I was particularly interested to hear ‘real’ stories from leading world organisations on the problems and experiences they faced when rolling out their intranets.  The overall theme of the conference was ‘Sharing is Caring’, a message that came through many of the talks. I’ve split my overview for each day of the conference below for easy reading. Enjoy!

Day 1

The first day was a little more informal and included interesting talks from Michael Edson, Direct or of Web and New Media at the Smithsonian Institution, and Merete Sanderhoff, Researcher at the National Gallery of Denmark, on how these traditional institutions have changed their whole attitude and approach on sharing public content.

Lau Andreasen also ran a great workshop on ‘Intranet Killer Apps’ getting feedback from Intranet Managers on what works and drives traffic. It was not surprising to learn despite the fantastic intranet technology out there, it’s the traditional tools that are still attracting users such as booking rooms or even ordering their lunch.

Day 2

This was the start of the main conference with a formal keynote presentation and multiple workshops. The main keynote being an inspiring talk by Michael Edson on the history of technology and the world of sharing.

Tracy Green, a fellow brit and Head of Online Services in UK Parliament, also gave a fascinating presentation of the journey of the intranet for the UK parliament. Trying to balance the benefits of new technology under the scrutiny of the UK media is a tricky thing. Often only the negative numbers are published and not the true savings Tracy and her team are making.

One particular story involved iPad’s which are being introduced for all MP’s. Although initially this seems a large expense, it’s actually a huge cost saving over the paper that was previously being wasted with huge amounts of printing.

The final part of day 2 also included the infamous ‘Web Idol‘ competition. The wigs certainly made an impression:

Day 3

The final day of the conference included some great workshops on intranets and the sharing of real business stories.

It started with a collection of ‘super-hero’s’ presenting their views on changing technology. In particular the talk Michael Fienen, Senior Interactive Developer for @aquentn, on user-centric design was inspiring. He pointed out a quote by Steve Jobs which made everyone smile:

“We made the buttons on the screen look so good you’ll want to lick them.”

From an intranet software perspective this really hit home. It’s extremely important to get user-interface design right so users enjoy using the software. It’s something our Product Development Team work hard on at Interact.

Sean Winter, Senior Manager of Intranet and Collaboration at Capital One (58,000 employees and contractors) provided a really excellent insight into the journey of going from static to social. The journey they made went from simple functionality to a full social platform. The journey is as follows..

• 2009: Simple functionality including comments, polls and profile, & blogs
• 2009 / 2011:  Full self-service model including blogs, wikis, micro-blogging, user-generated videos, and training videos
• 2012 / 2014: Consolidating into one social intranet with activity streams, expertise location, spaces and groups, ideation, project spaces, recommendations, friending and following, integrated document management, and mobile

A lot of work also went into the planning which is crucial for such a shift. This included mapping out the social goals such as:

• Transparent decision making
• Citizen editors sharing info to the organisation (liking and sharing content)
• Expertise location
• Cross-functional communities
• Ideation channels – best ideas rise to the top
• Q&A crowd sourcing – correct answer over a timely response

They also hugely benefited from creating:

• Use Cases focused around users which could be measured
• Creating ‘Internal Advocates’ across the organisation to ‘spread the word’
• Creating an internal beta testing team which provided valuable feedback

A lot of the above work meant that Sean and his team could really quantify the benefits of this shift from static to social, something that can be very tricky to provide to your CIO if not planned correctly.

Nathan Bricklin @socialbrick and Darius Miranda @dariusmiranda also provided a great insight into the benefits of being social at Wells Fargo. As a bank they have over 270,000 team members and 25,000 contractors. Quite a large organisation! Their main business drivers for social were split over 5 categories and have a been a great success;

• To drive cross-selling – ‘sales’
• Provide better support – ‘service’
• Foster thought leadership – ‘knowledge’
• Efficiency, reduce spend – ‘productivity’
• Working better together – ‘engagement’

There were also other fascinating presentations from Joanne Jackson from Endo and Becky Kaplan Farone from Group Health on their SharePoint journeys and the hurdles they faced.

Overall the conference really highlighted two issues for me…

1. Sharing is Caring… the movement of sharing is so prominent in the outside world is naturally moving inside organisations. Traditionally knowledge is power and sharing that knowledge was deemed to be dangerous. However this perception has now shifted. To be the one sharing information with others to empower decisions and get work done is now becoming the norm.
2. True intranet traffic is still being generated by the simple tasks! As mentioned above, many users are still visiting the intranet to perform simple business processes such as ordering their lunch. The challenge is to shift the perception and prove that intranets can do so much more for today’s workers.

I believe that intelligent tools that push information to user automatically, as provided in Interact Intranet, is certainly one great way to help engage users. With limited time, intranet users want information extremely quickly. Pushing relevant content to them saves time and builds a level of trust ensuring repeat traffic.

So whilst a user drops into the intranet to order their lunch or process some information, tools like Interact Suggests are working hard to push information to them and get their attention in that limited timeframe.

Finally, a huge thanks to the team at J Boye for organising a great conference. Hopefully I’ll see some of you again at Interaction 2012!

