Our friend SharePoint, a very hot topic in the intranet space 12 months ago, was hardly mentioned in the 2009 Quick Poll.

I did not put it on the list, and there were only 10 comments in the open question suggesting to include it (out of the 50 people who commented, out of the 165 total who took the Poll).

Their suggestions for issues concerning SharePoint:

1. When to use SharePoint, when to use the intranet

• "Amazingly, people are using the word Sharepoint as if it were generic for I don’t know what. I’ve never seen a commercial brand name gain such traction so fast in the intranet world. It’s scary."
• "Secured content: intranet or SharePoint?"
• "SharePoint or intranet: appropriate identification of when to use either"

2. Governance

• "Governance intranet / SharePoint"
• "Governance/control of SharePoint Designer, now that it's 'free.' "
• "SharePoint Issues."

3. Numbers & stories around SharePoint

• "Would be interested to know how many organizations have or are intending to roll out Sharepoint MOSS as their portal platform."
• "Another focus on Sharepoint would be interesting."
• "I'd be interested to hear real-life stories of Sharepoint for intranet."
• ".... I deal with SharePoint in an intranet environment not intended for collaboration. I wonder about the experience of others with the same or other systems."

What do you make of this relatively low level of interest in a topic that was so hot just 12 months ago?

From participants in the recent pre-survey Quick Poll... 

Our biggest pressure point

"Placement/importance of the intranet and its teams within the organisation is by far our biggest pressure point at the moment - in economic crisis, restructures are causing the intranet to be an afterthought more than ever (i.e. 'oh the intranet, well someone can just keep that up to date, we dont need much headcount for that, theres an economic crisis going on'). The challenges to deliver through the intranet instead of external high-cost mediums means the opposite should be happening in times like this, but it just cannot seem to reach the radars of those at the top." 

Top management claims...

"How can an organisation fulfil all increasing requirements in regards of functions to an Intranet when top management claims the intranet to be the most important internal communication and collaboration channel and at the same time reducing resources both technical and communication wise?"

What about the future?

"We are dealing with extreme downsizing of already stretched intranet teams. How will this impact intranets in the coming years?"

Loss of experience, less time for everyone

"Loss of experienced publishers due to downsizing (crisis). Less time for everyone to maintain "public", static, non-collaborative content. (e.g. Information about the company, or policies). Public content is important because it provides general information and "body" for people who are not (yet) using collaborative workspaces. How can we motivate owners of policies etc. to realize that their content is important and should be maintained"

My comments:

Organizations are taking huge risks by ignoring or down playing the intranet during these tough times.
Those that decide to leverage the intranet to help the organizations save time, decrease and avoid costs, and communicate and collaborate better are those that will have a better chance at surviving the crisis and becoming stronger.
I wonder how many organizations have actually calculated what they save by downsizing intranet teams versus what they will be losing.
Practically none, in my opinion.

As you saw from my previous post, raising senior management awareness of the role of the intranet is a key priority for lots of enterprises.
In preparation for this year's Global Intranet Strategies survey, I did some preliminary pre-survey research with the members of the NetJMC & Co Linkedin group of intranet managers and asked them where they were placed in their organizations.

How far from the top of your organization is the first fulltime intranet person or team? In other words, how many levels under the CEO or top position?

"3 levels down from the CEO" was the most frequent response.
In my calculations to get this figure, I considered the CEO to be level 0, then counted down using the information in the answers. A number of people shared the reporting line in detail.
A couple people responded saying 2 levels down, saying that their manager reports directly to the CEO. Several more ranged from 4 to 6 levels down, but the majority were at 3.

Of course the interpretation of this depends on how hierarchical or flat the organization is. Three levels under the CEO may be quite high, or not very high at all!

I will nuance this question in the survey itself by asking participants to tell us how many levels exist in their organization, then at what level the first fulltime intranet person or team is placed.

Question to the readers of this blog, especially those who work in large organizations:
Do you actually know how many hierarchical levels exist in your enterprise? Is this a question that is relatively easy to answer?

Ciba Solutions runs an unusual survey for end-users of intranets. It runs non-stop, and organizations are encouraged to share the link with their employees and to monitor the feedback in real time on the internet. The survey is always available online, letting intranet managers decide when the most useful time might be for using it.

