Intranet Benchmarking Forum

Demonstrating intranet value in tough times

We’ve focussed a lot recently on what we’re referring to at IBF as the campaign for the recession-strength intranet. Watching the intranet news and blogosphere I’m noticing this getting more coverage which is encouraging as intranet managers need all the support they can get as the economic downturn continues. In a post this week Jane McConnell sums up the risks of sidelining the intranet sparked by some of the responses to her pre-survey quick poll:

“Organizations are taking huge risks by ignoring or down playing the intranet during these tough times. Those that decide to leverage the intranet to help the organization save time, decrease and avoid costs, and communicate and collaborate better are those that will have a better chance at surviving the crisis and becoming stronger. I wonder how many organizations have actually calculated what they save by downsizing intranet teams versus what they will be losing.  Practically none, in my opinion.”

This point is also emphasized in a timely article by Rachel Lei published on CIO.com this week on Leveraging the Power of the intranet:

“When businesses are faced with a scary and volatile market, the intranet often falls by the wayside and attention is focused outward. Increasing revenue is the primary goal even in the best of economies. What we all miss at times is turning inward and taking stock of how we can better serve the customers we already have. Your intranet can be key in helping your employees provide exceptional customer service, and it can make it easier for them to drive more sales and provide added value.”

It goes on to mention some of the other ways that the intranet can help to provide cost savings such as moving printed materials online and enabling employee collaboration. These kind of cost saving initiatives on the intranet are key to its survival in the times we’re in. If you haven’t read it yet I really recommend the free research paper we released earlier this year “The Recession-strength intranet” with its real life examples of how smart intranets are “finding ways for the intranet to release previously unexploited value and make a major contribution to the organisation’s bottom line.”

But what about intranets that are already providing value but this value isn’t being  measured and importantly acknowledged at the highest levels of the organisation? With intranet metrics often falling off the bottom of the intranet team’s to do list, this is a real issue. A recent poll at Intranets Live showed that people tend to underestimate the value of the intranet compared to what IBF has found through the Intranet Financial Value Benchmark - as a live tweet from the session sums it up:

 

In a timely article on Ragan.com aptly titled Without metrics, intranets languish Toby Ward comments on this issue:

“Executives have no respect for the intranet," explains Toby Ward, CEO of consulting firm Prescient Digital. "They see no value in it, little future for it, and they see it as a cost center. There are a few execs who get it—but most don’t, and that’s why it’s stagnating at most organizations.”

Demonstrating value can range from a baseline of having a clear “elevator pitch” on intranet value, through a more fully fledged metrics program, right through to the full-blown Intranet Financial Value Benchmark that IBF recently launched. All three levels have been looked at in recent posts:

The bare essentials or “elevator pitch” in Measuring the effectiveness of intranets:

"The three main points that every Intranet Manager should be prepared to demonstrate at any time are:
1.    State the current investment levels and business as usual costs
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"

Developing a more fully fledged metrics program was the topic of a recent Special Interest Group, the highlights of which appeared in Demonstrating intranet success using metrics which looked at practical ways to measure and report metrics (including low cost methods):

•    User/Customer satisfaction
•    Content accessed/User Journeys
•    Performance of site
•    Readability score of content
•    Search terms used
•    Time to complete transactions
•    Number of participants in social areas

And the full blown analysis developed by IBF that is the Intranet Financial Value Tool in What is the financial value of your intranet? Now we have the answer... which quantifies the exploited and unexploited contribution of an intranet in terms of financial cost savings, revenue gains and reduced risks - and in a way that will certainly make the CFO sit up and pay attention.

Wherever you start, demonstrating the value of the intranet is certainly coming to the fore in the current climate. Intranet managers can take encouragement from the recent Watson Wyatt survey which found that since the start of the economic slump 72% of employers have increased intranet use, signalling an acknowledgement of how the intranet can help (and again emphasising  the importance of being able to make sure this is recognised at senior levels).

