2. Sam Marshall
Director of ClearBox Consulting
15 years intranet and digital
workplace
Former global portal manager at
Unilever
Benchmarked over 40 intranets
Comms, KM & IT background
sam@clearbox.co.uk
@sammarshall
7. Making it all about the Head Office
Focusing on big deals, high-
level strategy, SVPs
Giving everyone the same
homepage
Confusing the head office
location with its role
16. “Internal communication is the process
by which the bosses tell everyone what
is happening, followed by a feedback
stage where everyone can tell the
bosses what is really happening.”
—Guy Browning
17. 2. Promoting Silence
Only letting Comms
professionals write content
Not letting employees talk about
their concerns
• Or only asking every 2 years
Believing we can’t do it yet
• We don’t have SharePoint
2013 / Yammer
20. Two way conversations…
Encourage leaders to join
‘normal’ discussions
Solve company problems
openly
Blogs / News comments
• End posts with a question or an
opinion
• ‘Seed’ discussion responses
• Not every executive is cut out for
blogging
• Consider ‘baton passing’ between
execs
For more: www.clearbox.co.uk/executive-blogging-how-to-get-started/
22. The interface between
the individual and the
organisation
Individual context in a
virtual world
People > People >
Information an effective
search route
The value of Profiles & Activity Streams
Screenshotcourtesyof Oakley/Sitrion
24. Things on an intranet
home page
Things people want from
an intranet
Message from
CEO
Quarterly results
For sale
& wanted
My own
documents
Bonus
calculation
Rumours
Lunch
menu
Expense
forms
Photos of office
party
Phone numbers
Pictures of SVPs
Stock price
Mission statement
Weather
25. 3. Making it all talk
Filling the homepage with news
Making people go some other place
for:
• Expenses
• Room booking etc.
Not letting work get in the way:
• Finding people skills
• Collaboration
31. Who leads your intranet?
Organisation Need Intranet Flavour Sponsor
Improve communication
2-way, same message for all
Communication Comms Corp Affairs
Work effectively across silos Collaboration HR IT
Reduce operating costs Services Finance
"One Company" initiatives Communication Comms Corp Affairs
Improve Capability of a
Function (e.g. Marketing,
Sales, R&D)
Knowledge
Management
Head of Function
Support flexible working Digital Workplace HR
See: www.clearbox.co.uk/what-flavour-is-your-intranet/
33. Findwise survey 2012
75% said finding the right
information critical to
organization’s business
goals and success
34. 14% said finding the right
information was ‘very’ or
‘fairly’ easy
Findwise survey 2012
35. 4. Hiding all the good stuff
Structuring content by who
provides it
Putting a big “search all”
box on the main page
Sharing the best bits as
email attachments
37. Why finding stuff is hard…
Lack of active search management
Takes dedicated resource
Content owners don’t care
Poorly structured content & page layout
Search is much harder than on the Web
• Fewer providers – more gaps
• Lots of similar hits
• Content in documents, not web pages
• Popularity doesn’t help
41. Tips to improve search
1. Share analytics and failure-to-find with content owners
2. Put a feedback form on your results page
3. Use managed metadata, but mandate sparingly
4. Use entity extraction and for words specific to your org
All department names
All your product names
5. Promote library-level searches
6. Have a set of test data as a benchmark
43. 5. No channel strategy
Overloading employees
• News announcement
• Email about the news article
• Manager cascade
• Yammer post
Treating SharePoint as a
single channel
More: http://kilobox.net/2726
44. What to use when
Feature News Survey/Polls Discussions/Yamm
er Group
Blog
Use for • Formal comms
• Department
announcements
• Quantitative
feedback
• Knowledge sharing
• Qualitative
Feedback
• Working out loud
• Individual opinion
• Reaching out
• Knowledge broadcast
Interactivity • Possible with
comments
• Zero without
comments
• Constrained
• Zero with polls
• Very high • Can be high with the
right blogger, often low
in reality
Preconditions • Need resource to
write news
regularly
• Relevance
• Readiness to
respond to
results
• Risk of fatigue
• Clear purpose
• Open culture
• Facilitator resource
• Ability to write
personal, engaging
content
• Visibility of blogs
Longevity • Long if archived
• Easily searched
• Short
• Usually not
searchable
• Medium – context
tends to get lost
• Easily searched
• Long if archived
• Easily searched
• Finding by browsing
harder
See also: When to use what by www.2toLead.com
46. SharePoint Pyramid
Team
collaboration
Team or Wiki site
Teams
My Site,
OneDrive
C: Drive
Personal
Group Intranet
Publishing site
Every-
one
Department Site
Team or Publishing Site
Peers
Communicating
Collaborating
50. 7. Too little governance
Random inconsistencies
Team site sprawl
Graveyard sites
Only technical governance
– defend the platform at all
costs!