What's interesting about this survey is that it lets you compare your end-user feedback to a larger pool of intranet users. (Organizations are not identified in the reports. ) Data stays in the pool for 15 months, after which it is considered no longer relevant and is removed.

The questions are very generic, dealing with issues such as finding information, contact details about other employees, product information, "how to" info for new-comers. It also asks common questions such as page loading time, access through mobile devices. It asks respondents to rate the importance of a list of items in "contributing to a valuable intranet".

The first 30 organizations who participate will get a free "comparison" report showing how their intranet compares to others. Otherwise, the report will cost $290. You can also get a 4-page individual analysis for $200. According to the home page dated 12 May, 13 organizations have used this survey so far.

I asked Andrew Wright of Ciba Solutions what observations he's been able to make so far based on his first analysis of approximately 500 users from 6 different organizations:
His response was: (I quote)

• The questions related to the interactivity of the intranet (ie. The Web 2.0/Collaboration related questions, blogs, wikis, etc) have received low scores from all organisations indicating to me that Web 2.0 is yet to catch on with typical end users.
• Using the intranet as a staff directory still appears to be its main use, though news is coming a close second.
• Using the intranet to actually ‘do work stuff’ is pretty low.
• End users are generally finding the intranet to be ‘very useful’.
• The biggest area for improvement making information easier to find (search & navigation).

I'm very curious to see how this survey service evolves, and whether or not intranet managers find it a useful tool for getting user feedback. Some may feel it is not specific enough to their own cases. My take on this survey is that it is not intended to measure whether or not your intranet is fulfilling a specific strategy or purpose. What's interesting is that the questions are so basic they can be considered "what every intranet should do". It's sometimes easy to get caught up in offering new services to users, and forgetting to improve some of the basics.

Andrew's comments above fall into line with some of the high level conclusions drawn by our Global Intranet Strategies Survey which is conducted with intranet managers and is now entering the 4th year.
We've seen that:

• Intranets used as work tools is a fast growing trend, but not yet the case for the majority of participating organizations. (Organizations with intranets in Stage 3 have reached this point - but that's just over 20 % of the 2008 survey participants)
• At least half the organizations have major issues with search. (50 % dissatisfied.)
• Even 40 % of the organizations with intranets in Stage 1 (still far from being a work tool) say that if their intranet went down for 1 or 2 hours, employees would be disrupted in their work. This must mean they are considered "very useful". (This compares to 90 % in Stage 3).

Ref: Highlights from the 2008 survey, including descriptions of the 3 stages.

We are all looking for ways to measure the value of an intranet. Intranet managers often ask me how other organisations do it. The issue has been explored in the Global Intranet Strategies Survey since 2006, by asking some basic questions about indicators and techniques used.
We classified indicators into 4 categories:

• Soft - subjective and qualitative aspects such as increased employee satisfaction with the intranet
• Hard - objective measurements such as cost savings, decreased resources
• Quantified soft - combination of soft and hard, for example time saved converted into monetary value (dependent on agreement that the time saved does truly represent cost savings for the organisation)
• Derived - metrics using data from other enterprise or business systems such as sales reporting data studied before and after a sales portal is implemented on the intranet

One thing that is clear is that organisations with the more advanced intranets (in Stage 3 for example) measure more than the others:

• The Global Intranet Trends for 2009 Report shows that from 70 to 80 percent of all 3 stages use "soft" indicators.
• Stage 3 leads in the use of "hard indicators" (55 percent, compared to just over 30 and 20 percent for Stages 2 and 1 respectively).
• Stage 3 also leads in "quantified" at just over 30 percent, followed by Stage 2 at just over 20 percent and Stage 1 just under 10 percent.
• "Derived" are the hardest to conduct, and all 3 stages are at a similar low level under 15 percent.