Is your intranet recession-strength? How are you demonstrating its value in tough times? It would be great to hear your answers to these questions as we’ll be continuing to dig into them moving forward.

Demonstrating intranet success using metrics

This is a guest blog post from independent consultant Deirdre Joy, former intranet manager at Royal Mail, who recently lead a Special Interest Group on Metrics for IBF members.

Having managed an intranet for 8 years and also having been involved in metrics, I’m aware how much of a challenge this is for intranet managers.  Listening to members at the recent Metrics SIG, everyone appreciated that it is important to understand what intranet success means but not everyone had measures in place to demonstrate this success. It was also agreed that without metrics it is difficult to demonstrate the value of the intranet or to prioritise resources.

I took a look at some of the metrics available on an intranet, ranging in cost from team time to expensive software packages.  We had some great discussions around:

• User/Customer satisfaction
• Content accessed/User Journeys
• Performance of site
• Readability score of content
• Search terms used
• Time to complete transactions
• Number of participants in social areas

Key points:

User/Customer satisfaction surveys

• Make sure you know how you are going to analyse the data before you set up the survey

Analytics packages

• Ensure that you provide tailored reports to the target audience so they can use the data

Performance of site

• Need to understand how your end users experience the site

Readability Score

• Not all attendees were aware that you can measure the readability and some were going to set it as a measure for content quality

Search Terms used

• Some attendees were already measuring this and we had a good discussion about how to use this data

Transaction Time

• This is a great metric for demonstrating the value of your intranet

Number of participants in social areas

• We had to curtail the discussion about use of social areas on intranets!

Some of the actions that came out of the session for participants were:

• Define success criteria for the intranet
• Identify correct metrics and then report appropriately
• Build business case for analytics package
• Make reports relevant to target audience
• Get better understanding of users

And the key messages that came out:

• Quantitative information is key tool for any intranet manager.
• Decide your metrics, measure, report, analyse and take action to improve.

As well as offering members benchmarking in Metrics & Performance, IBF has also recently launched the Intranet Financial Value Benchmark.

Related reading:

• How can the effectiveness of intranets be measured?
• Put your intranet on your balance sheet as an asset

Put your intranet on your balance sheet as an asset!

Just relaxing after hosting a vibrant Intranets Live show yesterday with around 300 intranet managers and teams joining from 20 countries globally. We had a hectic programme with live tours from Arup, Razorfish and BT - plus great studio guests including Mark Morrell, Intranet Manager at BT and Sandy Blair, also from BT, Candace Cahill, Intranet Manager for Philips Healthcare, Julian Diamond, Head of Information Management & Associate Director at Arup and Shiv Singh from Razorfish.

In part of the show we introduced a new Intranet Financial Value Benchmark from IBF and discussed a recent deployment of the service within BT. For years, no one running intranets has a clear idea about the true financial value of the services they manage. Chief Information Officers and Chief Financial Officers ask the question "so what is the intranet worth?" and the response was "no idea!".

As we developed this new financial measurement and benchmarking service, most teams, even in major enterprise intranets, felt that answering this "six million dollar" question was impossible. Too intangible.....like valuing email......etc.

So now we have a proven methodology that can tell any intranet manager the actual and potential financial value of the services they run. And the figures are dramatic; far higher than anyone expected. In fact, on a poll on Intranets Live yesterday, 75 per cent of our listeners and viewers said they believed their intranets were worth less than £5M annually.

What is concerning now that the answer is at hand, is that a minority of intranet managers and heads of online services think having a financial valuation is unneccessary because "we get funding anyhow". Oh dear!

Here are my five reasons why EVERY major organisation must know the financial value of their intranet services:

1. If you know your intranet is worth $100M an you spend $3M a year (standard level figures in our experience) - you have an ROI of more than 30:1 - how many shared services can cite figure like that?

2. Until your CFO, CTO and CIO believe about hard financial values, you will be disabled as a business area. Yes, people will tell you how valuable you are in general terms but businesses thrive on financial data.

