Intranet Benchmarking Forum

Realising the potential of personalisation

There is much debate about the value and success of personalisation on the intranet. The IBF have just released a new research report on this topic, by Abigail Lewis-Bowen. It examines why organisations are getting such mixed results despite the expectations on personalisation to reduce information overload for employees and ensure they get the right information. The report also looks at the impact of Web 2.0 technologies such as RSS and tagging on more traditional personalisation techniques.

One of the issues that intranet managers face in successfully implementing personalisation, is the sheer amount of effort and hard work that go into getting it right, and without which it fails to deliver on it’s promise. Implementers face a number of key challenges:

• Mapping content to user profiles
• Developing accurate profile data
• Awkward user experience
• Meeting the needs of all users

Abigail then goes on to look at the ground rules for effective personalisation (such as common authentication for users, straightforward publishing processes for content authors, and pre-populating profile data) and the importance of measuring to track success (such as satisfaction, use and productivity).

As well as looking at personalisation from the more traditional, rules-based perspective, the report also examines how social computing tools such as RSS, tagging and mash-ups can enhance this approach. These tools allow the user greater control over content, achieving a balance of ‘push’ and ‘pull’, as well as leveraging information gathered from user behaviours. However these technologies will take time for people to adopt, while the basic ground rules for successful personalisation still remain key to realising it's full potential.

IBF members can download the report from the extranet (PDF file).

Collaboration, from the ground up

As intranet people, we’re often to be found facilitating or participating in conversations and initiatives relating to collaboration. And especially with the intranet becoming more and more a medium for these ways of working. But let’s step back a moment, and get our hands dirty with this collaboration business, from the ground up.

While participating on a discussion forum recently, the topic came up around our willingness to collaborate and share. One posting in particular encouraged sharing from members irrespective of how they perceived their knowledge or experience, or whether they thought that they had the “right” answer. And it went on to point out that only through our shared experiences and conversations will we generate new knowledge and answers.

We know this! And at a fundamental level, trends such as knowledge management and Web 2.0 encapsulate an almost intuitive reaching out towards these kind of interactions and the value they can create. Yet the barriers to these interactions remain formidable, even with technology increasingly available to support them. At one level, these barriers are about the traditional structures of corporate culture which are largely proving incompatible with more open, emergent ways of working. But these structures didn’t appear as if by magic, and so at another level, we get to look at the personal values and behaviours that we have as individuals around collaboration (online or offline). And to make these values and behaviours at the centre stage. Otherwise, we can debate all things 2.0 until we’re blue in the face, and until the trend fades away leaving little real change in our organisations.

So, what are these values? This is not an exhaustive list, but here are the one’s I would start with as being key...

Willingness (to be wrong!) - as in the example I started with, we have to be willing to share the knowledge and experience we do have, and take it from there. A good litmus test is: how willing are we to ask the so-called “stupid” question?

Responsibility for our actions - doing things because we know they will add value for the organisation, our colleagues and ourselves (not because they’re in our end of year objectives).

Openess about our activities, looking for the synergies between our projects and others, blogging (for example) about these projects and their real progress (rather than “controlling the message” when something doesn’t go quite to plan).

Spirit of adventure in all that we do! Being prepared to experiment, and see the opportunities for using the tools available in perhaps uncommon ways to create value.

We all have our areas for improvement, but an individual embodying the majority of these values in an organisation no longer has the need for “engagement” or “empowerment”, rather a guiding purpose and supportive framework to go about their business. Now that’s what you call changing corporate culture from the ground up! Ok, so we can’t avoid the other barriers, but it’s always refreshing to look at these things from the perspective of what individuals can do. And who ever failed to be inspired by someone who truly lives these kind of values? As intranet people we get a unique position in the organisation (not to change the world, though it is tempting) to facilitate some of these conversations around collaboration, and influence them by example.

Update: I've just been reading David Gurteen's March Knowledge Letter - he expresses this well as the "Thinking 2.0" or "Mindset 2.0" that we need if "Enterprise 2.0" is going to live up to it's potential.

The practical issues of governing 2.0

The debate continues as to whether Enterprise 2.0 is little more than hype or represents a key cultural as well as technological shift in our organisations; whether we should talk about it at all; and if we should talk about it, then whether it isn’t just knowledge management in a new disguise... phew!