Photos of the entire event can be seen here:

http://www.flickr.com//photos/jboye/sets/72157629646787650/show/

J Boye Intranet Conference – what I discovered… is a post from: Interact Intranet is Intelligent Intranet Software

Earlier this year Interact held two very popular intranet seminars that focused on best practice tips for launching an intranet. At Interact we like to make such sessions not only informative but also interactive, so we asked attendees to judge what activities they would do, or had done, when implementing an intranet and what order they would look to do them in.

The 12 key activities they were presented with were:

1. Engage users
2. Define SMART objectives for the intranet
3. Promote the intranet
4. Involve users in planning
5. Get an Intranet Sponsor
6. Name or brand the intranet
7. Determine user expectations
8. Focus on look and feel
9. Have a roadmap
10. Test the structure
11. Compile a content inventory
12. Observe end users

These 12 activities are a selection of a chain of activities and decisions that are done or made during the implementation of an intranet. It is not an exhaustive list. In fact it deliberately excluded a key task (which I’ll reveal later) it was presented to give an idea of the things that should be done. The task was to put these into a broadly sequential order and have some rationale for their thinking.  What emerged was that it was not as easy as you might think!

As you may expect there was no exact match between the 40 or so answer variants.  In fact it would be hard to get a universally agreed order as some activities will be conducted over time and therefore there will be an overlap with other activities. However, what can be agreed is that certain activities will need to be done before others in order for maximum benefit and efficiency, while some are conducted simultaneously and alongside others.

The working model

If you try to order these 12 activities then the sequential order would be:

1. Get an intranet sponsor

Their involvement can be crucial in helping you get things done or decisions made. They can act as your ally in giving clear and decisive intranet leadership.  The intranet sponsor may also have a dual role and also be a key stakeholder.

2. Define SMART objectives for the intranet

Ask and answer the questions – “Why is the intranet there?” and “How will we know if the intranet is a success?”  This can be done in discussion with the sponsor and in conjunction with the stakeholders, but it shouldn’t be a once and for all activity.  There is benefit in revisiting and refining the objectives, particularly after concluding the activities undertaken in step 3 and 4.

3. Observe end users

In the belief that an essential intranet is a key working tool it has to be of use and benefit to end users.  To that end you need to be aware of how people across the organisation work.  What are their daily tasks, what information do they need to help them make decisions and how do they source it.  While surveys can help this, it is only through heuristic observation that you get a clear picture.

4. Determine user expectations

While getting this information you will offer no guarantee of everything being delivered but it will help you uncover the “must have” elements as well as the “would like to have” ones.  It can help you make decisions on what features and content should be prioritised for the intranet launch, and what can follow on as part of the intranet evolution (see step 12)

5. Compile content inventory

Having observed and interviewed users as the information and task expectations you can list the content you currently have and assess what content needs to be on the new intranet.  Is current content fit for purpose, is it accurate, relevant and valued? As a rough guide it is not uncommon to cull 25% of existing.

6. Promote the intranet

In fact this is something that has already began, as during steps 3 and 4; observation and interviews you will have mentioned the new intranet and hopefully begun to enthuse people that something better is coming.  As well as word of mouth and informal promotion it can also be the first marketing activity.  A teaser campaign to build anticipation for the new intranet could be one of the first obvious marketing activities for the new intranet. It could be focused around a naming competition (see step 10.)

7. Involve users in planning

Having the dual role of also being an “engagement” activity (step 8 ) involving users in the decisions of how to structure content is key in building an intranet structure that is intuitive and one that provides context for content that is uncovered through search.  A classic example of such an activity is a card sort, where users are asked to group content.  This can help inform decisions of how content should be organised and presented.

8. Engage users

Again this has already happened, most recently in step 7.  However you should strive to ensure that you engage across the organisation.  You should look to engage with both ‘intranetphobes’ as well as ‘intranetphiles’. If someone doesn’t like or use the current intranet you need to know why, so you can set about delivering something that is of use and interest to them.  Engagement is an activity that continues throughout the launch phase and there should be regular opportunities where feedback is sought and progress reported on.   An intranet steering group could be the platform for this.

9. Test the structure

Step 7 was conducted to uncover the “mental maps” of how users would organise content and reveal how they think.  The data and evidence gathered is then reflected on and a first iteration of a navigation structure and taxonomy be developed.  To check that the conclusions drawn and decision made prove correct, testing should be performed.  Users should be presented with the structure and asked to locate content and give their thoughts.

10. Name or brand the intranet

Naming competitions can be an effective way to promote interest in the intranet, as can voting on “preferred” options.  However it is important that the right balance is achieved between this activity and others.  An intranet name might be desirable, but an intuitive structure with relevant and accurate content is a greater priority.

11. Focus on look and feel

Your reaction to this being step 11 depends on your stance in the “form follows function” debate.  In the context of designing an intranets a “form follows function” is often taken to mean that the designer should first gather the website’s requirements and then determine the aesthetics of the website based on the functional requirements.  While a “pretty” intranet won’t make a badly structured intranet more usable it could be argued that an “ugly” intranet will cause an adverse reaction amongst users no matter how well structured and relevant it is.

12. Have a roadmap

The “intranet project” does not stop at launch.  Intranets evolve in the same way the organisation within they exist evolves.  Objectives will need to be reviewed and possibly redefined.  It is unlikely that everything will be delivered for launch and therefore there should be a phased approach.  At launch your intranet might be version 1.  You should share what the development plans and schedule is for version 2, version 3 etc.