3. If you don't know what you have now, you cannot know the untapped financial potential. When you ask for $1M for a new search engine, showing a payback of $20M in year one is vital.

4. As other major players get their intranets valued, the question will come up: so what is our intranet worth? Being behind the curve weakens you as a business manager.

5. You manage assets worth between $20M - $1 billion - but you have no reliable evidence to support that so that reality is hidden. Get the numbers and watch your own salary, status and career progress. From cost centre to revenue generator!

Yes, it is in the interest of IBF that organisations know the financial value of their intranets. But what concerns me is that intranet departments may not see this a great chance to raise their game. It is time to step forward, evidence the dollar values and start shaping the productivity strategy for the company.

Put your intranet on your balance sheet as an asset!

How can the effectiveness of intranets be measured?

Last week, a member of the Intranet Professionals Group on LinkedIn recently posed the following question:

”How can the effectivity of intranets be measured? Of course it's a matter of tasks that have to be defined individually and relatively. Apart from that: Do you know about already existing standards, maybe even programmed routines for the measurement of intranet-success? And in general: what variables would make sense to gain insight in intranet-measurement?”

Upon reflection, I posted the following reply…

When the topic of intranet metrics arises the conversation often starts with in one of two questions, namely:

1.    What stats do you capture? (i.e., how many page views, how many users, who had clicked on what and so on – the data typically captured in log files.)

2.    Which reporting/analytic tools are you using? (Google Analytics, Web Trends, Site Catalyst, etc.)

In a recent gathering of the Intranet Benchmarking Forum, we contemplated three main points that every Intranet Manager should be prepared to demonstrate at any time are:

1.    State the current investment levels and business as usual costs

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

Examples of things that should be on the list for items 2 and 3 (and their likely benefits) include:

• Travel Booking (saves transaction costs)
• Online Meeting Tools (saves time and travel costs)
• Live chat (employee engagement; email overload avoidance)
• Leadership online (as above)
• ‘One Source of Truth“ (can reduce risk and error, increase reputation)
• Room Booking (saves manual labor)
• On Boarding Services (enables new hires to work efficiently faster)
• Off Boarding Services (enables to minimize knowledge drain)
• HR Self Services (saves transaction costs and manual labor)
• Web Library (saves distribution costs and time on finding books, reports, etc.;  avoids duplicate buying/subscriptions)
• Sell advertising space on the intranet to external organizations (actually generates income and provides benefits to employees)

So how would you go about building your intranet measurement strategy? Here are some initial thoughts to get you moving along the right path.

1.    Design metrics that support your intranet strategy. Think about what you want your metrics to say and why. Ideally, your metrics will serve as a backdrop for discussing on how to take what you know now about the intranet and raising performance to provide greater business value. James Robertson has written two excellent articles that point in this direction.

•                     25 reasons why saving time on your intranet is a bad metric

•                     Intranets: measuring before and after

 

2.    Bite the bullet. Put in the effort to produce good metrics. If you need to collect data by hand initially, allocate the resources to do just that. Also invest time on the visual presentation too! Consider a dashboard format that guides your reader to key wins, issues or decision points. Once you’ve whet stakeholder appetites for critical information, you can leverage dashboard production stats to lobby for more automated solutions.

 

3.    Contextualize results properly.  Provide a contextual narrative to support metrics. This should include developments inside of the organization during the reporting period. The internal perspective will help flag correlations and draw out insights, but it will also help stakeholders understand value drivers instead versus basis traffic statistics.

 

4.    Add depth by highlighting how your intranet is performing relative to industry peers. Take the time to do thorough external research and benchmarking. Tap into sources such as the Jane McConnell’s Global Intranet Survey and the Intranet Benchmarking Forum, which provides league tables for its member organizations as part of annual benchmarking.

 

Although your aim is alignment with internal company strategy, understanding the (often huge) differences between intranets and the reasons for these can really open your eyes to the possibilities and allow you to take a step back and assess your own company intranet more objectively.

