“Findability” – from isolated search functionality to organizational capability

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I’m currently re-working my slideset on “Enterprise Search and Information Architecture” for a series of seminars that will be starting next month (for German speakers, see: Kongress Media Akademie – Seminar zur Intranet-Suche).

After shedding light into the current state of searching and finding in internal information systems like an Intranet (which is still really, really bad), I was looking for something to top the introductory chapter off. What came to my mind is that search is still not approached from the right perspective:

Findability of information has turned from a function within systems (and therefore a responsibility of a system owner or IT in general) to a core organizational capability, that has to be treated like other key elements of information management (or any other kind of asset management for that matter). So, for instance, it is not acceptable anymore for most organizations to not have roles, responsibilities, processes and requirements defined in regard to information security. Now, the same attitude needs to be displayed towards findability, as the effects of a lack of findability can lead to just as great risks and other negative consequences, as the lack of information security compliance does.

Among the adverse effects are:

  • Reduced ability to take decissions
  • Reduced quality of decissions taken
  • Reduced productivity due to time lost searching
  • Reduced productivity due to double-work (e.g. creating information that already exists, but is not findable)
  • …

Clearly, the scope and momentousness of these problems is nothing that can be put into the responsibility of a system owner, e.g. an Intranet Manager. Beside the cross-system nature of finding information, which no single system owner can cover (not even the owner of the Digital Workplace of an organization), such a perspective still leaves the business impact of findability out of scope.

Therefore, the access and thus the capability to make use of information has to be handled like companies do for other organizational assets. If your company, for instance, cannot access and make use of the money it has, it surely would pose quite a substantial problem. The capability to make use of the monetarian assets of your company therefore is a key organizational capability.
The same goes for findability – without findability, information assets are virtualy both useless and worthless.

I remember a statement by P. G. Daly summing it up quite nicely: “If no one can find the information they need when they need it, does it even matter if the information really exists?”

Spark – taking Collaboration and Corporate Social Networking to a new Level at PwC

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When Beat Knechtli, Chief Knowledge Officer at PwC Switzerland, presented their recently launched social collaboration platform at the i2 Summit in Zurich, he surely had the audience hanging at his lips. His case study was not one of those “we are experimenting with a more collaborative and social intranet”, but one that gives practical meaning to the notion of “digital business transformation”. Not only does the solution outlined in this case study take social collaboration to a new level, also the project approach holds true to the new paradigm.
Beat Knechtli summed up both aspects very adequately by saying: “everything that is not fully dynamic is simply too slow to support our business any longer”. Just think of how many aspects of traditional projects and intranet solutions fail to meet that criterion.

Imagine that your organisation defines business goals that are impossible to achieve with traditional ways of doing business or incremental optimisation, but require radical new approaches. Imagine also, that your business has to deal with nearly mind-blowing level of dynamics that include integrating over 40’000 new employees into the company per year and catering to a highly qualified, global workforce that has an average age of just 27.

A glimpse of the “future normal”

What may sound like an organisational nightmare to most, might just sound a “too good to be true” business case for those wanting to give collaboration and social networking a jump start in their organisation. With over 180’000 employees in 776 locations spread over 158 countries and the goal to double turnover in a relatively short span of time, this is just how the starting situation at the global PwC network of firms looked like in 2011.

With a long history of advanced knowledge management solutions, it was clear from the beginning, that “doing things better” would not be enough. Instead, bold new ideas were needed. A group of about 15 people in knowledge management functions teamed up to deliver such an idea, that, under normal conditions, might not have stood a chance to see the light of day. Given PwC’s organisational structure with highly independent national legal entities, cross-border collaboration and information exchange was always a nearly insurmountable issue in the past (involving many legal, risk and compliance related obstacles).

But before the background of PwC’s ambitious business goals, the pitch for a radical new initiative was a self seller. And there simply was no alternative option how the company might achieve things like:

  • Much faster offering processes
  • Having knowledge flow instead of it being hidden in emails and other non-transparent information systems
  • Having 180’000 experts at your fingertip to help with every question or issue imaginable
  • Leveraging the potential of enabling people to work in a manner that they are already used to and proficient in from their private life
  • Turn documentation from a activity done after a task is finished (what I call “post mortem information management”) to an integral part of every normal work process

The project team didn’t even have to go much further in defining specific use cases to convince management, as it was obvious that defining what people will be using the future solution for in order to solve their individual business issues and optimise their own work activities would be impossible.

