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(Leslie O'Flahavan and Marilynne Rudick) We
had the privilege of being judges for the
Content Management Network's 2003 Intranet Best
In Class (IBIC)
award. (Congratulations to the winner:
LexisNexis's Employees Intranet.) The
application packets were impressive and showed
in many ways how far Intranets have come since
somebody nicknamed them the company junk
drawer: "It's all in there somewhere; it's
just impossible to find!" Here's what we
learned about how these state-of-the-art
Intranets improve communication and support the
company's mission: 1. Successful Intranets Save
Companies Money.
All IBIC
award applicants reported that their Intranets
save big bucks by eliminating paper forms,
reducing employee time spent completing tasks,
and automating processes. At a credit card
company, the online employee directory realized
savings of $45,300 in 2003 employee
productivity. A publishing company reported
that Online Benefits Enrollment saved around
$350,000.
2. Successful Intranets
Respond To User Needs.
Intranet teams use interviews, focus groups,
polls, usability testing, and surveys to
identify users' information needs and to
measure user satisfaction with the Intranet.
And, as they say, surveys show that award
applicants' users are really happy with their
Intranets: - From an
environmental and energy systems business:
"69% agree the Intranet helps them be more
productive in their jobs…"
- From an
automobile manufacturer: "Our post-launch
survey reports 91% overall satisfaction rate
…"
- From the
credit card company: "84% of employees say
that the Intranet is their primary source for
information…"
3.
Successful Intranets Get The
Support Of Top Management.
Far from being a little "side
project" well under management's radar,
these Intranets get attention from the top:
- "Leadership
uses the Intranet as the primary way of
communicating with employees…" Award
applicants reported that leadership relied on
data gathered from the Intranet to develop
webcasts and keynote addresses.
- "Our
Intranet was one of the corporate-wide success
stories at our annual meeting…" Managers
use the Intranet to do their work. At one
company, managers are required to submit
employee appraisals via interactive forms
available only on the Intranet. And for the
ultimate testament to its value, one CIO showed
support by permanently assigning developers to
the Intranet initiative instead of merely
detailing developers one project at a time.
4.
Successful
Intranets Are Well-Governed.
In the past, Intranets were
often patchwork quilts of design, branding, and
style. All IBIC award applicants described
orderly Intranets, ones that give users a
consistent, predictable, useful experience. And
making the user experience orderly requires
consistent rules and "policing" on
the back end. Award applicants reported that
their Intranet content is governed by web
policies and guidelines; content must fit
within templates. In their application, the
credit card company stated, "We developed
a style guide for content providers - and we do
enforce style guidelines."
5.
Successful Intranets Involve Everyone
In Contributing Content.
Though they use different tools to enable
content contribution, all the IBIC Award
applicants shared the goal of drawing content
from across the organization:
- The energy
systems business: "We have 825 certified
authors using Front Page..."
- The credit
card company: "Our Intranet has 150
content publishers…"
- The
automobile manufacturer: "93% of
departments publish content on our
Intranet…"
6.
Successful
Intranets Are Big.
Yesterday's Intranets may have been big, too,
but they were big and unwieldy. Departments
threw up content without much thought to
navigation or format. Today's successful
Intranets are big because they contain useful
content, structured so users can quickly find
what they need:
- "Our
Intranet includes 650 websites consisting of
over 100,000 pages."
- "16
million page views; 15,000 different
pages…"
7. Successful Intranets Use
Content Management Systems.
Yesterday's Intranets suffered from
shoemaker's-children-go-barefoot syndrome.
While the company's public web site used a
state-of-the-art CMS, the "family"
Intranet was still managed by hand. Not so
anymore. Whether they build one in-house or
purchase one, the IBIC Award applicants use
content management systems for creation,
maintenance, and automation of Intranet
content. Applicants see CMS as the only option
for managing such large and vital
Intranets. 8. Successful Intranets Have
Long-Term Plans.
When
thinking about the future, these Intranets
planners think big: an enterprise portal, a web
content management system, a federated search
service, project collaboration capabilities,
and instant messaging. IBIC Award applicants
knew exactly how the Intranet would grow over
the next 2 to 4 years:
- "We plan
to add portal technology in 2004…"
- "Future
development for our Intranet is evaluated
quarterly …"
- "We
launched v 4.5 this November and v 4.6 is
already in development…"
As you can
see, today's Intranets are not the poor
stepchildren of their Internet parents, poorly
dressed and underfunded. As the IBIC Award
applications showed, today's Intranets are
corporate workhorses that improve
communication, streamline and automate tasks,
and save companies money. The words of one
applicant put it in a nutshell: "Our
corporate Intranet is a content-rich,
user-focused portal to information, tools,
applications, and services for our 4,500
employees and contractors in 30 offices around
the world." Company junk drawer no
more! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