 

5.    Be transparent about intranet metrics. Carry your intranet dashboard around with you at all times. Incorporate a review of key performance indicators (KPIs) and key operational metrics into intranet governance meetings. Discuss intranet metrics openly – warts and all.

 

Further reading:

• 12 ways to use your intranet to save costs
• Recession-proof your intranet strategy

The recession-proof Intranet

At last week's IBF Global Member Meeting in Liverpool there was a discussion about what to say when the CFO tells you (as the Intranet Manager) to cut back.

The three main points that every Intranet Manager should be prepared to demonstrate at any time are:

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

Examples of things that should be on the list for 2. or 3. (and their likely benefits) include:

• Travel Booking (saves transaction costs)
• Online Meeting Tools (saves time and travel costs)
• Live chat (can augment employee engagement in economical difficult times)
• Leadership online (as above)
• „One Source of Truth“ (can reduce risk and error, increase reputation)
• Room Booking (saves manual labour)
• On Boarding Services (enables new hires to work efficiently faster)
• Off Boarding Services (enables to minimize knowledge drain)
• HR Self Services (saves transaction costs and manual labour)
• Web Library (saves distribution costs and time on finding books, reports, etc.;   avoids duplicate buying/subscriptions)
• Sell advertising space on the intranet to external organisations (actually generates income and provides benefits to employees)
• ...

There are many more such examples and we would like to hear what your principal arguments are for using the intranet as a cost cutter as opposed to cutting intranet costs.

Further reading:

• 12 ways to use your intranet to save costs
• Recession-proof your Intranet strategy

Facebook behind the Firewall

What would it mean to have a version of Facebook on your intranet?

The use of Facebook has grown rapidly and soon looks set to overtake MySpace (graph comparing MySpace, Orkut, Bebo and Facebook)

On this blog Louise Ferguson also recently commented on Facebook Use and Abuse by employees using the site during work time. In the IBF we've also been thinking about the next generation of phone books on intranets.

As internet trends are often precursors to intranet trends, I've therefore been wondering if a Corporate Social Network (CSN) would become the new 'Super Peoplefinder' in organisations.

There is certainly plenty of appeal:

• it would potentially allow searches on skills and interests
• people would be more motivated to maintain their profile - the problem with many current phonebooks is that people never look at their own entry
• its a way to propagate updates such as role changes that's more effective than email (too intrusive and disconnected for much of the audience)
• there's potential for micro-blogging where  someone could give several updates a day on the status of a time-critical event. e.g. if a server goes down the IT team could micro-blog status reports and only those who wanted to know need subscribe.

But, I also see some considerable barriers:

• intranet users tend to be less tolerant of multiple tools for the same task. In particular, having conflict between an email client and CSN, as the place to message would create a lot of confusion
• intranet users have a view on what 'completeness' is. That only 0.25% of internet users are on LinkedIn isn't seen as an issue. But it is common to complain about a phonebook that's less than even 80% complete
• CSN's are a lot less fun. Signing up to Facebook has intrinsic rewards and motivations because its social activity. Few organisations would implement a CSN that had such a degree of non-work content, and few employees would feel comfortable having their lunchtime gossip online. This would make the end result much drier. There would still be take-up, as there is with LinkedIn, but much less so.

Team blogging - an idea for intranets?

The fact we at IBF are 'team blogging' has in itself raised comment this month, which has prompted an article on the IBF website and blog review.  Let us know what you think... does a changing author of a blog lessen the value of that blog, or does it actually provide a broader viewpoint? 

Maybe, with so many companies considering corporate and CEO blogs for their intranet this is a model they should consider?  A 'leadership team' blog.... less onus on one member of the team to blog every day and a variety of viewpoints for employees to consider?

Toby Ward discussed intranet blogging earlier this year and offer good advice for those considering the idea in his article

It's the last day of July, so I shall be signing off as the IBF blogger for a while.  It's been a new and interesting experience and I'd like to thank everyone who has left comments and enabled discussion and debate.