Posts Tagged ‘Client Stories’
Thursday, May 19th, 2011
Last July, we posted a blog called Intranet Design 101 which offered four useful tips on how to improve your intranets functionality, design and navigation. Here are some of the ways that you can be creative with our turnkey, out of the box intranet software:
Tip #1 – Make use of new features
When you buy Intranet Connections software, you have a fleet of developers providing new features and functionality to your intranet on a regular basis so take advantage of this!
Tip #2 – Use a clean, fresh design
When you first go live with your intranet, sometimes it’s good to have a bold design theme, lots of graphics and a few boxes on the home page for social-fun content. This helps to drum up interest and attract employees to the new intranet.
Tip #3 – Rethink your navigation
Think Labels. A menu item called “General Information” does what exactly for employees? Now a menu item labeled “Employee Info, Events & Resources” is something I would click on expecting to find value for me, the employee.
PS: if your navigation is NOT at the top of the home page real estate, move it on up. Navigation first!
Tip #4 – Give users some power
Get your employees involved – you might be surprised at their level of responsibility and ability to share valuable information. For example: Suggestion Box, Discussion Forum, News, Blogs and Knowledge Center are collaboration tools that engage your employees.
We recently redesigned the Utah Community Credit Union and Northern Savings intranets as a thank you for participating in a recent case study. These intranets are used as the central portal for all company information by their employees. Simplifying the navigation and design of the site can increase productivity because it takes users less time to find what they are looking for. Check out the design revisions we completed using our Intranet Connections software:
Utah Community Credit Union Intranet before and after:
- To modernize the home page, we removed the blue background and replaced it with simple white
- Organized the content of the site by adding a centered top menu header which houses the sites content in drop down’s
- The new accent colors for the site were pulled from the corporate logo and website. This gives the intranet a look that is cohesive with their company website
Northern Savings Intranet before and after:
- When we spoke to Christine Komadina at Northern Savings, she expressed that their intranet theme had not changed since they implemented their intranet in 2006 and she felt like their site was ready for a facelift
- In the original site, there was a large amount of content on the home page and throughout the site. In order to cut back on scrolling and word clutter, we added a left aligned menu header with drop down’s to the home page
- We pulled colors and images from the Northern Savings corporate website, which gave it a cheerful and clean look
Using our Intranet Connections software, we can show clients what their intranet would look like with corporate branding incorporated on their site. We recently branded intranets for BleuBlancRouge and Sonoma Valley Hospital, and here are the results:
BleuBlancRouge Intranet:
- We used BleuBlancRouge’s corporate webpage as a template for their intranet theme
- We incorporated their corporate logo and branding on the intranet and added bright fuchsia to contrast with the white background
- Since this is an advertising and design company, we incorporated photos from their advertising campaigns on the intranet homepage
Sonoma Valley Hospital Intranet:
- We really loved their website’s autumn colors and photos, so we used them throughout the Sonoma Valley intranet
- The background of the intranet is white to contrast with the dark menu header, this allows the important menu information to be highlighted and easily searchable
Do you have an award winning intranet? The Neilson Norman Group is looking for the World’s 10 Best Intranets, and it could be yours! The Intranet Design Annual 2012 competition is now open, click here for more information.
New intranet blog posts will be added to our site weekly. Check back often for more ways to create a functional and engaging intranet using the Intranet Connections software!
Tags: Client Stories, employee engagement, Intranet Applications, Intranet Design, intranet resources, intranet ROI, Intranet Success, Intranet tips, Intranets
Posted in Customer Stories, Intranet Software | 4 Comments »
Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011
Peter Barron is an Intranet Connections Fan; he provides significant feedback on our blog, Linkedin and Facebook pages and speaks candidly about our software as it applies to his organization. Over the past ten years, Peter has managed the Rio Rancho Public Schools intranet, which is internally called “Rionet”. With over 20 school district departments that use the rionet, Peter targets applications and widgets that make the intranet process fast and easy for thousands of users. We recently interviewed Peter to find out what makes his intranet so successful, and today we are delighted to share his responses with our intranet community.
Here are Peter’s six tips for an efficient intranet:
| Time: Seeing as Rio Rancho is a school district, the majority of intranet users are teachers. Teachers are incredibly busy with students during the day and they lack freedom of time to peruse their intranets. In order to overcome this timing issue, Peter leverages the notification capabilities of the “rionet” with subscriptions to departments that the teachers have invested interest in. This subscription service has been a big push for Peter and the Rio Rancho Schools because it decreases searching time on the intranet by targeting topics of interest for the user.