The missing piece of the puzzle

What was the deliberately omitted task?  - This question was also asked on the seminar.

The answer?  Governance.

Governance is about having a process to make decisions and as such should begin during the first conversations with the Intranet Sponsor and objective setting phase and then underpins everything you do in the implementation and beyond launch.

What do you think?

I’d welcome your thoughts on the order I’ve settled on above, there are many other activities and decisions that need to be made when planning a new intranet.  I’ve drawn out those key 12 and underpinned them with the application of governance, but I’d love to know your alternative order or alternate 12 maybe.

Please leave a comment below.

Interact holds regular seminars, our next planned events are

May 22^nd in Manchester. Register your place >>
June 12^th in Dallas. Register your place >>

Intranet Best Practice Check List is a post from: Interact Intranet is Intelligent Intranet Software

We have created some unique tools to enable you to build more powerful relationships with your customers and drive value. As well as being able to create an extranet that is used for traditional content management such as an FAQ database, product documentation and training material, Interact Intranet allows you to build activity around this information and to create an on-line community.

A successful customer community will lead to increased customer retention, more customer self-serve, loyal customers and ultimately customers that are happy to spend more.

Here are 11 ways Interact’s extranet software can help you to engage with your customers more effectively.

1. Find advocates in your customer base

Some customers will shine out as advocates for your products but others can be difficult to find.  Tools like Interact Answers will help you to uncover who the people are behind your best customers because they will regularly contribute to questions and come to the forefront of your extranet. These are the people who are invaluable to your organisation and who you should be building long term relationships with.

2. Create discussions around information

How do you keep a record in your organisation if the same people are asking the same things again and again?  Or even more importantly, if they are asking for the same changes, improvements or products.

Two features in Interact’s extranet software allow you to find common areas of concern or improvement. Document Comments can be used for customers to ask further questions around topics such as product specs or training material.  Allowing ‘Likes’ on documents highlights information that is important to your customers such as product improvements or useful FAQs.

3. Create a thriving customer community

The collaboration and social intranet tools in our software are integrated with the more traditional tools to create a mass audience appeal – something that is difficult to achieve in any social software.  This is crucial in an extranet environment as this blending of technology can be used to ensure effective customer engagement. These existing tools are essential to creating a thriving customer community:

• Comments on documents
• Likes on documents
• Search on all types of content
• Ability to link to content easily in forums, comments and status updates

4. Improve support efficiency

Engaged communities will lead to more self-help and happy customers.  Customers shouldn’t have to go through lengthy processes to get support and a community can lead to your customers to becoming the best support team in your business.  Intelligent forums make building this on-line community easy and tools such as @tagging and ‘Like’ ensure the best answers rise to the top.

5. Engage your customers in feedback

In a rapidly changing economy it is important to be in touch with your customers views and opinions around your product or products.  Interact’s intranet and extranet software has many tools that allow you to get rapid feedback from your customers.

Tools like voting on content are simple ways for your customers to start leaving feedback on your extranet and this can give an insight into what information they are interested in and find useful. It’s easy to create a quick poll on your extranet to gather feedback and opinions on your products from your customers. This is a really simple way to gain an insight into your customers views, which could influence key business making decisions in your company.

6. Create more efficient customer processes

To create a community you must initially have a pull to the extranet.  The best way to do this is by moving some business processes to the extranet.  The Workflow and Forms tool allows non-technical people to build e-forms easily.  So whether you work in marketing, sales or product development, you will be able to create forms like customer surveys, new product sign up and ideas forms.

7. Create teams of common interests

Every business filters customers by a number of different criteria such as vertical sector, product use, and geographical location. Interact Teams allows you to build sub-communities around these groups and engage with people in a more focused way.

8. Suggest relevant content

People like to talk about and follow information that is relevant to them. At Interact we have a saying – “content should find people.”  A customer will visit an extranet to complete a task and they need to be pushed relevant information.  Think of Amazon – it pushes you books and DVD’s that are relevant to your purchases and viewing habits.  Interact Suggests does the same and intelligently suggests information relevant to the user.

9. Gain valuable customer intelligence

Find out what your customers are searching for and where the information black holes are using Statistics and Search Analytics.

The Statistics & Search Analytics tool identifies what users are looking for and provides an insight into how customers are searching your extranet, which can in turn be used to enhance your extranet content to directly support customers in their day-to-day work and their interactions with your business. You can identify if your customers are searching for a specific product issue or maybe there are a high percentage of searches being carried out on a new feature or product you are not stocking yet.

You can also find out which customers contribute the most to your extranet and who doesn’t contribute anything and asses if they are using the extranet to its maximum potential.

10. Focused customer communication

Blogs are an effective way to share skills and knowledge between customers and also for you to find out how customers are using your products day to day.

For example, a Product Manager can keep an eye on what features of the product may be working for or against customers to help with future improvements. Or your customer support team can make sure customers are kept happy and informed on key matters such as process enhancements and improved service delivery strategies.

11. Quick and easy to set-up with no technical skills

One of the big challenges when rolling out software products is coordinating IT, Marketing, Sales and HR.  We make it easy to set-up your customer environment without any technical skills.