What was also clear from the outset, was that no system already existing in PwC – and there are lots of them, including many advanced ones – could be used for this new solution (too much legacy involved) and that no systems would be integrated into the new solution at the start, as also this would slow the project down too much.

The Project is the Message

So when the team got the assignment, they set out with the goal to provide “one common social networking & collaboration platform that accelerates PwC’s ability to connect with each other and collaborate together to create value for themselves and their clients”.

When working out some fundamental principles for the project, it already became evident, that this was not your usual intranet project:

Underlying Beliefs

For an intranet this is quite a radical approach. At PwC it was met with surprisingly little resistance. Neither Communications (losing all their “news/homepage real estate”), nor HR objected. Some convincing still had to be done with technical stakeholders (preferring a more structured approach, e.g. in regard to information architecture) and risk & compliance related stakeholders (who quickly understood that the then current situation posed a greater risk than the future one).
Also here, the decision not to integrate or replace any existing systems in the first step helped the project team greatly in advancing quickly and without obstacles, as current system owners could be won much easier.

A classical project approach (with extensive analysis and specification phases) was not deemed fit for the purpose. Instead the team wanted to demonstrate the new way of doing things also in the project itself. Therefore an agile project approach with 7 sprints was used. At the core of the approach were two concepts:

  • Use “Waves”, not pilots: pilots can be stopped if stakeholders don’t see enough value or success. A wave, once started, cannot be stopped by anything.
  • Go where the energy is, not where the pockets of resistance are: the project team actively looked for the solution to be carried forward by a broad base of enthusiastic people. They found more than 1’000 of them (called “advocates”) and involved them in the project by already making use of the future solution.

 

Feature richness meets Web 2.0 simplicity

Following a short but intense technology evaluation process, Jive was selected. Given the products richness in functionality, the project team was careful not to “overdo it” in the first rollout. Spark – as the platform was named – is unusually feature rich, but due to a clear design and high usability, it still does a great job in not overwhelming users. For instance, it is always very clear what the key elements of a page are, everything else can be used at leisure.

Spark offers all the community, collaboration and social media functionality you can think of (see also screenshots below). What’s even more important: it is making information accessible in a variety of different ways, using as much context as possible. Taking the omnipresent, personal activity stream of each user as an example, this means that rich filtering options exist, enabling the user to…

  • See only topics and groups relevant to them
  • See only posting from people they follow
  • Hide information on a very granular level (e.g. whole groups, individual discussions, single threads, …)
  • See what information is most relevant in regard to the user’s own behaviour and interests
  • See only certain types of notifications, for instance just personal messages or tasks

And while all the filtering and search mechanisms (which of course also exist and work quite well) won’t do away with information overflow in itself, they serve an important psychological purpose as well: putting the responsibility for managing information needs into the hands of each individual user. Want to complain to IT because there is so much (and irrelevant) information on your start page? Not anymore! Now it’s you who is in the driver seat.
And given how simple and intuitive adapting your filters is, optimising your experience is much easier and quicker than living with an information tsunami right on your homepage.

A question coming up related to that was, whether filtering would lead to a situation in which people would miss out on information that might potentially be relevant for them. While the answer naturally is “yes, of course”, this situation still is vastly better than…

  • The old situation in which people didn’t even have the possibility to get the information at all
  • A situation in which no filtering is used and the sheer information volume makes people miss out on a large proportion of what is relevant to them

A closer look at Spark

Due to the confidential nature of PwC’s business, the following screenshots were taken from the implementation phase of the project. They don’t portray all facets of the current system and the rich interactions going on there!

