Archive for the ‘Intranet ROI’ Category
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
A strong roll-out plan can affect the immediate and long term success of your new intranet. Here are five key components to consider when planning your intranet launch.
Make It Easy
When preparing for an intranet launch, the last thing you want to do is to make it difficult for employees to access the site. Make sure that the intranet is set to be the default home page for all web browsers. Your IT group can push these changes out to all users through Active Directory Group Policies. Once you’ve launched, the first site employees see when they open their browser is the intranet, and they will never have to remember the URL.
Enable a single-sign on process for your intranet so that your employees do not have to remember another set of login credentials. Knowing who is logged into the intranet allows you to properly monitor usage, stats, and you can eventually tailor content to individuals, groups and teams.
Push for a company policy on restricting global emails, as it encourages daily use of the intranet. Don’t let mass emails be a competing form of communication within the organization. Place the intranet as the center of internal communication.
Brand Your Intranet
When you enter the latest top-rated restaurant in town, the ambience makes you feel: if the restaurant design is warm and intimate, you feel comfortable and relaxed; if the design is hip and leading edge, you feel upbeat and cool. Think of your intranet design as ambience. How do you want your employees to feel when they visit the site? Here are three different approaches to branding your intranet.
- Personality: create an identity for your intranet. Think of a mascot or name then design a logo and theme around the identity.
- Comfort: design your intranet to be in line with your corporate branding. Use color schemes, images and logos that employees are familiar with and are used throughout the company. Employees may be more comfortable with a site design where there is immediate recognition.
- Get Creative: create a different theme for holidays or for each season (spring, summer, fall, winter). This can help to pique interest by introducing fresh designs throughout the year.
Above all, keep your designs simple. Don’t overcrowd with content on the home page, don’t put in flashy graphics that blink, don’t use a black background with hot pink font, and don’t overwhelm.
Go Social First
Employee engagement is critical when it comes to user adoption of the intranet. If you can engage employees from the first visit to the site, you are well on your way to long-term intranet success. Humans are social by nature, so use the social aspects of your intranet to engage. Remember, your goal is buy-in and to get employees on the site daily. Once that happens, you can scale back the social and focus more on the tasks. Here our top five ways to immediately engage your employees.
- A successful intranet launch includes building awareness. An excellent way to do this is to include employees in the name-game. Set up a contest to name your intranet as part of the roll-out plan. You can even use the intranet to facilitate the contest by creating an electronic form and promoting it from the intranet home page. Employees can submit their ideas for the intranet name and the winner receives a prize and will be featured prominently on the intranet.
- People like to see and hear about other people so put employees on the intranet home page for launch day. Look for opportunities to feature employees: who just had a baby, who is getting married, does anyone have a milestone birthday coming up, and who’s heading into retirement? Most important: always upload a photo of the employee you are showcasing. Another popular tactic is to have your CEO post a welcome video, or generate a blog with (at minimum) three current blog posts from the CEO. This shows employees that management encourages and expects them to use this new tool.
- Another clever way to engage is to launch with an online scavenger hunt. This is fun and can help employees in using the site and finding content. “Hide” items on the intranet and ask employees to find the hidden content. The first three people to find the content (words, images, etc) are awarded prizes for their department. This strategy is an easy way to get a large number of employees browsing the site and introducing them to your navigation.
- Enable social media tools on your intranet. Ask employees to read, rate and comment on specific content that relates to them directly. Look for hot topics, both internally and externally, that impacts your employees. H1N1 is a good external topic so place tips on preventative measures, and what symptoms to watch out for. What is current and immediate in your company: are you working towards a product launch, coming up with a new brand, writing new policies, bringing on a new department manager, down-sizing, or expanding to new locations? Generate conversation about the hot topics in your organization, publish content, slideshows and videos about those topics and ask employees to participate in those conversations.
- Not surprisingly, some of the top used applications on an intranet are the employee directory and a buy-and-sell feature. Both have that social element and both can help to draw your employees to the intranet. Ensure that there are no paper copies of phone lists floating around the company. You want the intranet to be the only place employees can find contact info on other employees. Ask employees to post their photos to their employee directory profile (set one up for them before launch) and to fill in their skills and personal information/interests. For the buy-and-sell, ask people in your department if they have anything up on craigslist. They probably won’t mind having it also listed on the intranet’s buy-and-sell. You want to have real content loaded in these two applications before launch day.
Content is (Still) King
This may seem like a no-brainer but it requires careful consideration on how much content should be within the intranet when you launch. Our approach is in line with keeping it simple and don’t overwhelm – in other words, go for quality over quantity at the beginning.
Utilize the home page and create widgets to point employees to new and relevant content. Think in terms of what an employee needs. What information can you provide that would make their jobs easier.
Continue to promote content that engages. Promote a Suggestion Box application where employees can give input about the features they would like to see on the intranet. Create a home page quick poll, such as “how do you like the new intranet”. This shows employees that you’re interested in their opinions and feedback.
Although your intranet will include content that is generated by one, or a handful, of employees prior to launch, remember the single most important factor in your roll-out plan: allow employees to contribute content on the intranet. Employees want to be interactive with this new social tool, and by giving them a chance to contribute, you are ensured success in meeting your intranet launch goals.