E-forms: Teachers must attend conferences, so Peter created PDF e-forms for them to request conference admittance and funding in rionet. Directly from their classroom, teachers fill out the request form, and it is processed right away. |
 Rionet Intranet |
Collaboration: Peter says that collaboration among teachers is a difficult task because teachers don’t have extra time to go on the intranet. To overcome this, he encourages them to set up subscriptions to get alerts and on topics that they are interested in. This subscription section of rionet gives them a place where they can share information and tools back and forth (blogs, docs, and forums) in an efficient way.
Calendars: All of the Rio Rancho schools and school districts utilize the calendar tool. This is the primary application on the rionet because all important events can be easily added and searched here.
Tech support: Peter uses the tech support and help desk application for all 20 districts and schools. Users love the ticketing process because the tickets route directly to education technology specialists. This way, the issue is taken care of right away and then it is documented in their secure intranet site.
Mobile: In school districts, mobile capabilities are not beneficial because staff use their own cell phone providers. Although most people now have smart phones, they are not accessing wireless through Rio Rancho’s provider, so it is unlikely that accessing their intranet via mobile will occur.
At Intranet Connections, we enjoy connecting with our clients and receiving customer feedback to ensure that our software is meeting your needs. The Intranet Connections team would like to say a gigantic thank you to Peter for taking the time to answer our questions with great ease and detail and we hope that his insight is helpful to your intranet development.
What are you doing to simplify your intranet’s ease of use for busy employees?
Tags: Client Stories, Collaboration, Employee Communication, employee engagement, Intranet Applications, intranet software, Intranet Success, Intranet tips
Posted in Customer Stories, Intranet Software | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011
Sharlyn Lauby, a writer for Open Forum, recently wrote an article called “5 Challenges for Human Resources in a Digital World” which shares the automation challenges that HR departments face today. Sharlyn explains that an array of automation tools is available to HR professionals; however, the adoption of this technology is slow. A great way to overcome computerization issues is to implement an intranet to share and store human resources information digitally.
Once an intranet is up and running, there are exceptional applications that can make HR documents and polices accessible to all business sectors securely.
Justin Olson from the Utah Credit Union, who has been on our intranet software since 2004, created two unique time-saving Human Resources tools on his intranet:
Non-salaried employees clock-in using Hyperlinked logos that are connected to their external time tracking system. Hours worked are tracked through one site so that HR does not have to login to another system.
Full time employees have a Human Resources widget for health benefits, medical, dental and 401K plan information. Justin said that providing all of the proper documentation in a central area has freed up Human Resources because less people have questions when all of the forms are easily available on the site.
Practical Intranet HR Tools:
- Encourage employees to use the intranet by solely providing HR forms and policies on the intranet
- Use the vacation application to track and manage absence requests from employees.
- Create HR e-forms; all files can be stored and managed in this secured area
- Manage employee course registration with the training application
- Obtain user feedback by adding comments and ratings to the bottom of each widget or application that you create. This way, employees can respond on how things are working.
- Utilize the anniversary and birthday widgets so employees can respond to their coworker’s special occasions
These are a few of the great ways that an intranet can automate HR in a protected and organized manner. How has your company enhanced Human Resources capabilities via your intranet?
Tags: best practices, Client Stories, Employee Communication, employee engagement, Intranet Applications, Intranet Design, intranet ROI, Intranet tips
Posted in Customer Stories, Intranet Software | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, March 16th, 2011
We often use social media, like Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, to engage in conversation with our intranet software customers. We recently asked
Why do you love your intranet?
for the launch of our Facebook Fan Page. The response was great and one in particular stood out, from Jerrod Crouch at Coppermark Bank:
 |
“Coppermark Bank uses Intranet Connections as our go-to source for all company information. From company news to highlighting new products to sharing employee awards to staying inspired with our thought of the day… Intranet Connections does it all for us. And to have the support team there at the drop of a hat to handle our questions – it is truly the perfect fit.” |
|
One of the reasons they love their intranet is because it helps them stay inspired. Here are a few ideas to motivate and keep your employees enthused:
Share Your Corporate Values and Mission:
Your intranet is the perfect place to promote your corporate core values and goals for the organization. Ensure that your corporate mission and purpose are stated clearly on your intranet and use plain language. This keeps your employees aligned with your corporate goals and makes everyone feel like they are in the loop.