We partner with Rackspace (the world’s No1 hosting provider).  This combined with Interact Intranet software that has been penetration tested by many of the world’s leading security organisations means that your data is safe, easy to access and more importantly easy to set up.

11 ways Interact’s software can help you engage with your customers is a post from: Interact Intranet is Intelligent Intranet Software

Writing a good business case plays a crucial part in getting the support necessary to make an intranet project successful and it needs to be based on the business priorities of the senior management and focus on improving how employees work on a day to day basis.

However, for many intranet managers the task of putting together a business case can seem a daunting prospect so below we have listed some key ideas for what to include to help you build a relevant and robust case.

If you would like further help to build a successful business case for your new intranet then you can register for free for one of our UK and US seminars:

-          London, UK, 24^th April fully booked

-          Manchester, UK, 22^nd May

-          Dallas, US, 12^th June

1) Identify key tangible benefits

In order for any Board or Senior Management team to decide if a Business Case is worth progressing, it is essential to show the business benefits.

The benefits an organisation can gain from an intranet can be summarised into the following four key areas:

• Increased Business Efficiency
• Improved Staff Morale
• Increased Revenue
• Reduced Direct Costs

Decide on your key objectives and start to focus on what exact business benefits will be achieved and how they can be delivered by a new intranet. For example, if we look at Increase Business Efficiency you may find a new intranet can help in a number of ways:

Showing the benefits of a new intranet on quantitative terms can be difficult so below are what some of our clients have experienced, which may help you to identify areas on your business where costs could be saved or extra revenue generated.

1. Romec saved £80,000 a year by setting up a preferred supplier database on their intranet which meant they were able to benefit from economies of scale through the integration of one process when departments bought new supplies.
2. Affinity Sutton saved £75,000 a year in manpower through the use of having an easier to use and non-IT friendly solution so the three full-time members of staff previously devoted to the intranet functionality could be redeployed to other IT duties.
3. American Golf saved £41,500 by introducing work flow and forms via their intranet and removing the need for stores to manually input weekly payroll figures and report weekly on health and safety to the main office. Time saved was over ½hr per week per store, which on an average wage calculation bought about this saving.

Key Point: Look at the challenges and inadequate business processes your company might face and calculate what savings could be made through the use of your proposed new intranet.

2) Identify current challenges or ‘pain points’

This is an important stage that will help you build a strong business case for a new solution. There are two ways you might look at this; 1) stating general challenges that the business or employee’s face on a day to day basis and /or 2) identifying challenges with your current intranet (if you have one).

It is important to identify the challenges or ‘pain points’ that employees face on a day to day basis that an intranet could potentially solve. For example:

• Accessing important policies whilst on the road
• Knowing who the ‘go to’ experts are in the business
• Understanding the latest offers in sales
• Sharing best practice information with fellow employees
• Being able to keep essential documents updated

By identifying key ‘pain points’ you can then start to build together a case for why and how a new intranet would bring value to the business.

But how might you find out these ‘pain points’? Here are a few ideas to get you going…

Techniques that can be used to identify staff needs include:

• Stakeholder interviews
• Online Surveys
• Focus groups
• Workplace observation
• Usability Testing
• Usage statistics and search engine logs of current intranet

You may also want to review the challenges that are faced with your current intranet, which might include:

• poor search facility – making finding useful documents time consuming and ineffective for employees
• difficult to upload documents – preventing people from sharing knowledge and good content since it is easier and quick to store in their personal files or in outlook
• irrelevant content pushed to users – meaning people no longer see the intranet as a vital tool for helping them in their roles
• lack of collaborative tools – no opportunity to communicate with peers via the intranet so the only option is to revert back to email

All of the above points affect the adoption and usage of your intranet and prevent it from being an essential tool for the business. Your new solution must show that these challenges can be resolved.

Key Point: Address current ‘pain points’ with department leaders, as well as knowledge and field workers, so that you are addressing the needs of the whole business, which is vital for the building of an essential intranet.

This may seem like a time consuming process but it will be worth it in the long run.

Read more about identifying your staff needs in Intranet Expert, James Robertson’s book – What every intranet team should know

3) Round up a steering group and recruit champions

Within your proposal you should identify all the key people who will be involved in the project and who will act as on-going champions for its success. By having a solid group of people supporting the development and implementation of an essential intranet,you have a greater chance of getting the project agreed by budget holders and ensuring that various needs are met through the business.

Ideally there should be a central leadership for the intranet working with a Steering Committee and Governance Group which can ensure the wider organisational needs are reflected. Typically the Steering Committee includes representatives from Communications, IT, Knowledge or Information Management and HR, plus other leading functions specific to your organisation, this group needs to own the intranet strategy.
Key Point: Make sure you clearly identity the roles and responsibilities of everyone in the steering committee and get their 100% agreement on what their involvement in the intranet project.

If you would like further help to build a successful business case for your new intranet then you can register for free for one of our UK and US seminars:

-          London, UK, 24^th April fully booked

-          Manchester, UK, 22^nd May

-          Dallas, US, 12^th June

4) Selecting the best solution for your business

Show senior management that you have done your due diligence in selecting the right supplier by detailing how you have reviewed the different software and services to match the requirements of your business.