Tags: intranet deployment, Intranet Design, Intranet Success, Intranet tips, Social Software
Posted in Best Practices, Intranet ROI | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, July 21st, 2009
I was chatting with a client of our intranet software, Bill Diekmann, Director of IT at Cupertino Electric Inc. (www.cei.com) and he had some great insights as to how the implementation of an intranet site can greatly benefit a company. Cupertino purchased Intranet Connections in August 2008, so they are relatively new to the software. Bill shared information on how a solid, quick to deploy intranet platform has improved productivity and lowered operating costs for Cupertino.
An intranet is more than a central place to store your documents and corporate information. Our chat with Bill Diekmann really brought to light how important it is to think about how the various pieces of intranet functionality can improve workflow, save valuable time, and maybe most importantly save money. The cost vs. benefit of implementing an intranet is overwhelming when all the factors are taken into account.
First on the list is a well designed, easily searchable Employee Directory can be an invaluable asset on your intranet. Enabling employees to have information about everyone in the company, along with their skills and unique talents, can’t be undervalued.
Bill Diekmann: “We can go to our Employee Directory and see our entire employee list. All of our employee information is there and we can search employees by job site, which was really big for us.”
Another big item on the list is a robust Document Management and Electronic Form Builder feature. With ROI increasingly important in the current economic climate, the cost savings that can be achieved in printing costs alone can be monumental.
“We have about 1100 employees, only 300 of which are in the office”, says Bill Diekmann. “We used to publish our forms into binders and send them out to job sites on a regular basis. Whenever these forms would change, we would have 60-odd job sites that need their binders updated. Now with the intranet, the binders are gone and everything is updated through the site. The cost savings alone from printing my ISO forms gave us ROI on our intranet in less than a year.”
Having all your documents centrally located and easily searchable is an important asset that an intranet application can provide for your company. Employees can have corporate documents and information they might need all in one place and searchable. Not to mention that they can obtain this content in a matter of a few clicks.
“Anybody in the company, whether inside or outside the office, can very easily search documents and e-forms and find the exact item that they are looking for.”
 Intranet Connections Document Management Features
At Cupertino Electric, they have 300 employees in the office and approximately 800 in the field. The time saved from having to re-print new documents and procedures, and then distribute and update them as necessary to these employee was a massive benefit. Less administration time used updating documents means more resources available to use elsewhere.
Another benefit of packaged intranet software is the cut down in administration time. When you can have your documents, employee directory, department pages, support desk, and employee networking all in one neat and tidy location, the administration time can be minimized. Training employees on multiple tools is cumbersome and time consuming. The Intranet Connections software was built with little-to-no maintenance required from a dedicated company resource. The entire intranet can set up in minutes and can be managed with very little time committed on a regular basis. This was a big selling feature for Cupertino, who first went down the SharePoint route. Rapid deployment, simple setup, easy data backups and minimum on-going maintenance were factors in Cupertino deciding to drop the SharePoint project and go with Intranet Connections. Now Cupertino invests about three man hours a week of intranet administration and answering employee questions.
There are also many ‘outside the box’ uses of an intranet. An interesting piece of functionality that Bill had created which had been an invaluable resource to them was to create a Competitive Information sub-site through the intranet software. All real-time information about their competitors is shared through this hub, allowing employees to obtain current competitor data from one place easily, removing the need for them to search the internet independently.
Bill’s experience with Intranet Connections is an excellent example of how an enterprise intranet tool can streamline your company’s productivity. When looking into intranet software, try not to think of all the functionality it provides at face value. It is important to look deeper at how you can leverage the features and turn your intranet into a cost savings tool.
Tags: Client Stories, intranet ROI, Intranet Success, Intranet tips
Posted in Customer Stories, Intranet ROI | 3 Comments »
Monday, June 29th, 2009
In tough economic times, the prevailing thought for most companies is ”how do we get more out of what we already have?”
Leveraging the power of your intranet is a simple way of ensuring that this philosophy rings true in your organization. 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.
One way to do this (and increase cost savings) is by simplifying channels of internal communication. The intranet should be the single point of publication for corporate newsletters, announcements and news about your customers. If your employees can find information quickly, at their fingertips and in one central location, they can better serve the outside customer.
Intranets can also do justice in serving the internal customer and provide cost savings when budgets are tight. Instead of sending out broadcast emails, post all communication on your intranet. At Dougherty County School System, all teaching curriculums and teachers’ materials have been uploaded to their intranet instead of being printed and handed out in a thick 3” binder at the beginning of each school year. The teachers have learned to look for updated curriculums on the intranet and the cost savings in lowered personnel time and of printing and distributing the packages has been substantial. If all internal communication has been posted on the intranet, managers can also track which users have viewed the announcements by checking statistics reports and send out reminders accordingly.
We often write about the key to a successful intranet. Increasing employee buy-in on your intranet has to be a priority in leveraging the power of this tool. The District of North Vancouver is well aware of how important user adoption is to intranet success. Their intranet site, District Junction, allows users to participate in the site and gives them a way to listen, query and interact with the community of fellow employees. By leveraging discussion forums, providing job growth with training, and keeping an open publishing environment on the intranet, District Junction has become the go-to place for information.
Here are some simple tips that you can implement on your intranet to encourage employees to rely on it as a resource and to foster communication for better service and productivity.
Tags: Intranet ROI, Intranet Success, Intranets
Posted in Intranet Articles, Intranet ROI | No Comments »
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