Intranet 2.0: A must-have

There are a number of reasons why a corporation or a not-for-profit should adopt Intranet 2.0 tools.  Enhancing communications and collaboration with employees, and improving employee investment and retention are primary considerations. But there’s another more pressing need: snooze or lose.

For help implementing a social intranet or Intranet 2.0 tools see Intranet 2.0 Blueprint

While the intranet still plays poor cousin to the all-important website, intranet 2.0 cannot play backseat to any organization looking to differentiate itself from the competition.

“You really have no choice,” says Steve Krol, EVP of Professional Services with Lyons Consulting Group, which has worked with the likes of AON, Porsche and even Playboy. “Social media represents a full-fledge media /communication channel that will evolve with or without you. It’s another accepted form of communications that people want.

2.0 TURNS MAINSTREAM

Nearly 50% of organizations are now using social media and intranet 2.0 tools. 561 organizations of all sizes from across the planet participated in the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey and the results reveal rapid adoption of social media on the corporate intranet in the past year.

Intranet blogs, wikis and discussion forums are quite pervasive, while other less common tools such as podcasts and mashups remain an after-thought at most organizations:

  • 47% have intranet wikis (17% enterprise deployment); 10% have no plans or interest
  • 45% have intranet blogs (13% enterprise deployment); 11% have no plans or interest
  • 46% have intranet discussion forums (19% enterprise use); 9% have no plans or interest
  • 46% have intranet instant messaging (29% enterprise use); 21% have no plans or interest
  • 19% have intranet social networking (6% enterprise use); 20% have no plans or interest

BENEFITS

While there are many benefits that most organizations can reap from employing Enteprise 2.0 tools, Krol cites five over-arching employee benefits:

  • Engagement
  • Retention
  • Productivity
  • Cost Reduction
  • Time-to-market

While the softer more ethereal benefits such as “engagement” and “productivity” will not excite too many accountants, there are plenty of case studies that demonstrate real return on investment (ROI) including costs savings and increased revenue.

INTRANET 2.0 CASE STUDIES

T. Rowe Price adds 1,500 workers to work in its call center for each tax season (for approximately 3 months). Training these workers is large, involved exercise, but imperfect. Price’s corporate trainers got smart and transferred the entire training program to a wiki. Price encouraged new employees to take notes during the sessions and then add notes, comments and recommendations to the wiki. As a result, the company estimates that it saves one to two minutes per call at $20 per minute (the net result is in the millions of dollars).

BlueShirt Nation (BSN) is a secure and private social networking site for more than 100,000 Best Buy employees. Established by Best Buy as a means of engaging employees for ideas for innovation and improving the business, the online community encourages discussion about whatever they want to talk about (e.g. pets, sports, etc.).

“In general, they talk about how to make Best Buy a better place,” says founder and sponsor Gary Koelling. “Improve on the things we don’t do well, share the things that we do do well, talk about and express the culture that we have, talk about customers- both good and bad.”

Some control was sacrificed to help increase the engagement which among other things encouraged employees to participate in a video contest that promoted their 401k retirement campaign. Employees were encouraged to upload their own videos to the site as part of the contest (see a sample at Best Buy Using Social Media for Employee Engagement). Out of 140,000 Best Buy employees (almost all young), BSN helped increase the number of employees signing up for 401(k) accounts by 30%, and no doubt has contributed to a significant increase in employee retention in a tight staffing market.

At Placemaking, the entire intranet is built on a wiki platform (Intranet case study: Intrawest Placemaking). A Placemaking project manager using the intranet (wiki) created a page about a method of finishing concrete floors that creates an appearance better than tile at a substantially lower cost – saving the company $500,000 and reducing the project timeline. Other project managers in Florida and Nevada posted comments to the page, asking further questions and adding comments. In response, Hartigan posted photos of the finished job and addressed their comments. The other construction managers planned on using this valuable knowledge in future projects, potentially saving the company millions of dollars.

