2012 Intranet Excellence Award Winners Announced!

Glasgow Housing Association, Waterstones and Superdrug – Winners at the Intranet Excellence Awards

The winners of the 2012 Intranet Excellence Awards were announced last night during an exciting awards ceremony at Interaction 2012 intranet conference, in America Square Conference Centre.

The Interact Intranet Excellence Awards is the annual awards ceremony that celebrates the hard work of intranet managers in their efforts towards creating an essential intranet for their organisation.

There were six categories open to all Interact Intranet users this year and the coveted Best Overall Intranet award – given to the intranet that encapsulates all of the award categories, voted for by our board of judges.

Best Overall Intranet

Glasgow Housing Association, one of Europe’s largest social landlords scooped the most awards of the night, including the top accolade of ‘Best Overall Intranet’ – for demonstrating that their intranet had the strongest blend of communication, business process and collaboration tools and showing how they use Interact Intranet to solve real business problems in their organisation.

Best Intranet Design

  • Winner – GHA
  • Runner up – Superdrug
  • Runner up – Royal College of Physicians

Glasgow Housing Association were awarded first place for their innovative use of their Cog logo to symbolise that the intranet is an essential element in the function of the organisation. Judges also commended the superb user research from their Intranet Focus Group which ensured that the information architecture was tried and tested specifically for their users.

Superdrug were awarded runner up because of their simple and clear intranet design that encapsulates the Superdrug brand. Judges also liked their use of the intranet to advertise brands and get users engaged with new products and promotions.

The second runners up were the Royal College of Physicians who utilise a simple and clear aesthetic design, which is great for new starters. The balance between pushed communication and collaboration features was also praised.

Best Intranet Manager

  • Winner – Kelly Freeman, Superdrug
  • Runner up – Louise Cheshire, Futures Housing
  • Runner up – Intranet Management team, UK Asset Resolution

Kelly Freeman, of beauty and health retailer, Superdrug was awarded Best Intranet manager due to her dedication and enthusiasm to go ‘the extra mile’ for the Superdrug intranet. Her efforts have resulted in huge user adoption from director level down and she has championed a fantastic range of social intranet tools on the intranet including blogging and forums to improve business processes. Kelly was nominated by her colleague, Grace Sotheby.

Louise Cheshire from Futures Housing was awarded runners up position because of her constant enthusiasm in advocating the intranet and engaging all levels of staff through exciting campaigns including intranet cafe’s and celebrations.

Charlotte Dovell and Claire Johnson from UK Asset Resolution were awarded runners up also for providing a great example of how to utilise the intranet positively in a company merger. Their team of 50 content managers led by Charlotte and Claire provide excellent content manager support and knowledge sharing.

Best Intranet Launch Strategy

  • Winner – G4S
  • Runner up – Swagelok
  • Runner up – Glasgow Housing Association
  • Runner up – Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation

Global security business, G4S took first place for their innovative intranet launch strategy. This involved them setting up a web editor group using the online tool, Interact Teams to share ideas and good practice and successfully launching their intranet in 125 locations around the world. They also made great use of brand awareness through their mascot ‘Hari’.

       

Before their intranet launch, Swagelok – who claimed runner up position, spent many months with different groups from across the company honing the perfect intranet structure for their company. The judges also appreciated the great guerilla marketing strategy which involved them replacing all the old mugs in the kitchen overnight with new mugs with the Knowlesy logo.

Best Return on Investment

  • Winner – Romec
  • Runner up – Waterstones
  • Runner up – Manheim

Facilities management company, Romec were winners of the Best Return on Investment category. They proved that they had saved GBP2.1 million in one year, using the online forms offered in Interact Intranet’s ‘Workflow and Form’ module, which allows simple forms to be made on the intranet to streamline business processes.

Waterstones were 2011 winners and they have continued to prove to judges that their intranet is making significant savings year-on-year. They used a variety of tools offered in Interact Intranet including specific Discussion Forums which aided sales for the business.

Manheim also claimed a runners up position by showing how they used their intranet to save approximately GBP65,000 in alternative 3rd party systems and how it made a significant reduction in email usage.

Best Social Intranet – Intranet Idol

  • Winner – Business Environment
  • Runner up – GHA
  • Runner up – Waterstones

The winner of the Best Social Intranet was Business Environment as voted for by the audience of Interaction in Social Intranet Idol. All three finalists had (around!) 5 minutes each to pitch their intranet and prove how they utilised the social tools in Interact Intranet to dramatically improve business processes in their organisation.

Joni Vass from Business Environment said in her pitch that on the intranet homepage staff are encouraged to talk to each other which is in-line with their company values of being a transparent company who are open to clients and staff alike. They utilise lots of status updates and forums and the collaboration space on the homepage lets people communicate on all levels. The interests tab enabled visibility of how photography was an interest of a particular employee. Now that person has become the in-house photographer. Joni shared impressive stats including – 100% of staff have logged into the intranet in 2012 and 86% of their social tools they use in Interact Intranet have business benefits.

Ayesha Graves from Waterstones pitched her intranet,compass. Telling the audience how she had persuaded the senior management team to understand that discussion forums can be channelled to focus on work and are useful for business productivity. Their intranet begun with 4 forums and now has over 20 forums today, with each content area manager wanting a discussion forum to share knowledge between their 4,000 knowledgeable staff.

Wendy Jordan from Glasgow Housing Association showed how there was vast use of blogging throughout their intranet, despite it only being 2 months old. She provided a specific example of a customer service blog about the day-to-day life in their department. This blog reduced the fear other GHA staff had when they were faced with the prospect of moving departments.

Louise Cheshire from Futures Housing was voted ‘Best Community Influence’ by her peers for having the most presence on the Interact Community – an exclusive online customer community dedicated to help Interact customers maximise the potential from their intranet.

Interact would like to thank everyone who took the time to enter the Intranet Excellence Awards and we look forward to celebrating your intranet successes at Interaction 2013.