 

Screenshot of PwC Spark

The activity stream bringing together information from all over Spark in a highly personalised way

 

Screenshot 2 PwC Spark

A sample community (called “groups” in Spark) – the interaction elements used can be adapted freely by the group owner

 

While many details of how communities are supported, how workspaces are built etc. would be worth mentioning, it is not possible to look at all the options Spark offers in more depth here. Instead let’s take a quick look at four areas that stood out for me in the intranet tour given by Beat Knechtli:

  • Gamification
  • Recommended Content
  • Office Integration
  • LinkedIn Connector

Gamification

Gamification is a concept that uses playful methods in order to foster user activity and engagement. Contributing to Spark will automatically give you points (different actions being worth a defined number of points in relation to their value) and a certain number of points will earn you badges, like for instance a “Super Spark” badge. This form of user recognition not only helps increase employee motivation to make use of Spark, it also shows that using the system is something that the company encourages you to do (as opposed to seeing it as a way to waste time for people who have not enough work on their desks). It is also helpful in identifying experts in the employee directory.

There are 5 status levels:

Status level Point level Image
New 0 – 50
Spark 51 – 250
Bright Spark 251 – 1,000
Super Spark 1,001 – 3,000
Mega Spark 3,001+

 

Points can be gained by the following activities:

Activity Points
Posting or responding to discussion 1
Correctly answered discussion questions 4
Helpful responses to discussion questions 2
Creating new documents 4
Creating new blog posts 3
Completing tasks in a project 1
Creating a new status update 1
User’s status was liked 1
User’s status update shared 1
Create idea 4
Add comment for idea 2
Vote an idea 1

 

Recommended Content

Using “collaborative filtering” technologies, Spark makes context-based recommendations for items potentially relevant for a user. This can be content that is related to what you currently have on your screen, a community that is similar to the one you are using at the moment or any other content item that is in the context of what you are doing.

Screenshot Related Content

Related content recommended to the user in the context of what he is doing or interested in (taken from his activities and his profile)

This function relies on a piece of software (called “Jive Genius”). However, this doesn’t mean that users are not active in recommending as well. With groups, for instance, it quickly became clear to community moderators, that the more relevant people they have in their group, the more value the group will create for its members. That started group owners to go “hunting” for members with interests and expertise in the community’s respective topic area.
With over 9’000 communities (as of December 2012) already established, competition for user attention among groups should help drive creativity and motivation to make communities as attractive as possible.

Also, using the “share with” function, you can share any information you find relevant with a target audience that you define. This can be people from your networks, a group of people or a community. This also helps foster exchange among communities and linking content more tightly.

Screenshot of share function

The share function makes it easy to channel content to target groups of the user’ choosing

 

Office Integration

Files in office format can be opened from Spark and saved directly back to Spark. Via a user pane integrated into the MS Office applications, also all metadata belonging to the respective document is visible and usable. Want to know how a document has been rated by other users and what tags have been assigned to it? All that is available right there in Word, Excel and Powerpoint.

Screenshot of integration between Spark and MS Office

With the “Dashboard” pane in Office applications the chasm between the intranet and Office applications is made much smaller

 

LinkedIn Connector

The employee profile in Spark’s people directory serves as an aggregation point for people related content from all over the system. Of course, it also offers the possibility to enter additional information about yourself, your interests and expertise. You can also tag yourself with the keywords that you would like to be found with in searches.

As many of PwC’s employees already have profiles in LinkedIn (more than 100’000 by end of 2012), your personal profile also contains a direct link to that profile and the option to import data from your LinkedIn profile into spark (e.g. your employment history).

Screenshot of access to LinkedIn

Direct access to a colleagues profile data on LinkedIn

 

User adoption

Given Spark’s direct link to a strategic business goal, management buy-in was gained rather quickly. This, of course, was not a guarantee that people would accept Spark and adopt to the new way of doing things. Remember, that even though PwC’s employees have a low average age (27!), open collaboration among countries was anything but the norm in the past. So, in addition to the already mentioned user advocates, the project team used a number of additional approaches to make sure that Spark would be a success. This included:

  • Promoting success stories: as the project team didn’t define use cases for Spark, they promote the successful, real-life use cases that people come up with and use Spark for. There is a whole collection of such cases that gets cultivated and keeps growing. Among the success stories you will find things like offering processes being cut in half, version control issues being reduced by 80% or solving business problems in your sleep through a worldwide community.
  • Asking the countries to come up with their own innovative ways to introduce Spark. This led to outstanding approaches, that really got people’s attention. While some were of a more playful nature (but always connected to the theme of doing things in new ways), others were strictly business oriented. In Switzerland, for instance, information about the yearly promotions was made available only on Spark. So, if you wanted to know whether you had moved up the ladder or not, you had to visit Spark. This catapulted adoption rates from a little over 20% to 92% in a matter of days.
    What will come as a surprise to many is, that the rates didn’t collapse after the event but remained on a high level. The value of a system needs to be pretty self-evident to create such effects.

 

Chart of Spark Adoption rates in Switzerland

Spark Adoption rates in Switzerland – the red line indicates the non-returning users

 

One of the videos created for promoting Spark:

 

Business Value

While discussions about the business value of a social platform can be endless (and often fruitless as well), PwC can already show good evidence on how Spark is affecting the business. Here are some examples:

  • A first survey a few months after the launch shows that already some 80% of the frequent users think that Spark increases both their efficiency and effectiveness. This supports data collected by Jive with other clients who show similar results.
    (see page 9 in the attached PDF “The business value of social business” by Jive Software for more information)
  • Some systems with a similar scope used on a national level have already been partly or fully replaced by Spark, directly saving cost
  • For potential hires, Spark can be a unique selling proposition, as the direct competition seems to be less advanced in that area. Beat Knechtli anecdotally tells the story of a new employee who explicitly stated that Spark was among the key reasons for him to decide for PwC and against offers from the competition.

Further acknowledgement comes from external sources: PwC won the “New Way to Business” award at Jive World 2012 as a recognition for demonstrating “a strategic organizational change in the way work gets done”.

The heat is on

What does Spark’s success mean for the business of other companies? Your organisation might not have to double its turnover, hire 40k new employees a year or have an average employee age below 30. Furthermore, the relation between your employee’s capability to do something and your bottom-line might not be as direct as PwC’s, where additional knowledge (for instance) can directly translate into more hours billed or better service delivered.

While all these points will apply for most organisations, it would wrong to conclude that they are in a completely different situation and can therefore just lean back and watch developments in this area for some more time.
In reality, the situation differs only in the degree of pressure to transform your organisation into a much more connected and knowledge-based one. So it is not a question of whether or not you are affected, but just to how high a degree. Consider this:

  • Market realities force all organisations to move at an ever increasing pace (this might translate into need for growth, need to specialise, faster time-to-market, etc. – all scenarios that are directly linked to better execution in collaboration)
  • Increased competition for talent affects all organisations – in this “war for talents” employer marketing only goes so far. A nice employer brand won’t keep people happy for long once they discover that the shiny external image isn’t reflected in work practises, culture and tools as well.
  • Employee age will be much less important for demand and adoption of such solutions in the future as social and collaborative technologies permeate the society in general ever more
  • And finally, access to the right knowledge and people has already become a key success factor for every business, even if more indirectly as in PwC’s business. If the project team working on your new product has to resort to traditional, inefficient and ineffective work tools and practises, the result will not be left unaffected by this.

The future of work is already here. As Spark shows, smart work will lead to better results and more engaged employees. To cite Richard Branson (the founder and chairman of the Virgin Group with more than 400 companies): “Have fun, success will follow”.

A big thank you goes to Beat Knechtli for making this case study possible by answering all my questions and providing the material used here!

Building the Digital Workplace by improving one work task at a time

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Many people are now somewhat familiar with the (basics of the) concept of the Digital Workplace (if you are new to this, you might consider reading our report on the Digital Workplace). Those who are familiar with it see the enormous potential it offers, but – quite naturally – also the effort, time and change required to get there. “We need this so desperately, but we are just not ready to start going down that road, yet” is something I hear organizations say quite often.

