Intranet Benchmarking Forum

Making intranets global and local at the same time

One of the many challenges around intranet development, especially in a large or dispersed organisation, is making content REALLY relevant to the end user.

When IBF benchmark intranets, one of the many aspects it covers is around "global / local balance", both in terms of content contribution and content delivery.

As a user in a small local office of a multinational organisation, you probably want to see local news about your business, along with what's on the menu on the canteen, but also you'd like an understanding of where you fit into the big global picture - what is the organisation doing as a whole. 

Delivering this delicate mix of content is key to ensuring an intranet delivers relevance for the user and supports the engagement of staff in the wider business strategy.  The key is understanding from the start what users need to do their job, plus what would motivate and interest them to feel part of the larger organisation.  How do you do this?  Involve your users, or local team managers, in the process right from the start.

Which brings me onto the other aspect of "global / local balance" - the content creation stage.  Having the right person create the really local content is key.  One organisation I recently worked with had the office receptionist/manager update the content.  This worked brilliantly for them because this role in each local office knew everything that was going on, as well as what was on local people's minds, just through passing conversations. 

So considering the most relevant people to publish is just as important as having a publishing model in place which supports both aspects.

Jane McConnell has also recently written an article on just this subject. Her blog is actually called "Globally Local and Locally Global" and here she describes why;

"I think I have never explained why I named this blog "Globally Local and Locally Global" so here goes. For me, those 5 words represent the deepest, most difficult challenge of all global intranets and portals.  And I do mean 5 words, and not 4. The "and" is as important - if not more - than the other 2 sides of the equation!"

For more tips on how to achieve this, the full article is well worth a read!

More on the challenges for intranet managers

Yesterday I started talking through the intranet managers 'vicious circle'.  Today we'll complete the circle and then look at some strategies to break it...

Large corporate intranets often grow through islands of different practices, where local business units develop the intranet to suit their local needs without necessarily considering the wider global needs of the organisation.  This fragmented approach hinders the development of an overall and shared governance model. Without overall governance it's really tricky to have formal strategies in place, prioritise IT development and develop long term plans. 

From a user point of view, consistency in the use of an intranet is vitally important, preventing a user from having to re-learn or re-understand every new site they come across.  However this organic and unstructured approach makes it very difficult to enforce relevant standards and ensure this consistency.

Often good guidelines are developed, maybe by an intranet review project, a piece of consultancy, or by the central intranet team.  However if the resources and processes are not put in place to manage, police or enforce those standards on an ongoing basis, the intranet continues to become fragmented.

The intranet team typically spends time fire-fighting operational issues and trying to support dispersed publishers and encouraging them to keep to standards in an informal way, that many do not invest enough time and resource into forward planning and strategy development.

Without this the intranet struggles to be taken seriously by senior managers - and we are just back where we started!

The good news is there are many tips, tools and strategies out there to help break this cycle.  Several are detailed in IBF's recent report, some key bullet points below;

• Develop a formal strategy that shows the value of the intranet to the business
• Communicate strategy upwards, sideways and downwards
• Develop a governance model with clear roles and responsibilities
• Enforce standards and guidelines
• Ensure clear board level ownership of the intranet
• Involve all relevant stakeholders in the development process

There are also many resources on the internet;

• James Robertson talks about creating the upward spiral for your intranet
• Martin White also has a good white paper on the subject of intranet governance : an introduction
• More tips were recently provided from Intranets Today

However you start to improve your intranet strategy development and governance, my personal tip would be to remember one thing, sometimes forgotten in the politics of intranet management, the USER.  Intranets which are managed through good governance, develop a consistent user experience, provide accurate up to date information and make life easier for the user can only be am improvement.

Intranet Strategy ; the intranet manager's challenge

As part of the Intranet Benchmarking Forum's research programme they have just published a detailed research report for it's members on the challenges of managing intranet strategy and governance, written by me and John Baptista.

Following a survey of nearly 70 large organisations, and analysing the benchmarking data IBF has from all it's Global members, we summarised the potential challenges faced by intranet managers in this area - the 'vicious circle' of intranet management (click on the image below for a larger version)

Even though most of the organisations we analysed have a developing intranet or portal supporting key business processes, we found that in most organisations here is often a lack of understanding about the strategic importance of the organisation's intranet.

This often means that senior leaders struggle to see why they should be involved with intranet development, and leads to little or no obvious senior level support.

Jane McConnell also recently discussed this trend in her blog post What keeps senior management awake at night and predicts this is an area won't have changed much in the near future.

If no one senior leader champions the intranet, other senior leaders also may not see the need to be that involved, and if senior leaders are not energised by the intranet, those underneath them will not be either - leading to a general lack of involvement in strategy development from the wider business.  The lack of senior involvement also reduces the prospect of developing an effective steering committee. 

Without this process to ensure input from all areas of the business, local units who DO want to develop the intranet to support their business processes find there is often no formal route to ensure the group wide intranet supports their developing needs. Local units then start developing their own local plan to serve their needs.  Whilst this works locally it can cause problems for the wider intranet plan....

More on this tomorrow.

Do we REALLY need web 2.0 on our intranet?

Jumping on the web 2.0 for intranets bandwagon

I find it rather strange how many people I meet through my intranet work who are saying things like 'oh we need blogs, we need a wiki too' but don't really seem to understand what they need them for.  Intranet Managers are often fighting a battle with intranet users and senior managers coming into work and saying 'well last night my daughter introduced me to this blog thing on the internet and I want one' etc.  Some people seem to be so wrapped up in the trend they aren't clear what problem they are trying to solve.