51. “Good governance is like having
good brakes on a car, they make it
safer to go faster”
--Ralph O’Brien
52. “No you can’t use rotating gif images on your homepage”
65. Only a fraction of SharePoint gets used
62% of organisations disillusioned with ROI from
their SharePoint intranets
-- Mando Group survey 2014
66. “Our new intranet based
on SharePoint 2007 will
help us connect,
communicate and
collaborate more
effectively.
It will help us share
knowledge, find
information and break
down silos”
67. “Our new intranet based
on SharePoint 2007 will
help us connect,
communicate and
collaborate more
effectively.
It will help us share
knowledge, find
information and break
down silos”
72. 9. Post-launch planning
Have multiple tactics for adoption
Don’t think ‘project’ think ‘service’
SharePoint intranets are like launching a magazine, not
a book
Have a multi-function CoE that provides internal
consultancy, implementation and support
For more see: www.clearbox.co.uk/what-to-do-after-the-launch-of-your-intranet-part-1/
77. Capability Benefit Outcome
Strategic
Goals
Feature
“One”
Organisation
Single identityAll employees
see same msg.
Corp-Wide
Comms
News Hub
2-way comms
Employee
engagementYammer
Less churn
Customer
satisfaction
Time savings Response times
faster
Fewer outagesBetter stock
controlSAP Dashboard
Quicker access
to data
Single place to
collaborate
Flexible project
resourcing
Best people on
a taskTeam Sites
Benefits mapping
78. A good SharePoint strategy…
• Sets out how SharePoint supports the organisation’s
strategy
• Shows how we’ll get the desired behaviour, and in turn the
outcomes that matter
• Is responsive to changes in business need
• Has clear, time-bound milestones
79. Don’t think of ‘SharePoint’ in the middle of your
Digital Workplace….
80. @
…think of how it enables the flow between
people and content
81. 10 Worst Practices
1. Making it all about head office
2. Promoting silence
3. Making it all talk
4. Hiding all the good stuff
5. No channel strategy
6. Confusing comms & collaboration
7. Too much / too little governance
8. Excluding half your workforce
9. Only planning the launch
10. No strategy
82. If you have been affected by any of
these issues…
83. Intranet, SharePoint & Digital Workplace
Strategy
Governance
Implementation
Collaboration
Training
www.clearbox.co.uk
Sam Marshall
Director
sam@clearbox.co.uk
+44 1244 458746
Hinweis der Redaktion
Not sure if this guy has tripped and lost his laptop or he’s using SharePoint and trying to drown it in frustration…
2 reasons to give this talk [above & below]
If it’s something embarrassing: I’ve got this friend, who has a problem…
Creates a ‘distance’’ and means people don’t pick up on what really matters to them.
PERSONALIZED HOMEPAGES MATTER
Global stories need translating into a more meaningful context. You’ve won a big contract – what does it mean for MY Business unit. The competition has launched a new product, what might it mean for my division?
All this helps the employee engage with the org.
[Next: personalization]
When you get multiple locations, a tension arises around the start page.
3 people, dressed by national stereotype
You could create 3 start pages that combine different elements, but it doesn’t scale. What fi you now add Marketing, Sales and Finance x London, Paris & Rome?
So profile-driven personalization makes sense
Personalization by profile is a long-standing intranet concept, but not many companies manage to pull it off.
At Unilever we looked at people’s profiles and gave them home pages matched to their location, their function, the brand they worked on and the market. This really simplified the navigation, but when people wanted to look at another function or brand it was really hard to find.
If you personalize too much – and people don’t understand the logic behind it – then it feels creepy. Moreover, people get disorientated.
It’s like taking them blindfold to the exact aisle of the supermarket where you think you want them to be. It might be a useful starting point, but they don’t have any idea what else is there – actually going through a menu navigation sometimes helps people get that orientation because they learn the structure as they go.
It matters when your intranet reaches a certain degree of complexity..
Unilever
Yara- bring it all into one stream
Do readily in SharePoint using metadata and Content Search Web Part
Forums:
General feedback: “Are you well informed about changes in our organization?” Do they remember? What can you do with feedback like that?
2-way lets you hear what your employees are thinking. If they’re to be ambassadors, then you need to know what they heard, not what was said.
“Better to be slapped in the face on your intranet than stabbed in the back on Glassdoor.com”
SharePoint has really easy to use POLLS & SURVEYS, as has Yammer. They don’t need to be a grand-scale, company wide thing. Discussion forums can add enormous value – even in SharePoint 2003 they were useful.
Act of God debate
http://www.contentmanager.de/magazin/pic/magazin_2223_04.gif
Stephen Elop at Nokia – What do I need to know? What might I miss?
If a blog isn’t personal, it’s basically just a memo
Not all execs cut out for it…
“Just had a terrible weekend…”
Don’t turn off ‘My Sites’
[Show of hands: How well used are your My Sites?]
*** “People in the Corridor” story
Big Governance issue with intranets is “who owns it?”. Often it falls to communications, but if it does then it makes it less attractive as a channel – like erecting billboards in the desert and bussing people out to see them.
