Over the last ten years I have seen many intranets develop from simple document lists to powerful portals that act as the central hub of a business. During this time I have attained an excellent understanding of the factors which influence intranets, which has allowed us to create a model for success. This has traditionally been based on the three pillars of Communications, Business Processes and Knowledge Management. By Nigel Danson
There has been a lot of buzz recently about using the intranet as a collaborative tool to facilitate knowledge sharing amongst users, raising the questions as to whether collaboration is a key success factor. I think that there is definitely a good reason to add collaboration to our list, as it promotes mass participation and improves best practice.
This makes our four key success factors:
Communications -- e.g. News and events
Business Processes -- e.g. Absence Booking workflow
Knowledge Management -- e.g. Best Practice documentation
Collaboration -- e.g. Cross-department working group discussion board
Early intranets were mainly communications driven and over time evolved into broader productivity tools that included more process-specific business applications and management tools. Intranets today do much more than simply host the staff directory and HR manuals - although these remain important. They are growing in strategic importance and increasingly incorporate collaboration support and Enterprise Social Networking features. For an intranet to be truly successful it must provide a balance of all of these elements. Some elements may form a greater percentage of the whole depending on an organization's particular needs. Also, the proportional split of these elements may well alter over time to meet changing business and employee requirements.
The ratio of these components will depend to some extent on the type of organization e.g. in a professional services organization the 'knowledge management' constituent is likely to form the largest element as these organizations usually have masses of documentation, research and policies that staff need access to, whereas in a more project based organization 'collaboration' may form the largest proportion with people working together in collaborative workspaces on the intranet.
However, none of these elements should exist in isolation but have a connection with the other elements; there is a relationship between them in many instances. For example, a document about swine flu is published on the intranet and pushed out to staff via a 'communication' but it then forms part of the 'knowledge' of the organization. A collaborative intranet will enable people to comment on the document or ask questions about its content.
A successful intranet will retain all this information and link it to other relevant information e.g. sickness policy, recent discussions on the subject, latest posts, HR presentation on swine flu and other users' comments on swine flu. This additional information may be spread out across the intranet in an unconnected way, but intelligent intranets should bring this information together and connect users to content in meaningful and contextual ways.
This works rather like leading websites such as Amazon which use anonymous data collection technology to look at what users are browsing and buying; their purchase decisions, product searches and movement around the website adds to the site's store of anonymously gathered intelligence. This in turn develops insight into a user's preferences. It outputs this intelligence in peer-rated product suggestions. It is this same technology, applied to an internal audience, which will enable modern intranets to effectively 'push' the most current, useful and important content.
In order to understand what each of these elements constitutes we need to look at what they should consist of in a successful intranet.
Communications
Tends to be information classified as time sensitive i.e. information with limited 'shelf life' e.g. corporate news announcements, internal job vacancies, corporate events, latest KPIs. This type of information is pushed to employees on a regular basis. Traditionally this element has formed the greatest part of most intranets. It is important that a good mechanism exists for making sure the right people see the right communications and it shouldn't get lost in an intranet 'black hole'.
Collaboration
Collaboration can be defined as two or more people working together to achieve common goals by sharing knowledge, learning and building consensus. Research shows that a staggering 36% of a company's overall performance is driven by its ability to collaborate. (Source: Meetings Around the World: The Impact of Collaboration on Business Performance by Frost & Sullivan.)
A real strength of successful intranets is the collaborative platform they can provide to organizations to help harness the collective intelligence of everyone. Increasingly Enterprise 2.0 technologies such as wikis and blogs are being used on intranets as they facilitate collaboration. Discussion boards, comments and feedback facilities on content, and polls also promote collaboration amongst employees.
A recent report by ECM industry researcher, AIIM, shows that business take-up of Enterprise 2.0 has doubled in the last year.2 According to this report, there has been a dramatic increase in the understanding of how Enterprise 2.0 technologies such as wikis, blogs, forums, and social networks can be used to improve business collaboration and knowledge sharing, with over half of organizations now considering Enterprise 2.0 to be "important" or "very important" to their business goals and success. (Source: The AIIM research report is entitled "Collaboration and Enterprise 2.0: work meets play or the future of business?" Jun 09.)
In the Nielsen Norman Group Intranet Design Annual 2009, a common theme amongst the Year's ten best intranets was the incorporation of Web 2.0 community and social features. They pointed out that "as social networking's popularity increases, more employees will expect such features on their intranets, too. Further, the intranet is a perfect place to use social networking because it can help employees share information and knowledge and find the right people for a job."
Collaborative tools open up channels of communication across an organization. For example, project teams can have a collaborative workspace on intranet where they can contribute and share information. This can cut down on face to face meetings reducing the traveling time and therefore cutting costs, particularly if staff is spread across different locations. Collaborative tools empower staff by providing them with the ability to contribute opinion and share knowledge thus improving overall staff morale.
In the real world intranet managers still see these collaborative tools as a draw into the intranet but have not fully appreciated the efficiency gains they can provide; In my opinion they promote knowledge sharing and best practice which leads to efficiency gains by improving productivity.
However, the key to a successful intranet is that they should not merely provide the collaborative environment but they should actively connect all relevant information that has been amassed as a result of collaborative working and present this content to the users where relevant.
For example, taking the swine flu scenario again, a user searches for information about swine flu and posts a comment asking a question, say, as to whether the company is offering vaccination against the virus. HR respond accordingly. All this information should then be stored in the intranet so when another person searches on swine flu they are presented with this information automatically. As more and more information on swine flu is added to the intranet it is automatically pushed to the relevant people without them having to laboriously track it down across several people and documents.
Nigel Danson is managing director of Odyssey Interactive. Formed in 1996, Odyssey is one of the UK's longest established internet companies with specialist knowledge in intranet technology. The company specializes in providing the UK's leading out-of-the box intranet solution, Interact.