In searching around for comment on this I was pleased to find many of my colleagues are also saying that web 2.0 tools are not necessarily the answer and we must understand the problem first.  As intranet managers and developers we have to be able to describe this need to the enthusiastic Senior managers and advocates in our organisation who really just want to launch the new toy and see what happens.

Toby Ward’s web site article Enterprise 2.0 vs. Intranet 2.0 clearly describes how intranet managers need to ensure their house is in order before jumping on the web 2.0 bandwagon;

“Is this important for your organization? Should you be embracing enterprise 2.0? Yes and no. Firstly, if you’re without a comprehensive communications plan, that includes a comprehensive intranet plan (intranet blueprint), that is well executed and managed, you have bigger priorities (this includes about 85% of all corporations)”

Using the right tools for the right job

James P. MacLennan short article is a useful review of one such challenge.  he talks about the the implementation of web 2.0 tools in his work and the need to define the differences between Announcements, Blogs, Discussion Forums and Wikis

Jane McConnell’s post Enterprise 2.0 - to be or not to be? Depends on how you approach it... has a great 5 step plan to help understand if you really need web 2.0 in your organisation.  In summary it's all about ...

1. Understanding the users and organsational needs
2. Defining the functions they require to support these needs (NOT the tools)
3. Review what you already have - could it do the job just as well?
4. If web.2.0 can help, start small and fast
5. Integrate the tools well and communicate communicate

Jane also discusses the 3 question technology test, which again, in my view is great practical advice..

"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)"

This slightly challenges a previous blog entry here from Sam Marshall Web 2.0 inside your organisation - where to start?, who supports those organisations out there who are just trying the tools and seeing how they take off.  But hey, what are blogs about if it's not to encourage debate....

The state of KM, CM and intranets

Last week I attended a Knowledge and Content Management conference in London.  There were over 200 delegates and two streams of papers covering, funnily enough, Knowledge Management and Content Management.

What surprised me was the bias in numbers attending the two streams, with far more attendees in the KM room than the CM room.  I wasn’t sure why it surprised me which made me ponder on it some more….

I think that after many years working in the world of information management, and dipping my toes into knowledge management on some occasions, I’d come round to thinking that KM was a bit old hat.  I’d thought it was a term which had been labelled as one of those management consultants’ theories and was almost gone.  I’d worked in blue chip companies where KM was definitely a no-no term to use, where eyes drifted up to the ceiling at its mere mention.  I’d personally moved on into intranet management using good, solid information management skills; organising content for the user, managing content though proper life cycles etc.

But here was a conference full of people wanting to make KM work for them and their organisations, still discussing ways in which people’s tacit knowledge (the stuff in their heads) could be captured before they leave a company, how it could be shared and reused.

To start with I seemed to be hearing the same conversations I was involved with nearly 10 years ago – about how to make KM work.  But I soon realised that it had then been a problem then without a technology solution to make it EASY to solve.  Some intranets, along with other huge non web-based databases had been developed to ‘share knowledge’ in the past and had so often failed because the technology was just too difficult to use.  Very few companies really got KM to work for them.

Now, in the newer era of Web 2.0, with wikis, blogs, discussion forums, photo sharing on Flickr, networking through FaceBook and Myspace, and all things ‘sharing and communicating’ online, Knowledge Management has become a real possibility again.

These web based tools, adapted for use within corporate firewalls, integrated with everyone’s intranet to be part of normal working web environment, now offer easy to use solutions to information and knowledge sharing.  But are we ready for the free-for-all inside the corporate firewall, how many rules do we need to have around the ‘networking’ and will the rules just stifle the sharing again? 

It seemed from last week that there’s a real mix out there now, still some stayed intranet based databases of ‘knowledge’ that no one really looks at, plus some very active communities sharing knowledge over geographic and functional boundaries.  Maybe KM hasn’t drifted away at all, but is finally becoming something useable and real.  My gut feel is still that good KM is just good ‘Information Management’ really (I would say that, I’m an information professional!), but I’m open to being convinced that it’s more than that now.

New month, new blogger

Hello.  I’m the IBF blogger for the month of July and wanted to start by introducing myself.

My name is Helen Day and I’ve been working with IBF for just over a year and a half.  I’m Director of Special Interest Groups and also benchmark global intranets for IBF in the areas of Intranet strategy, governance, value and communication.

My background before intranet consulting was largely with The Boots Group latterly managing and developing intranets and portals there, consolidating lots of intranets through a content management systems and delivering personalised content through portal technology into Boots stores. 

I started, way back when, as a retail and pharmaceutical Marketing Researcher and then trained as an information professional.  So the core of my interest was quite simple – it’s about having the right information in the right place for the right people.  This all needed management, so much of it was online – and hey presto I ended up managing and developing intranets!

I live in Nottingham in the UK, but have spent the last year and a half travelling around the UK and to Europe working with lots of companies to understand and help improve their intranets, especially around intranet management and governance.  Intranets, especially those spread across different geographies or businesses, need good management and governance to remain useful and productive.  But many have grown organically and need a bit of reigning in – so this is what I help do now.

Over the next month I hope to highlight, and share my views on some of the things going on in the intranet world which catch my eye.