In the past we have found many organisations that come to us looking to replace their failing intranets have originally put the software in place without giving enough attention to the people who will be expected to manage and use it. Make sure you select a supplier that not only provides you with good software but also offers a range of services, which offer their experience, expertise and support to make it a success.

Key Point: Look at the services a supplier can offer as well as the software since this will be critical to the success of your overall intranet project.

What next?

If you would like further help to build a successful business case for your new intranet then you can register for free for one of our UK and US seminars:

-          London, UK, 24^th April fully booked

-          Manchester, UK, 22^nd May

-          Dallas, US, 12^th June

We will also be launching our new Building a Business Case Template soon. If you would like this emailing to you then you can register here.

Building a Business Case for your new Intranet is a post from: Interact Intranet is Intelligent Intranet Software

We have therefore put together a list of ways you can convince your boss why it is essential for you to attend Interaction 2012:

• This is the only intranet conference in the UK where you will get expert advice from the world’s leading independent intranet specialists. Interaction 2012 is your only chance to visit a conference in the UK that brings together industry specialists from all over the world under one roof to deliver best practice, advice and analysis on industry hot topics.  For example we have James Robertson from Step Two Designs coming over from Australia to discuss innovations in smart intranets and Sam Marshall, from Clearbox Consulting, looking at new trends for improving employee adoption. What better way to unleash the potential out of your own intranet?

• A rare opportunity to take a look at other companies award-winning intranets. Find out how G4S have successfully set up collaborative teams in their organisation to boost collaboration between their 635,000 employees. You’ll be able to take a personal live tour around the intranets of huge companies including G4S, Yodel, Gwalia and more.  This will offer you a great chance to get insights into how others use their intranets and pick up tips to take back to your business.

• Network with like-minded peers. Attendees from Interaction 2011 told us that they found it easier to solve their intranet problems by talking to peers who were in the same situation as them. The conference is an unmatched networking opportunity where you will be able to talk to peers to learn how they’re tackling industry challenges. Right now we are expecting at least 180 other Intranet Managers to attend and some of the world’s best intranet experts to be on hand to answer any of your questions.

• Find out the latest developments in the industry. Ensure your intranet continues to be an essential tool in your organisations success by staying up-to-date with the latest taking place in the fast paced nature of the intranet industry. Janus Boye, Founder and Managing Director of J.Boye is just one of the speakers looking at what changes are happening in how intranets are used and what this means for you as an intranet manager.

• Live Q&A panel. We have the best selection of intranet experts from around the world to answer your burning intranet questions. Get instant answers in the live question and answer panel debate.

• Tailor the day specifically to your business. The dual break-out sessions covering a breadth of intranet topics mean that you can tailor the event schedule so that it suits the requirements of your company – no time is wasted! See the agenda>>

• Enhance your company CSR contribution as £5 from the ticket price will be given to the charity Epilepsy Action.

• Save your company money. This really is one of the best value conferences in the UK – if you book before July 31st 2012 you pay £199 for the conference day, saving your company up to £50 off the cost of your ticket. Thereafter, conference day tickets will cost £249. Plus the sooner you book – the cheaper the travel and accommodation will be. You can email us at events@interact-intranet.com for a list of all the nearby hotels to save you looking. Book your ticket >>

• Free Wi-Fi connection throughout the day. You won’t need to be disconnected from the office for long as you will have free access to a Wi-Fi connection and a number of breaks to keep checking those mounting emails!

See what others said about Interaction 2011:

Take advantage of the early-bird discount and book your ticket today >>

How to convince your boss it is essential you attend Interaction 2012 – London Intranet Conference is a post from: Interact Intranet is Intelligent Intranet Software

Your intranet solution should sustain your organisations identity but it should be different to your corporate website. A separate identity is crucial for user adoption and so that employees recognise this is a tool specifically for them.

Organisations who replace a failed or outdated intranet with a new system can find it difficult to motivate and re-engage staff with the new tool. No matter how different the intranet software is, it can easily be tarred with the same brush. Give your intranet a brand – a name which uniquely identifies it so users stop thinking of all intranets as being equal.

Create an intranet name that gives your intranet an identity which can then transcend into the design. The Interact intranet is called ‘Homer’ and this is reflected all over our intranet. Our peer-to-peer recognition tool – Interact Rewards lets us give ‘doughnuts’ to other members of staff, instead of points. You can take the theme as far as you like!

Some of the names that have been used by our clients include anagrams such as:

• ‘Yeti’ (Your Electronic access To Information)
• ‘Elaine’ (Electronic Accessible Information Network)

To more concept driven names such as:

• ‘The Passion’
• ‘Connect’
• ‘The Hub’
• ‘The Group Vine’

Through to purely fun names such as:

• ‘Westie’ (with their character being a little white westie dog)
• ‘Merlin’
• ‘The Fridge’

Read more about intranet names in this recent blog written by @digitaljonathan on Intranetizen ‘What’s in an intranet name’ >>

American Golf, Europe’s largest golf retailer has really embraced their intranet design and have extended their company brand throughout. They ran an internal competition to decide on the name ‘Clubhouse’ which was decided upon as it’s the place on any golf course where you can find information, share information and communicate. They have also developed a character called ‘Golfy’ who comes in various designs relevant to the section he appears on.