In the meantime, organisations need to deal with the practical issues around introducing more participative, open tools, both inside and outside the firewall (whether we call them 2.0 or some other equally cool sounding name). One of these practical issues is addressing the concerns these tools cause in some quarters around company reputation and legal risks. Paul Miller touched on this in his post about Intranet Governance 2.0 back in January and it will be the subject of an (eagerly anticipated) research report in the very near future! :)

If you take the new wave of employee directories I blogged about in my last post as an example, the question of data protection and privacy comes up as more employee data is exposed on the intranet. And for global organisations, this may have different implications across their operating countries. Additionally, with more freedom of expression, both on the intranet “inside” and “outside” concerns arise around content liability.

But these issues should not become show stoppers within the organisation for letting Enterprise 2.0 tools in and letting employees out to participate in Web 2.0 sites. Rather, they should be handled through ensuring that intranet governance keeps pace with the changing intranet landscape. The nature of this landscape means that hard and fast rules suited to more traditional structures, are not really suitable. Rather we get a framework of guidelines around behaviour and content that is acceptable and (as at BT) ensure that employees are held accountable for their actions.

Andrew McAfee on his Harvard Business School blog puts the argument around the risks into perspective: “Imagine two competitors, one of which has the guiding principle "keep security risks and discoverability to a minimum," the other of which is guided by the rule "make it as easy as possible for people to collaborate and access each others' expertise." Both put in technology infrastructures appropriate for their guiding principles. Take all IT, legal, and leak-related costs into account. Which of these two comes out ahead over time? I know which one I'm betting on.” In his recent debate with Tom Davenport (and that's another story!) he makes the point that if people wanted to make defamatory statements or expose company secrets then they have already had plenty of tools and opportunity to do this. He goes on to comment that in all of his research into companies use of 2.0 he has come across no examples of such cases.

The key here is around the guidelines the company provides (this is providing a clear lead, whilst not being over prescriptive), holding employees accountable for their actions (we never get new freedoms without new responsibilities) and being prepared to follow through on any breaches (walking the talk).

The potential of the Employee Directory...

I was reading the article yesterday about the launch of Motorola’s new intranet, iMoto. One of the highlights of this launch is reported as being the new employee directory:

"I can pull up a person’s directory listing and not only do I see information about the part of the organization in which they sit, who they report to, but I also see the communities they belong to" - Mary Owens, Director of Internal Communications at Motorola

The features described in the article aren’t rocket science, but it demonstrates the impact of a good employee directory as well as it’s potential for richer, more collaborative features. These features take their inspiration from the popular social networking sites beyond the firewall, enriching the more formal aspects of the Employee Directory. It’s something that’s been the topic of lively debate at recent IBF member meetings!

We’ve seen the evolution of the directory from it’s earliest and dustiest paper-based copies, that were then uploaded to the intranet, through to a robust database driven application that has rightfully earned the nickname of “the killer application” on the intranet. So what’s next?

As I mentioned the newer wave of employee directories incorporate elements of the popular social networking sites, and as with all things 2.0 they're lighter and nimbler than knowledge management type expertise systems that tried to do a similar thing. Building on the basic directory...

• Static and formal employee information expands into a profile page that includes more personal and diverse information and multimedia.
• This interactive “hub” becomes a key social and business tool, enabling employees to build an internal network.
• Multi-faceted search means that people can be found by a variety of criteria (e.g. - skill, location)
• Linkages are built with collaborative tools such as communities and blogs

Ok, so a social network behind the firewall is never likely to generate the same excitement as on the web, but it is certainly creating excitement both in organisations that are doing it (or thinking of doing it) and vendors both big and small racing to provide solutions (for example, Lotus Connections, ConnectBeam, Nakisa, to mention but a few).

At Oracle, a few developers decided to explore this and built their own internal social network late last year, which they marketed virally inside the organisation with great success. It certainly seems to have hit the right note at Oracle. You can hear them talk about it online.

With so much exciting potential, it’s important to bear in mind the challenges that many organisations still face in getting “the basics” right:

• Ensuring that the information in the employee directory is accurate and up-to-date (both via central and self-services updates)


• Employee profiles often only provide quite basic details about staff, which limits the usefulness of the directory.


• Frequently, organisation charts are neither dynamically generated (meaning they go out-of-date quickly) nor are they properly integrated into the employee directory.


• Another challenge, is the integration of all the relevant information sources into the directory. It can even be the case that a well-intentioned effort such as an expertise directory gets developed in isolation from the main employee directory, compounding this issue. (I’ve seen this recently in a Professional Services firm, and it has caused no end of confusion!)


• Lack of promotion of the directory, and any self-service functionality.

Getting these basics right is a huge win in itself for this “killer application”, and then provides the perfect springboard for some creative and useful advanced features that can help connect people together in a more fluid and dynamic manner.