Over the past few years the microblogging platform Twitter has quickly gained traction in the social media sector with over 7 million users as of February 2009 (according to Nielsen Online). As Intranet Connections is entering our 2nd year on Twitter, we have had the privilege of reaching out to our customers via this popular social networking tool.
One client that stands out in particular is Yasser Ahktar. Yasser has been a member of Twitter since June 2008 and has established himself as a social media evangelist. His tweets are refreshing, informative, and provide great value to his followers. The majority of his tweets are focused on the benefits of social media and ways it can be used in a corporate setting.
In addition to his passion for social media, Yasser is an Intranet Manager for a large financial-market intelligence company. This company has over 10,000 employees and relies heavily on their intranet to facilitate the majority of internal communication. While email is predominantly used for one-on-one interaction, the intranet plays a key role in disseminating company news and data. Yasser freed up some of his time to chat with us on how they are using their IC intranet.
As a regulated company within the financial market, it is imperative that all policies and compliance documents be highly visible, easily accessible to all employees, and searchable so it’s not surprising that the Document Management tool within Intranet Connections is heavily used within their intranet. Other popular sections are …
Daily News
keeps employees abreast of press releases and media mentions for the organization
Find a Colleague
employee profiles and search facility to find colleagues by name, department, and skill set or job description
Finance Dictionary
an application to store frequently used terms in the world of finance
President’s Corner
a sub-site where the company President uploads his videos and webcasts, memos and announcements
Intranet Site Map
an A-Z look at all areas of the intranet & facilitates navigation and site search in content mapping
The Internal Communications department purchased Intranet Connections 5 years ago. Despite a large user base of 10,000 employees, the resources committed to on-going maintenance of the site is minimal. Yasser likes the ease of use allowing him to have a small intranet team comprised of himself as intranet administrator, and a handful of content publishers who help to update the intranet content on a daily basis. Because of turnkey nature of Intranet Connections, ease of use, and minimal on-going maintenance and administration of the software, ROI gains were seen within months of implementation.
Although the company is currently not using a lot of social media features on the intranet, Yasser is constantly pushing the issue within the organization and would like to see the intranet move towards being a more social and collaborative environment. He says that the tools are available within the intranet for them to use, but as he works for a regulated company there is some hesitation to move in that direction without proper policies in place. Knowing Yasser’s passion and drive for social media, there is no doubt that he will continue to be an evangelist for it until policies have been established and their intranet can start the social evolution.
Follow Yasser Akhtar on Twitter: http://twitter.com/yakhtar