Arriva, is one of the largest transport services organisations in Europe, employing around 47,500 people. It delivers more than 1.5 billion passenger journeys across 12 European countries every year. They called their intranet ‘Connect’ – as it coincides with their core business ethos to connect people around the world. It also links to the intelligence store which is at the heart of Interact Intranet, connects content to people, people to experts and answers to questions. The transport theme is reflected in the design elements throughout the whole of the intranet.

Fashion retailer, Republic were awarded first prize in our annual Intranet Excellence Awards for their amazing looking intranet called Reptile.   They have a ‘one-click’ infrastructure and the incorporate a white ceramic title wall in the design, which is a prominent feature in the Republic brand. They also make use of a competitive element of the departmental homepages in terms of layout, content and use of design.

Grwp Gwalia Cyf, a housing association and care provider based in South and Mid-wales called their intranet; Y Wall|The Wall. They decided on this name as it represented the housing element of the organisation and it acts as a metaphor for their support services. A characterful brick background frames content, with a street sign acting as the site’s logo, which gives the intranet its own brand identity emphasising a community feel aimed at bringing the different elements of Gwalia together.

Waterstones chose the name Compass for their intranet so they could drive home the message that with this new software internal communications had a new purpose. To help their 1000+ staff ‘find their way’ back to the corporate brand after many years of store communication being reduced to erratic, brief email updates.Compass is now an immensely active intranet with 75% of users visiting it daily and is now the first place people turn to when they need information or to review the last book they read.

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Give your intranet a life of its own is a post from: Interact Intranet is Intelligent Intranet Software

Here are some ways you can encourage the positive interactions with your intranet that create a collaboration rich on-line environment. Some of these ideas cross over each other, or support each other, the idea being that if one suggestion didn’t work another similar one might. Not all these suggestions may be for you or your company culture, but some will be, try all that work, tweak them to fit your organisation, invent new ones, but most importantly try something and keep trying, it’s ultimately the only way to succeed with a social intranet.

Here are the first 24 tips for you to digest, if you would like the full list of 53 just let us know and we’ll send it through to you.

Get all 53 ways to boost collaboration on your intranet >>

1. Advertise lists of the most ‘liked’ content

Every time someone ‘likes’ a piece of content on your intranet you’re getting a small peak in positive collaboration. Encourage this, give people a list of the most liked content on your homepage, or within well visited content areas, with links for easy browsing. Help to merge those small peaks into a tidal wave.

2. Show the benefits

What do you hope enhanced collaboration will achieve? What are the business benefits for you? Have them clear in your mind and whenever these benefits are achieved then show everyone, advertise it, tell people that this is what they are aiming for. Showcase good collaboration; explain why the outcome was a business benefit. Such as helping sales – take this example: “We want to help you improve your win rate against competitor X. Can you share reasons for your losses on in the sales team area?”

3. Create Champions

Look for those who contribute a lot, not just documents, but comments; blogs, forum posts etc and harness that enthusiasm. Make these people champions, have them help you write or rewrite your intranet mission statement or charter, give ideas on how you can build collaboration in your specific environment, what problems do they think collaboration could solve? Impress on these people that by making them champions others will look to them for examples of good collaboration. Give them their own blogs; encourage them to talk about how they became collaboration champions, so that others can understand the sort of collaborative actions, commenting, posting on forums, answering questions etc that’s expected of them.

4. Advertise blogs

Do this on and off the intranet, for those who blog – include a link to their blog as part of their internal e-mail signature. On the intranet use bright, inviting and clickable adverts to direct people to the latest star blog.

5. Images can be content too

Sometimes the heaviest debate can be over images, be it the new company logo, a process flow chart, Venn diagram, KIP graph or circuit diagram. Think of the endless debate over the London 2012 Olympics mascot? Provide facilities for people to add images that matter to them and the option to comment. Make your images more than just supportive additions to text.

6. Reward good collaboration

One of the fastest ways to foster companywide collaboration is to encourage those who embrace it. Look at your stats, who contributes the most? Rewards could be given on an individual or departmental basis, based on the number of forum posts, comments or questions answered or more meaningfully, based on the quality of the comments or posts.

7. Shout about your successes

Sell your intranet, make it synonymous with ‘getting work done more efficiently’ by advertising your successes, however small these may be to being with. Who had their questions answered successfully? Which collaborative discussions lead to money saving, customer service improvements or better practice? Make this quantitative by setting up a homepage widget that promotes this – 5 problems solved, 3 new apps.

8. Have a great reward system

Nothing screams positive collaboration quite like people being given the opportunity to publicly thank those they work with. Not manager praise, but employee to employee thanks for help given, questions answered or good advice. This peer-to-peer recognition is invaluable in boosting company moral, encouraging strong business relationships and helping to grease the cogs of collaboration.

9. If you train them, they will come

Make collaboration training, such as @ and # tagging, commenting on documents, adding posts and answering questions, part of induction intranet training for all your new starters. Maybe set up a training area with tests using collaboration tools.

10. Share problems

This could be a straight forward question. For example: Can anyone suggest a better way of working out the office parking problems? Or something more business process related. Whatever it is empower your staff by asking them for solutions and ideas, perhaps by setting up a forum, or maybe adding the problem as a document and encouraging comments. Interact Answers is a great tool for this as it pushes questions to experts intelligently.

