Here is another in a series of session notes for KM World 2010 and Enterprise Search Summit 2010. I attended the session, Intranets in 2015 led by James Robertson, Managing Director - Step Two Designs. Here is the session description.
“How can we deliver great intranets if we don't know where we're heading? This powerful presentation outlines a vision for intranets in 2015, describing a day-in-the-life of how staff will work. Going beyond the technology aspects, this session explores the "enterprise experience" that we should be providing to staff and how to start delivering it today.”
James has been talking about intranets for a long time. He speaks with a lot of people about how to make then work. His site has over 250 articles that are available for free on his site. He does three new articles a month except for January.
Looking at today’s intranet issues can be better addressed by knowing what the future holds. He started with the first of two scenarios, a new employee, first day at work. First, she finds a desk and computer with an email waiting for her. It is from the intranet offering to help her get started. Someone in the audience said they wanted to work there.
She starts the intranet and finds a series of links on getting started. There are videos from other staff on things they wish they learned on day one. There are many induction tasks including updating her profile. She can add her own tasks. There is a space for collaborating. She can see the collaborative spaces and view the profiles of her team members.
There are product chats about the company’s various offerings, as well as competitors. At the end of the first day she has a good start on her new job. She has done some tasks and has an initial understanding of what is happening at the company and within its market.
In debriefing this scenario it was mentioned that much is happening behind the scenes. This is cool but there is a fine line between being cool and creapy, with too much “big brother.” James feels that intranets need to be proactive and take advantage of the information located around the enterprise.
James said that these features are not blue sky. Some of the features are already in place. For example, the Jansen-Cilag intranet allows people to manage their own IT assets (see ). The CRS Australia intranet has an inbox that collects to-dos for multiple areas. The IDEO intranet connects people to people.
Then James covered another scenario. The new employee is off to her first business meeting and has some downtime at the airport. She looks at the intranet and finds all the company’s products and many real time details around them: sales, customer satisfaction, etc.. Booking the trip was automated through the intranet. She saw the hotels for her pay grade and no others, restaurants with reviews, both by the company and outside on the Web, and information for joggers. The intranet noticed that this was her first trip so the company issues and policies are covered.
James said the important issue is the employee experience and not whether it is on the cloud or inside the firewall. He said that there are some tough issues in these scenarios but they are achievable. I would agree. James noted that eighty to ninety percent of the data exists so you just need to make it accessible and use it.
James offered some principles. First, content is not longer the center, people are. User centered design is the approach to use. I found this to be the case since the early 90s, if not before. I found that the degree of success for a project was directly related to how much the users were involved in the design and their needs were made the center of it.
Second – provide universal access, including mobile access for everyone. Enable access from home.
Third - create a seamless enterprise experience. Blur the line between systems. Make this capability a mandate for vendors.
Fourth – Offer end-to-end solutions. Focus on task completion and clarify and simplify. The simplification can generate a lot of ROI.
Fifth – Integrate into the business
Sixth – Crossing boundaries – Break down silos and create awareness of what is going on in the enterprise, as well as outside. Enable a transparent organization.
James moved to what we can do now when budgets are tight, management is cautious, technology can be clunky. First, create your own design and future scenarios. Design small but great solutions. Make sure you do something rather than just talk about possibilities. Remember intranet need to attractive, as well as functional.
It was very useful for him to close on some calls to action.
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