The IBF team have made a significant step forward in designing a systematic approach to the question of intranet value. The IFVB (Intranet Financial Value Benchmarking) is designed to help organisations identify both the cost of the intranet and the value it brings to the organisation. It highlights both exploited and unexploited values. It is based on a full view of looking at all the functional and business areas of the organisation and includes different types of indicators.
The model was developed with financial analysts and some of the IBF’s member organisations including BT whose intranet manager Mark Morrell will be participating in IntranetsLive next Tuesday May 5th. He will be talking about how BT used the IFVB to highlight both areas of current value and new areas of potential value to explore. The IFVB model uses time-saving and increased productivity figures ("quantified soft") as one of the major types of indicators, but places them in a context that also includes "hard" indicators as well as some "derived indicators".
We intranet people know intuitively that a well-designed intranet helps people save time, thereby work more productively. However, this belief will not necessarily be shared by high level budget holders who may not have personally experienced the satisfaction of finding the right person to answer your question in seconds, or the frustration of spending a hour searching for a document and never being sure to have found the right version. The global approach used by the IFVB model, organised by function and business activity, gives more strength to the time-saving figures by placing them in a business-oriented framework side by side with other figures including process streamlining, savings in travel costs and real estate through remote and mobile working, and more.

I highly recommend tuning into IntranetsLive next Tuesday, May 5th, to hear what BT has to say about IFVB. More information here. You can get a first time visitor's pass if you are not a member.

(IntranetsLive is the monthly online intranet event created by IBF and followed by intranet managers around the world. IFVB is a service that can be purchased by members and non-members of IBF)

Unfortunately, I won't be online next Tuesday, as I'll be in Philadelphia at the JBoye event, but would love to hear from any of you on how you have gone about evaluating the value of your intranet.
Have you ever done a study on ROI?
If so, what types of indicators did you use?
Any specific point you'd like to see developed in this year's Global Intranet Strategies survey around the ROI issue?

Enterprise search is scary. We've all heard horror stories about how it does not work, how much it cost, and so on. Many of us have experienced this grief firsthand.
Just a couple of days ago, the intranet manager in an organisation I'm working with said to me "I wouldn't count on the search engine. I'll send you the links." That's exactly what he did as we visited his intranet and I identified things I wanted to go back and examine. This organisation is far ahead of many in that their intranet is accessible from outside the official workplace and authorised external people (like me) can get access within 24 hours. That's truly exceptional.
However, when it comes to enterprise search, they, like most organisations are in trouble.

The Global Intranet Trends for 2009 Report states that out of the 226 organisations who participated in the survey... "Only 10 percent are 'very satisfied' although another 40 percent are 'moderately satisfied'. That means half the participating organisations are dissatisfied with their search implementation. The figures are slightly more favourable than in the previous year's survey where 60 percent reported dissatisfaction. However, this situation is thought-provoking for organisations where access to the right information rapidly is a business success factor. " (page 49).

If you want to gain a better understanding of enterprise search, I highly recommend reading "Successful Enterprise Search Management" by Stephen Arnold and Martin White. Both are recognised experts in the field of search, and the cost and few hours required to read their book will bring you a good understanding of what's involved and what's required to succeed. There is more information on the Intranet Focus web site, and as you can see from the table of contents, you'll get a full view of search management from the introduction through to implementation.

"Twitter makes altruism the work of a few seconds". This is a quote from Andrew McAfee's blog post "“17 Things we Used to Do”. Maybe "altruism" is not the right word for enterprises, but the spirit of the word is definitely right on.
This post is a must-read for intranet managers.

Andrew concludes his post with: "I think it’s important .... to keep in mind that not all exchanges are governed by incentives, mutual benefit, or economic rationality. Sometimes they’re governed by simple neighborliness, and Twitter is an awfully big neighborhood."

An enterprise is also "an awfully big neighbourhood" or should be!

I am still surprised that Twitter has not made a bigger entry into the enterprise neighbourhood. The data from the Global Intranet Strategies Survey from 2008 revealed that only 15 percent of the enterprises at Stage 3 (most advanced) intranets say that they are "testing" micro-blogging or "implementing it in some parts of the organisation". Zero % have optimised it or extended it to "general use".

Five percent of the enterprises with intranets at Stage 1 (least mature) are testing it, with 95 percent saying they are not considering it.

I expect the numbers to increase significantly this year. I sure hope they do!

Any of you out there with "Twitter behind the firewall" stories to share?

And, by the way, I should NOT be saying "behind the firewall". That's a concept that is changing rapidly as organisations are finally saying (out loud) that a lot of their project work involves external people, and that employees and external partners need to share information and therefore information systems.

So, any of you out there with "Twitter to help us do our jobs" stories to share?