11. In our intranet we trust

In our intranet we trust. Trust is vital to collaboration. If you ask for feedback on a document, ensure the feedback given is seen to be acted upon. Get the author to give an update to their document, or advertise the result of using the feedback given. The more trust they have that the comments and feedback offered will be listened to and acted upon, the more people will be encouraged to collaborate.

12. Good statistics will lead you

Good statistics will lead you. Pay attention to your intranet stats that tell you who your top contributors are, who wrote the most viewed content, or whose document has the most comments and feed this information back to them. This can be extremely motivating and shows that others are aware of their efforts.

13. Encourage friendly rivalry

List the collaboration statistics, perhaps by department. Which department blogs the most, contributes to forums the most, answers the most questions, adds or comments on the most documents? Give praise or small rewards for getting to the top of these lists.

14. Actively encourage non-contributors

Check your statistics. Who’s not contributing? Could they benefit from a few lessons, or mentoring from an intranet champion? Is it a specific set of people? Non-contributors are contributors waiting to happen, sometimes all it needs is a little guidance to get them going.

15. Embrace Questions

No matter how difficult to answer, honestly asked questions are an important part of good collaboration. Don’t stifle or delete them, this will just cripple the trust people have in their intranet and cause resentment. Instead have the question answered by the most appropriately place senior member of staff.

16. Ask experts to blog

There are those in every business who are the experts, the knowledge holders, the experienced. Ask these people to blog about to what they do, day-to-day. They might want to do it weekly, monthly or even quarterly. Give them a few ideas to get them started. For example: A day in the life of the Production Foreman. Not everyone will say yes, encourage those who do to support and help each other.

17. Ideas forum

Create a business benefit driven ideas forum. Where users can express ideas on how customer service can be improved, processes made more efficient and time saved. Review these ideas regularly, ensure senior management is seen to respond every so often. But give people time to come up with ideas and promote a problem a week or month – this is the key!

18. Make sharing knowledge acceptable

In some companies collaboration is seen with distrust as those who have the knowledge think they need it to keep control of their position. Making knowledge sharing acceptable starts with people being willing to answer questions. This can be encouraged by monitoring people who answer the most questions correctly. With Interact Intranet we have Interact Answers, which automatically logs the people that answer the most questions correctly. Use this information to flatter a few egos. It’s great to be considered the expert for a department, how much better would it be to be the top expert in the whole company? Build up a little friendly rivalry. Don’t forget to publicly praise and reward those who provide the most correct answers.

19. Promote new profiles

Ensure new staff fill in their profile page as part of their induction and then promote that profile; employees will be more familiar with the people they work with, which in turn leads to better communication and ultimately improved collaboration. As it’s more intuitive to us as human beings to have discussion and idea sharing with people we know a little something about.

20. Have content worth collaborating on

Check your statistics. How much of your content has high ratings? How much of your content has high ‘like’ scores against it. How much of your content is relevant and up-to-date? Valuable, useful, interesting content is MUCH more likely to get people collaborating, as they will have first wanted to read it. If your statistics show poor, un-read content, start by retraining your authors.

21. Advertise blogs from teams

Give teams the ability to publicly log their progress, even if you are not going to give people access to all their content. Then promote these blogs in a high profile place. This will keep people apprised of what their colleagues are doing, providing information for cross departmental discussion. For example: Marketing blog that they are creating the new posters for a convention next month. Someone in sales reads about this and suggests they might want to try the company they used a few months ago for printing leaflets, as the printers had offered a 10% discount if they used them again before the end of the year and they did a really good job. There’s some really business benefit collaboration.

22. Ask for feedback

If you allow comments on documents, make sure you mention in that document that comments are welcomed. Don’t assume people will comment on a document – give them reasons to comment such as – we regularly update this policy – if you have any ideas let us know below.

23. Offer collaboration tips

Advertise your collaboration drive on your homepage by offering tips to users to help them get into the swing of it. For example:

• ‘If you’re leaving a comment, how about trying @Tagging? – a simple way to link to other content on the intranet’
• ‘Reading a document you think your colleague would like?, try sharing it with them’
• ‘Tell your colleagues if you find something valuable – make it your mission to give one piece of feedback today.’
• ‘What are you working on today? Updated your status and let people know. It may help others and reduce duplication of effort.’

24. Don’t give up

Even small collaboration attempts such as ‘liking’ or ‘sharing’ a document are better than nothing, especially in the beginning. Keep trying, try as many of these 53 points as it takes. Adapt them to your needs, add new ones, if you come up with any good ones I’d love to hear about them.

Get all 53 ways to boost collaboration on your intranet >>

53 ways to boost collaboration on your intranet is a post from: Interact Intranet is Intelligent Intranet Software

Meet the Interact US Intranet Team! is a post from: Interact Intranet is Intelligent Intranet Software

G4S is a leading international security company that employs 635,000 employees in over 125 countries. They initially struggled with having a central place where teams from different locations could share ideas and work on documents or projects in the early stages of development. Since having Interact Teams they have been able to reduce emails and improve collaboration between people, regardless of location or time zone.

