Posts Tagged ‘intranet ROI’
Monday, July 25th, 2011
At Intranet Connections, we aim to provide our blog readers with value added content that is educational and inspirational. To assist you with building a better intranet, we will post valuable intranet links on our blog every Monday.
Check out this week’s links:
>> Get employees to use your intranet by making it fun to visit: The Company Intranet, User Adoption and What’s In a Name
>> To have a successful digital workplace, organizations must have the right strategy, culture, environment and infrastructure to exploit the benefits fully: 7 Ways to Engage People in a Digital Workplace
>> Transform an intranet into a functioning internal community with web 2.0 features: The Evolution of the Corporate Intranet
>> How to demonstrate the purpose and benefits of online collaboration to help people choose to adopt newer, faster, ways of working: Importance of having reasons to collaborate online
>>Learn how Intranet Connections customers use our collaboration software to build upon their dynamic culture and promote employee engagement: Social Intranets Unleashed
Stay tuned, we will continue to post new intranet content to our Intranet Connections blog every Thursday!
Tags: best practices, employee engagement, intranet ROI, Intranet Success, Intranet tips
Posted in Intranet Software | 1 Comment »
Thursday, July 7th, 2011
Everything we do nowadays is online. We pay our bills online, we find our partners online, and we plan our futures online.
Company culture has changed. Most organizations are online at least 95% of the day. Be it inputting financials, looking up products or typing blogs, we are constantly attached to a screen to access and update information.
With the fast paced corporate environments that we spend the majority of our lives in, how can we ensure that all of your employees are staying connected, are inspired, and that all of your internal company information is at their fingertips?
An intranet effectively brings together all of its employees and gives them the latest information and tools that your company needs to share its culture. From corporate newsletters, highlighting company events, baby announcements, up to the minute advertising, chat messages, and eye-catching themes, your intranet has an array of options that can be personalized to your company’s needs.
Through all of these means, an intranet brings your employees together. An intranet caters to your company needs to promote culture and ultimately it enhances the way employee’s work and share information.
Check out our blog posts to learn how you can use an intranet to inspire and engage your employees:
> A Day in the Life of an Intranet
> Top Four Ways to Inspire on your Intranet
>Get Creative. Build on Culture. Empower Employees with Intranet Connections v11
>Satisfy Your Gen X and Gen Y Intranet Users
> What does Intranet Innovation Mean to You?
For more information on our v11 software and how it can support your company culture, please visit our website.
Tags: company culture, culture, employee engagement, intranet ROI, online
Posted in Intranet Software | 1 Comment »
Thursday, June 16th, 2011
Last week, I had the privilege of attending the Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco. It was a fabulous conference with enlightening speeches from influential marketing professionals. One of the speakers that hit home for me was Elyse Tager from Constant Contact. Elyse gave an insightful presentation about Engagement Marketing and spoke about customer engagement and the act of giving a great customer experience.
I believe that Elyse said it best, “there is no marketing cure for sucking, the last thing you want to do is ignore the customer experience.” This motto echo’s our customer service goals at Intranet Connections because we strive to continuously deliver positive customer experiences over the phone, with email and through social media.
These are three important things that our team does to nurture, connect and educate our connections:
>> At Intranet Connections, we cultivate relationships with our client’s by encouraging them to “talk to us”. We love that our customers feel that they can get in touch with us directly to receive assistance with tech support, sales, marketing, or if they just want to chat. We always answer the phone, no call routing, just personalized communication between our company and you.
>> Our customers give us permission to engage with them via social media, blogs, and emails, and we thank them for this opportunity.
>> We provide valuable information to our customers and prospects by sharing and commenting on articles by thought leaders in our industry.
Make sure you check out these cool initiatives that our Intranet Connections customers are participating in:
We recently had the opportunity to tour Fathom Online Marketing’s intranet where they are doing some amazing things to promote their corporate culture initiatives. Find out more about their intranet at IBF Live on Tuesday, July 5th
Are you interested in updating the design of your intranet? Take a look at Aggregate Industries Most Beautiful Intranet entry for creative ideas for your intranet.
Would you like to learn more about Intranet Connections? Come see what our customers are saying.
Tags: best practices, Client Stories, Collaboration, Customer Service, Employee Communication, employee engagement, Intranet Design, intranet development, intranet ROI, Intranet Success, Social Software
Posted in Best Practices, Customer Stories, IBF Live, Intranet Design, Intranet Software | 1 Comment »
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 »
Wednesday, May 11th, 2011
With the boom of tech-savvy employees in the workforce, companies are in search of unique engagement tools to keep the Gen X and Gen Y employees interested. In Dana LaSalvia’s article called “Building an Employee-Enriched Culture with Social Media” she wrote that “organizations should think about integrating companywide marketing messages and upgrading their employee’s recognition programs to be more virtual.” To do this, implement an intranet! An intranet will improve employee culture and collaboration and act as a central portal for important company information. When you position your company online, you are catering to a large group of Gen X and Gen Y employees.
An intranet is a virtual solution to inform and connect with your tech savvy employees. To do so, utilize Dana’s Electronic Tool suggestions on your intranet:
Blogs provide a platform for a constant flow of communication. It is a low-cost, easy-to-use method to implement. Keep content rich and employee-centered.
RSS Feeds (a.k.a. Real Simple Syndication) provide a stream of information for employees and can act as an update alert for recognition program news.
Widgets are small applications that can be installed and executed by an end user. Create a recognition wizard or a tip-of-the-day widget to supplement any program type.
Podcasts (or non-streamed webcast) are a series of digital media files that can be downloaded through Web syndication for training modules, off-site seminars and integrated communications.
With your Intranet Connections software, you can construct an intranet platform that offers a variety of collaboration tools to gratify the Gen X and Y employees. Here are some intranet initiatives that you can put into practice:
Show loyalty Allow all employees to post blogs that are related to the company so they can share your intranet initiatives
Promote give-back programs Give and Take Days are a great way to get employees to give back to the community. Advertise community initiatives on the intranet calendars and offer a free vacation day for every 8 hours of community service.
Offer employee perks Contests are a great social tool to promote workplace activity. You can offer gift cards, half days or extended lunches to people that contribute good content to social tools.
Feature outstanding work Use the What’s New application to highlight achievements that the entire company can see instantly. Give employees public recognition in a central area of the intranet.
Encourage employee engagement Use intranet collaboration tools to instantly send messages, share pictures and post blogs for the entire company or particular a department to view. Everyone enjoys sharing parts of their social lives with coworkers.
Build staff retention Do you permit using social media sites like Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin on work computers? A great way to maintain employee interest is to let them network on these sites while at work.
When you enable companywide communication on the intranet, you open up a large platform for sharing and engagement. How does your intranet help to facilitate your corporate culture and accommodate the Gen X and Gen Y users?
Tags: Collaboration, Employee Communication, employee engagement, facebook, Intranet Applications, intranet ROI, intranet software, Intranet Success, Intranet tips, Intranets
Posted in Intranet Software | 1 Comment »
|
|