Adopting an intranet wiki or blog however should not be done without the requisite planning and change management. Here are a number of suggestions for proceeding:

  • Listen – Understand and monitor the social web to see what is being said about you, and ask your customers / employees what they want.
  • Monitor – Ensure you’re aware of which community websites (e.g. YouTube) your audience and competitors are using
  • Benchmark – Understand the ingredients of a good blog, wiki or podcast; watch and cherry-pick from the leaders
  • Leadership – Senior management must set the tone; your executives must be leading the dialogue and controlling the message
  • Plan – Planning is an essential requisite for success; develop a plan that is based on a thorough assessment and contains key performance indicators (KPIs)
  • Governance – very tool needs an owner and a policy (terms of use)
  • Technology – choose your vendors carefully based on business requirements & needs
  • Refresh – keep your content and tools relevant and fresh, and ensure they cross-promote your latest products and services
  • Measure – Document the link between social media and the business and develop a set of performance metrics with baselines that are regularly measured
  • Engage – gather constant feedback and act quickly on necessary changes

Finally, consider an Enterprise 2.0 undertaking as “evolution not revolution” – there’s no need to solve the world on your first attempt; test and pilot solutions and enhance as necessary before trying to conquer the world.

10 INTRANET 2.0 SOLUTIONS TO WATCH:

SocialCast
Yammer
ConnectBeam
SocialText
Google Gadgets
Lotus Connections
Quickr
SharePoint
Confluence
ThoughtFarmer

THE INTRANET 2.0 GLOBAL SURVEY

The findings of the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey are highlighted in the report “Intranet 2.0: social media becomes mainstream on the corporate intranet.” 561 organizations took part in the survey.


Download for free the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey Summary Report (2010 VERSION)

Purchase Intranet 2.0 Global Survey Report (2010 VERSION)

6 thoughts on “Intranet 2.0: A must-have”

  1. I am working on a request to develop an internal blog and am not sure how to go about it. I have an account on blogger.com, but have not been able to solve permissions and moderation issues. The blog is to be from the GM to employees, with the employees having the option of anonymous commenting, but there isn't a way to restrict access to the blog without having to list those with permission, which is restricted to 100 and we are a little bigger than that, and require that they have a blogger login.
    Setting access to Anonymous allows anyone who happens to stumble upon the blog to view it, and we don't want anyone outside the company to have access to view the blog. We use SharePoint but it seems we would run into the same issue with making the blog truly anonymous. With both methods it seems that moderation takes place after the comments are posted, which would leave room for the information to be passed on before it is removed from the blog.
    Any suggestions?

  2. I personally would never, ever allow anonymous comments on an employee blog. You don't want people taking pot shots at your senior executive… however if you're reviewing them in advance then it might work well. I think there may be a good third party plug-in blog for Sharepoint. I would check with Shawn Shell at Consejo Inc. (www.consejoinc.com).
    The software that powers this blog is quite good and you can restrict audiences and allow anonymous postings. Its called Blogware (just Google it).
    Cheers, Toby

  3. Another clear and useful post Toby – thanks!
    I just want to share a few other intranet 2.0 platforms that are worth examining:
    Confluence, by Atlassian
    Cyn.In
    HyperOffice
    Clearspace, by Jive
    Intranet Dashboard
    Traction TeamPage
    I'm not sure if these all fully qualify as intranet 2.0, but I think they do.

  4. Thanks JF — and thanks for the noting the other platforms. Traction and Confluence definitely qualify as Intranet 2.0, but Intranet Dashboard and HyperOffice definitely do not qualify. Clearspace probably also qualifies.
    Cheers, Toby
    PS – I know those firms that don't qualify will argue this point, just keep in mind Intranet 2.0 features don't even figure in prominently in your own marketing so there's little point in arguing with me. However, my guess is these present non-qualifiers will soon be emerging qualifiers as they don't want to be left in the dust.

  5. Really interesting article indeed. But I think there is a critical point you did not mention : adoption. I work in that space and I realized that many customers feel let down by 2.0 technologies. They spend time and invest money, yet they realize almost nobody's using it internally. I personnaly think that you can't impose collaboration. People are willing to do it or not. And software that come with the maximum amount of features are not making anything easier, let's not forget that for most members of regular companies, facebook is still something brand new, let alone twitter.
    So I think when you talk about an Intranet 2.0, you have to talk about how you're going to foster adoption, since it is a long and sometimes complicated process…
    Just as a side comment I'd recommend you take a look at http://www.yoolinkpro.com – a company I'm working for. We tried to develop an intranet 2.0 – or corporate social network as we call it – that focus on adoption, rather than features. Happy to get your feedback on this…

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