During the webinar Charlotte discussed how they have set up a number of teams over the past couple of months and they position them under the People Directory so they can be easily found by their staff. Most of their teams have been set up as private teams, so people can only become members by invitation only. They also have an open team, which is open to everybody to join called the Greenhouse Team – a place where they discuss environmental issues and CSR.

One of the main teams they are using at the moment is the Website Editor Team. This is a team for all the G4S website editors from around the world to come together to communicate, share ideas and collaborate. Before using this team, it was extremely difficult for the website editors to converse because of different time zones and language barriers.

Charlotte told us how she uses the blog widget on the team page to communicate her monthly updates, which previously were done via a huge email (which even had an index at the beginning it was so long!) and sent to over 100 people. The blog functionality gives her team the ability to subscribe to the blog so they can be updated automatically if they wish or they can choose whether to log in and check the blog manually. By using the blog in this way the communication is never lost or deleted and prevents Charlotte’s inbox being clogged up with out of office notifications! The most recent intranet statistics showed that the blog had 209 hits over the past 60 days so it is definitely being well read by staff and Charlotte now has a way to track success of that communication.

Interact Teams is so easy to use that after just a quick overview and best practice demo, three new teams popped up on our intranet. This shows just how easy it is to set up and we never get anybody who struggles to use it.” - Charlotte Bagley, G4S

Staff in G4S have quickly seen the benefits using Interact Teams can bring to their every day duties and there has been an organic growth in the use of them. They have found that once people had been invited to join a team they had then gone on to create their own teams, kick-starting collaboration as staff are now speaking to each other and sharing information with people they may never have spoken to before, due to location barriers.

Another simple feature Charlotte told us about that is having a great impact, is the calendar widget which features on team pages. With this tool, people can book training or events exclusively for the group. This has helped get greater uptake to group training days and it is much easier to find out what is happening and how the changes will impact them.

Watch the webinar with G4S demonstrating the use of Teams on their Intranet>>

American Golf have been using Interact Teams, since it was released in Interact Intranet 4.9 in October 2011.

All American Golf stores have traditionally been grouped together by region but the Superstore Team on Interact Intranet has enabled the larger American Golf stores to communicate with each other to discuss business related issues and promotions with like-minded peers. The group is heavily used and staff share images of store layouts and ideas with each other, eliminating the need to rely on email and making all issues available for all staff to view.

Their ‘Buyers Team’ connects the two buyer departments that are based at two different geographical sites many miles from each other. They use a completely different network so are unable to file share. This team means they can now all view the same information and it has bridged the gap that existed in information before using Interact Teams.

The ‘Payroll Replacement Team’ is a project based team that is currently in use while the company look for a new vendor for their payroll system. As the project members consist of staff from different departments of the business including IT, Finance and HR this team brings everyone together via a single platform to discuss the tasks and the milestones of the project.

Members of the team are able to view presentations from different vendors and discuss ideas as well as view meeting minutes. Now, there is no need to email around large presentation attachments to all the different team members and the team ensures no information is missed by a team member who may not have been able to make a meeting.

How companies are using Interact Teams to improve group collaboration is a post from: Interact Intranet is Intelligent Intranet Software

Back in November 2011 we launched a global competition, open to all charities and non-profit organisations to win a free Interact Intranet software package for their organisation. We had so many entries that we decided to give two free intranet’s away – one to a UK charity and one to a US charity!

After much deliberation with the judges that included Sam Marshall, owner of ClearBox Consulting – independent intranet consultancy and Mark Morton, Digital Media Manager of Epilepsy Action, we finally managed to decide on two deserved winners!

North Devon Hospice, a charity supporting individuals and families who are faced with the impact of a terminal illness, were awarded the UK winner. It was such a close call but finally the judges decided on North Devon Hospice as they thought Interact Intranet would be able to provide them with a collaborative social intranet platform for their remote workers to discuss and share information 24/7, which is crucial for the charity who have a community nursing team who work across a large geographical area and are often isolated from news, events and processes.

Judge, Sam Marshall said that, “all of the charities were very worthwhile causes, but North Devon stood out for the sheer enthusiasm for the work that they do and the breadth of the ideas that they put forward.” He commended their, “clear vision of the multiple ways in which Interact Intranet could help them progress and of all the submissions they seemed best-placed to take a new intranet and really run with it.”

North Devon Hospice were ‘over the moon’ when told they were winners. Gordon Lester, CEO of North Devon Hospice told us:

We are really thrilled about winning this competition.  We’re looking forward to rolling out an intranet for the charity and also the opportunity to work with Interact.  We work remotely across the length and breadth of North Devon, caring and supporting our patients and their families.  An intranet means our nursing teams can work across the rural area with the hospice in their pocket, that we can better communicate between our 12 charity shops, that we can generally stay in touch with each other with more ease and refine our processes, making us more efficient…the list just goes on.

On behalf of all at North Devon Hospice and the patients and families we care for, we would like to thank Interact for this amazing opportunity and wonderful charitable gesture.”

We are going to feature a series of blogs with the progress of North Devon Hospice’s intranet over the coming months, make sure you subscribe to our blog >>

Read the full press release here >>

See how a collaborative intranet can help your charity >>

The US winner of the competition will be announced over the coming weeks.

Winner of charity intranet competition announced is a post from: Interact Intranet is Intelligent Intranet Software