. 'Let's give it to X this year. Last year it was Y." Etc.

How can one intranet be outstandingly better than another? True, many intranets are better than many others, but designating the top 1 or 5 or  10 intranets in any given category is a dubious venture.

Intranets should support user, organisational and business needs. It is impossible in my opinion to determine that one is doing it notably better than another unless you include analysis on

• what the needs are,
• how the intranet supports them,
• and whether or not the intranet makes a difference to the people and the organisations.

Mission impossible unless you have access to extensive internal information from the organisations.

Benchmarking is a risky activity. The word is used too loosely. Consultants and agencies like it because it is a good source of business. However, unless you are able to find an organisation similar to yours in terms of user profiles, business challenges, organisational issues and  sector / industry and regulatory  requirements, you cannot draw meaningful conclusions from comparing the intranets.

What companies who embark upon what they call "benchmarking" really want to do, is get good ideas from other intranets and see if they make sense for their own intranets. That is something that can come from simple exchange of ideas and clear thinking about what can work for you.
Hopefully - if enough organisations participate, this will be something the Intranet Innovation Awards will help you do.

I encourage you to take a look at the information pages on Step Two's web site, where you will find more information and the entry form. The deadline is 15 May.

Technorati Tags: intranet

Notable quotes on the impact of the intranet on the organisation

Free text comments from participants in the 2006 Global Intranet Strategies Survey offer a fresh view from the front-lines. What do intranets really do, and what are the challenges for intranet teams?

Straight from the mouths of intranet managers ...

• "We are in a mode of commoditization and standardization, so the Intranet is playing a huge role in that effort. It truly is a culture-changing tool to force people to self-serve more than they ever have before."

• "What is interesting is that top-down leadership may not work with our culture considering how long we have operated as silos. The intranet may create a community we are not used to having, but then again, it may continue to be siloed. We will see. It depends a lot on how important an intranet is to our new executive director."

• "Adoption of the intranet has been quite smooth once workers find out what it can do, except for the older generation of workers, who have resisted change."

• "It can be difficult for a new employee to understand who does what in the organisation because it's not always obvious where a department sits in the organisation. Having lots of organisational charts on the intranet doesn't really help because the user still needs a certain amount of knowledge about the company to use the charts correctly."

• "Today, most employees in the operations rely almost completely on their local/unit's intranet; with certain exceptions (e.g., global company events), outside of corporate HQs, the global intranet is mainly used regularly only by management and members of cross-discipline communities.

• "Lots of employees have great hopes for the new intranet, and we plan to deliver on that desire. Creating an intranet strategy that senior managers buy into is also key. But we have to start small and replacing the current intranet with an easy to use content management system is our first step."

One of the biggest challenges may be to make the organisation and especially management aware of what is involved in keeping the intranet alive and well! I offer you one final quote:

• "People view it as a utility now, like the lights, telephone and e-mail. No awareness of the teams behind, or the work involved."
  
  Sounds like this organisation has "made it" in terms of the intranet being business critical - but I wonder if the intranet team is getting the recognition they deserve...??

Technorati Tags: intranet, intranet strategy

Web 2.0 adoption within intranets

Andrew McAfee has written a post, "Fast Forward to a Better Understanding, Part 3" on his blog The Impact of Technology on Businesses and their Leaders, about adoption of web 2.0 technologies by companies.

To quote from Andrew's post:

"My skepticism about any wildfire spread of E2.0 stems from the fact that the new tools and approaches will succeed over time only in environments that have a set of characteristics.  Technical characteristics are the most obvious of these.  As the IWeek survey highlighted, security and access control remain key concerns among technologists, and they'll have to be addressed before most IT departments give their blessings to Enterprise 2.0. In addition, the user interfaces of many (most?) current tools will also need to be improved."

Be sure to read the comments too.

The slide you see here is from my 2006 Global Intranet Survey results about the integration of blogs into intranets. They confirm that the integration of new tools such as blogs is progressive, certainly not yet the norm. (You can read background on the survey on my post Global Intranet Strategies Survey Results written in October when I released the report. The data was collected between June and August 2006. Send me an email if you want the link to download the report, which is free. )

FYI: The survey sample included 101 organisations headquartered in Europe (58%), North America (29%) and Asia Pacific (12%), ranging in size from under 5000 employees (20%), from 5 to 15,000 (29%), from 15 to 50,000 (25%) and over 50,000 (25%). Over 57% of the organisations operate in over 20 countries, and over one third have from 2 to 4 official languages.

The 2007 survey which will follow this June, one year later, will let us see how the "internal blogoshere" will have evolved over the past year. I will be asking more detailed questions this time on 2.0 issues. I will post them later and see if readers have additional suggestions.

Andrew talks about "environments that have a set of characteristics".  I suggest the following additional characteristics :

• A culture where bottom up communication is valued, not feared.
• Senior management who are open to - and even better - use 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis, ...
• HR and training policies making it easy for manager acquire "digital skills" (using a search engine, creating a blog, contributing to a wiki, running virtual meetings, etc. ..)
• An intranet or portal that is or is becoming "the way of working" (processes and applications integrated) and where 2.0 functions have their natural place.

These characteristics (with the exception of the first one) can be observed and measured as easily as the  technical ones.

Do you have others to suggest?

Technorati Tags: intranet, intranet 2.0, intranet strategy, intranet2.0

What are "knowledge workers"?

Thanks to Sylvie Arkandis, and her post "Qu'est que c'est un knowledge worker?", I came across an interesting article discussing the definition of "knowledge workers". "What is a Knowledge Worker Anyway?", from The Future of Work blog by Jim Ware and Charlie Grantham.