Recognize Employees:
What better way to inspire your staff than by letting them know about the achievements of their coworkers? If you learn of an accomplishment or award that an employee in your organization is receiving, write about it on the intranet. The achievements don’t have to be related to your organization at all. Highlighting your employees’ accomplishments not only shows that you recognize their contributions, but it can also help encourage others.
Information Bank:
Create an area on your intranet where employees can share blog posts and articles they find online. This can be a great source of information about trends in the market, best practices and innovation within your sector. You never know where a new idea will come from or what information with inspire others.
Thought of the Day:
Add a widget to your Home Page that cycles through a selection of pre-populated messages. The messages can be inspirational quotes, tips to help employees perform their daily tasks, answers to frequently asked questions and ‘did you know’ topics. The goal is to provide valuable content in bite-sized chunks, from the first page of your intranet.
Sometimes, finding ways to inspire employees doesn’t need to involve complex initiatives. Take a look at the tools available on your current intranet and provide avenues for employees to share, inspire and engage.
Read more about what Intranet Connections customers have to say on our Facebook page. Be sure to “like” us!
Tags: Client Stories, Employee Communication, employee engagement, facebook, linkedin, social media, twitter
Posted in Customer Stories | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, February 8th, 2011
We are a fan of James Robertson’s book, Designing Intranets, and of his blog in general. We recently blogged about the book Designing Intranets. We like it so much that we sent it out to over 30 customers, who are product champions and reference clients for our intranet software.
I had our client services reps (who deal with prospects) and our customer support team read Designing Intranets, because the principles of the book fall in line with our core values. I had hoped that one day James’ advice would help one of our customers.
Here is a transcript of how a little bit of coaching with front line staff can boost your business and help a customer. It’s going the extra mile, and the great feeling you get when you can make a difference.
[Customer]
Thank you for the instructions to remove data. I will give it a try.
From this point forward, I thought I’d give you a high level plan of what my intentions are in the hopes that you can provide me any information or suggestions:
- I plan to hold separate meetings with each department to:
a. Get buy in and get help to encourage the use of our new intranet
b. Discuss advantages to having a department site
c. Get requirements on how they want their department site to be set up
- At the same time, develop all corporate areas of the intranet
a. Gather groups of people to provide input and assistance in preparing the corporate side
b. Prepare for training by departments to help establish regular usage
c. Make it fun and interactive
[Client Services]
Your plan sounds good. The only caveat would be not to get caught into the trap of talking about rather than doing. For example, you can hold 10 meetings regarding how to set up the intranet site, and you end up going in circles. Everyone is busy with their own jobs, and not 100% clear on how the intranet can be used to really help the organization. Sometimes you need to come up with ideas, implement them on the site to present them to departments, get the ok – or the nay – and keep trucking. Here are some ideas:
- Ask your departments for a description on what their employees DO each day
- Ask what type of documents to the employees need to do their jobs
- What processes or procedures do they handle each week
- How many times a day do they need to look up someone’s phone number
Write down three to five really good questions for employees – the people on the front lines, customer service people, HR clerks, the guys on your IT help desk. Drop in on these employees, ask the questions, and write down the answers. Look for opportunities in the answers to use the intranet to make their lives easier. If you go into the meetings asking “what do you want on the intranet”, there is a good chance they will have no idea.
We have a client, DNV, and their IT Director wrote a blog post for us on the success of their intranet site – 10+ years old and still an enterprise tool used every single day by employees. You might find his advice useful.
http://blogs.intranetconnections.com/customer_stories/six-steps-to-intranet-success
[Customer]
WOW, that’s great advice and definitely worth doing. You just saved me a ton of time, thanks.
The tone of our response was fairly casual – we had worked closely with this customer during their evaluation phase and built a relationship with them. They had just purchased our intranet software and were looking for advice on getting started.
In our weekly CS Team meeting, I asked what prompted them to send this correspondence to me for posting on the blog. The consensus was that if this customer thought it was good advice and helpful, perhaps other companies facing an intranet launch might find it valuable as well.
Tags: best practices, Client Stories, Customer Service, From the CEO, intranet deployment, intranet development, Intranet Success, Intranet tips
Posted in Customer Stories, Intranet Software | 1 Comment »
|
|