Internal Comms Dept are usually important stakeholder for your SharePoint Intranet, but don’t let them rule everything: Internal communications like commercial break – its tolerated, may even draw people in, but its not why they go there.
Danish construction consultancy – 6000 employees, 50,000 team sites
THIS is what SharePoint is all about to them
Put your hand up if your intranet is based on SharePoint
Keep up if meets expectations
Comms
IT
HR
KM
Steering Group?
Who owns collab?
170 orgs
170 orgs
PRECIOUS THINGS!
SharePoint often likened to a bucket of lego. Actually radioactive lego.
Keep the best bits on your C:\ drive – email everyone if it ever changes.
If someone wants a new laptop – is it IT, Finance, Facilities – put them off and save money!
170 orgs
Nobody cares enough! Internal SEO? Google rankings?
“Paternity leave” story – search engine can’t find it
Cf Average weight of a walrus on the web
PERMISSIONS
170 orgs
Maternity leave policy
Entity extraction tells crawler these are managed properties via a custom dictionary
Overloading people
Thanks Wedge Black!
e.g. Moving office to a new location
>Series of news stories
>Long term reference and FAQ
>Multiple layers of detail – Headline > Summary > Blueprint; Specialist briefings for Facilities & HR
>Feedback: Q&A~ forums, blog posts etc.
Multiple team sites for the same thing
Graveyard sites – Reviewing one client’s intranet and found a site in Turkey that had snow falling and played a Christmas tune… It was lovely, except it was April…
Tech-focus misses out: What to use when for collaboration, IA, Channel strategy, brand alignment, tone of voice, Legal – employee confientaility
Ralp O’Brien at Avepoint
Part fo governance is about Understanding RISK
‘Dusty book’ when benchmarking
Amadeus example
The best intranets are ones where everyone is both a contributor and a consumer of content. So it’s a bit like throwing a party – you have to step back and let people do their own thing.
And yet it’s awfully tempting to think of every terrible thing they might do in advance and tell them not to do it.
I once wrote a governance document for a client. Every time we met we thought of more and more things that might come up.
Eventually we had a document over 100 pages long.
People = steering group & team
[Show of hands]
I your intranet accessible to 100% of your workforce?
Have you taken steps to optimise for mobile?
Mywalmart.com, myroyalmail.com
Includes demo mobile account so staff don’t have to show customer their own one.
MyZone gave connectivity to frontline staff who previously lacked even an EMAIL address.
Employee Engagement across BRANCH STAFF went up 22% in 6-months and MyZone was seen as a factor in this.
50% decrease in complaints relating to staff knowledge
£1 million in avoided costs due to staff ideas
Coca-Cola enterprises have created mobile interfaces for key transactions, including labour distribution reports and approval, payslip review and leave management.
News readership increased by 50% since it became available on mobile
“What matters most in intranet success, the people side or the technology side?”
Keep your hand up if your budget for the people side is bigger than your budget for the tech side.
Tech side or people side?
Sometimes companies only BUDGET for the tech deployment, the whole content and usage is resourced.
Planning for the tangibles is *seductive*
People then complain that “SharePoint didn’t work”, but the issue is that the project should never have been about SharePoint, it should have been about supporting how people work and understadnign the CHANGE implications >>>
There seem to be more immediate things to worry about
Mando Group surveyed 300 information pros in UK and US
See lots of good launch campaigns where lots of energy goes into creating excitement around something new.
But an intranet is like a magazine not a book – how do you sustain interest, how do you keep it relevant and valuable?
See lots of good launch campaigns where lots of energy goes into creating excitement around something new.
But an intranet is like a magazine not a book – how do you sustain interest, how do you keep it relevant and valuable?
This is why Google Wave failed – not easy transition from normal email.
Lotus notes is 4th
ABB increased number of SP users by 43% after it introduced Harmon.ie.
Most famous study by Ryan & Gross in 1940s
Hybrid seed corn introduced in Iowa. It had 20% better yield and was drought and pest resistant. But it also meant farmers bought new seeds every year instead of keeping seeds from the previous year’s crop.
Rationally it should have been a no-brainer, in in fact it took over 9 years to catch on. People wanted to experiment, planting maybe 1 acre the first year then gradually switching over. Crucially, the spread was very much through the social system.
Innovators got info from Salesmen, they were more affluent, better educated, went to city more often. Late majority mainly influenced by what neighbours experience was.
Diffusion if Innovation model RELEVANT bcos social construct, not top down authoritarian decision. Matters for adoption if DISCRETIONARY tasks, which most of intranet is (expenses isn't).
The ‘S-Curve’
Manage as a portfolio of releases.
Assume you’ll need to customize – like spending money on a package holiday
Part of the problem is how we think of it
Don’t switch everything on! It comes with a *cognitive cost* for the organization
To our employees, they should only see the bits that matter to them
What really matters here is the CAPABILITY part – you can use Communities in N different ways.
This means SharePoint is fading into the background