I quote:

"The difficulty with generalizations about knowledge workers is that knowledge work is inherently diverse and varied. Almost any definition of a knowledge-based job will include some tasks that are essentially location-independent, but only some jobs have become totally "post-geographic."

This discussion is of interest to me, as I had asked the question "What proportion of your employees are knowledge workers?" in the 2006 Global Intranet Survey.

Several respondents emailed me during the survey to ask me how I defined knowledge worker. I used the Wikipedia definition as an explanation, but realised at the time that it was not at all obvious, as you'll see when you read author's post.

I had been interested primarily in the location-independent aspect of knowledge workers, specifically what this required of the intranet. Surprisingly, most of the intranet managers in the survey did not know to what extent people worked in locations outside the office. That is a problem if you're in charge of the intranet. You need to know under what conditions people are using the intranet. It will make a big difference in content, page design, personalisation and information architecture strategy.

FYI, here are 2 graphs from the Survey report:

Technorati Tags: intranet

Looking for 5 to 7 high level industry categories - can you help me?

I'm preparing the 2007 Global Intranet Survey, and I'm looking for a simple but meaningful list of categories to describe an organisation's activities.
Since many of the survey participants are very large companies and operate in more than one industry, I need some fairly high level categories.

I'd like them to be meaningful enough that I can segment survey responses based on industry or sector. Ideally I'd like 5 or 6 categories, maybe 7 or 8 at the most.

Looking up 'sector" in the Wikipedia led me to some potentially helpful definitions:

Primary (mining, agriculture, forestry, ...) - changing natural resources into primary products
Secondary (manufacturing, construction, ...) - creating a finished, usable product
Tertiary (services)
Quaternary (intellectual services)

The Wikipedia also says "However, some geographers believe there should be a fifth classification of industry as well: the Quinary Industries. These would comprise such things as: Health, Education, Culture, Research, Police, Fire Service, and other government industries not intended to make a profit (industries generally in the private sector.)

Going to a deeper level seems to lead to lists as long as 25 or more categories, which is not realistic for segmentation of the survey results.

Are any of you aware of other high level breakdowns I could use?

Technorati Tags: intranet, intranet strategy, portal

Obstacles to achieving intranet potential?

I amused myself by producing two different tag clouds from data from the NetStrategy/JMC Global Intranet Study question about "What obstacles prevent your intranet from reaching its potential?"

I divided the respondents into 2 groups:
1 - those whose management considered the intranet business critical or very useful
2 - and those whose management considered it useful or nice to have

They two groups ranked the obstacles differently, as shown below: group 1 on the top, 2 on the bottom:

What is equally interesting is to look at the two tag clouds I produced using the text entered by the survey participants into the "other" field. Guess which is group 1 and which is group 2?

 

 

Satisfaction doesn't matter - just engage the intranet user

Toby Ward has highlighted an interesting study by IPSOS in the US (disclaimer: IPSOS Paris is hosting my next JMC Breakfast)

Take a look at Toby's article "Employee satisfaction doesn't matter, study says", posted on 8 January. (Go to blog, then search for title. Permalink is not working)

Quote:

"Employee satisfaction used to matter. In fact it still does at most organizations, however, employee satisfaction is a dying metric.

"In a new analysis (Making Employee Engagement a Focus) by research firm Ipsos, “there is a very poor correlation between employee satisfaction and bottom line results. Sometimes the connection is there, but just as often, it isn’t.”

"Instead, some experts maintain that organizations should shift their focus from satisfaction to employee engagement."

So what role does the intranet play in engaging employees?

60 second survey on Personalisation

This survey is being conducted to answer a question about which opinions vary: How much personalisation is available today on intranets, and to what extent do users take advantage of it?

It is supported by Step Two Designs, the Intranet Leadership Forum, CMSWatch, Boye IT and CM Forum.

If you have 60 seconds, it would be great if you could answer the few questions you will find at this link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=17972957515

Quote: "The full results of this survey will be shared publicly, and the aim is to quickly gather valuable figures that can be used by intranet and portal teams when planning product selection and implementation".

I had this very discussion with a client last week where there was a split of opinion within the intranet team itself - one person strongly believing the majority of people will use the personalisation options they will be offering on their new, not-yet-born Sharepoint portal, and the other person convinced that very few will.

I asked the Global Intranet Survey participants (results released in October 2006) the following questions:
1. What proportion of content on the home page is identical for all employees (press releases, announcements, and so on.)
2. What proportion is customised for a population of people such as a country or a business division or a profession
3. What proportion what proportion can be personalized by the individual (quick links, most-used sites, positioning of items, etc.)

The results of the new 60 second survey will develop details on the third question and help us better understand (1) what intranets offer or will offer in personalisation and (2) user adoption.

- The results of the survey will raise a number of questions:

- If few users take advantage of personalisation, does it mean we should encourage them to use it more?

- Does it mean that people do not need these features?

- Do they prefer having the standard home page?

- To what extent should the standard home page be "automatically" customised according to people's job roles, professions, organisational entity?

- Do people not understand how to use these features?

- Are they simply too rushed to take the time to implement personalisation themselves?

- If many users take advantage of personalisation features to a great extent, is there a risk of their not seeing the global view of their organisation?

- Do they choose to see primarily the local news and their own tasks to the detriment of corporate news and announcements?

- What is the appropriate balance of content from global, local and - often the most difficult - the intermediary layers of an organisation?

I look forward to discussing these issues with the survey organisers and the readers of Globally Local very soon.