In this situation, it first needs explaining that a Digital Workplace shouldn’t be thought of a finished product that one day (after lots and lots of hard work) will just be there, but rather as the long-term goal of a well-designed Digital Workplace Roadmap.
While this helps people relax and bring the Digital Workplace back into an area of their minds that is tagged “realistic projects”, still a lot of upfront work is required before you can harvest the first sweet fruits coming from such an initiative.

So as you are creating your Digital Workplace strategy and roadmap – and I encourage every organization to really take their time to find out what it is, that they want the Digital Workplace to do for them – there are still things that you can do to bring about the new digital reality you want to create even faster.

The Digital Workplace is about work optimisation

Nowadays, work increasingly is “digital work” or “information work”. Especially the tasks with the highest impact on organizational success fall into the category of “information work”. Technology can do a lot to improve this type of work, but “a fool with a tool is still a fool” – and the Digital Workplace is no exception to this. Optimizing and changing current work practices is therefore a big issue for any Digital Workplace (and for the more advanced Intranets as well). And that is exactly where you can start today, right now, without any grand strategy, without the need to buy a new system or any other big investment.

All you need to do is find work procedures that are not well executed today. And you don’t need to look far to find them. The way in which the vast majority of people are working with information today is highly ineffective (the aforementioned report lists a disturbing amount of proof for that). The good news: much of this can be improved with little changes and by using current technology.

So, in parallel to more strategic considerations also start on a more operational, day-to-day work level. There are so many things one can do to improve information work. Given that this kind of work constitutes an ever increasing part of the job for an ever increasing number of staff, you will gather support for your broader Digital Workplace initiative from the people that you have helped in getting their work done in a better way.

In order to help you get going, I will start a series of blog posts that look at typical tasks in information work and how to improve them. The first couple of posts will look at aspects of collaboration in an enterprise setting, at what works and what doesn’t.

Have a great day and let me know any such “small steps” that you have already successfully introduced in your organization’s journey to the Digital Workplace. :-)

 

What does the Digital Workplace actually look like?

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One of the most frequent questions I get from readers of our highly successful report “The Digital Workplace” (more than 1’000 registrations so far) is this: how does a Digital Workplace look like and where can I go and see one?

There of course isn’t one single answer to the first part of the question, as each Digital Workplace will be very individual to its respective company. Still many people have a hard time imaging how it would be for their company.
Intranet guru James Robertson has shared his vision of the future intranet and Digital Workplace already two years ago in presentations at various conferences around the world. This vision was so gripping that you literally could see it before your own eyes while James was talking.

Now he has put the scenarios he described in his talks into a whitepaper that is available free for download: A week in the digital workplace

A must read that also answers the second part of the question above.

Hinter jedem gutem Intranet steckt… Leidenschaft!

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Hervorragende Intranets entstehen weder durch Zufall noch von alleine. In den vielen Jahren, in denen ich ungezählte Intranets kennen lernen durfte, ist mir ein Faktor immer wieder aufgefallen, der direkt mit dem Erfolg eines Intranets verknüpft zu sein scheint: die Leidenschaft des oder der Menschen, die für das entsprechende Intranet verantwortlich sind.

Das mag glamourös klingen – und dadurch einen deutlichen Kontrast zum Alltag der meisten Intranet Manager bilden – doch es stellt offensichtlich einen Teil der Intranet-Realität dar. Wer sich davon überzeugen will, kann dies in der Kampagne “Intranet Love Affairs” des Intranet Benchmarking Forums tun. Dort finden sich bereits mehrere Seiten voll von “Liebeserklärungen” von Intranet Managern an ihre Intranets.
Und wer mitmachen will, kann die eigene Leidenschaft für sein Intranet dort auch direkt zum Ausdruck bringen.

Links:
- Alle “Intranet Love Affairs” sehen
- Eigene “Intranet Love Affair” posten

What industry experts say about the Digital Workplace report

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The whitepaper “THE DIGITAL WORKPLACE – Redefining Productivity in the Information Age” has gotten quite some attention in the market in the few weeks since its publication.

From Norway to Indonesia, from New Zealand to Canada, from Spain to Vietnam – readers come from around the world and from organizations of all sizes and sectors.

I’ve been impressed by the feedback we’ve received so far and just wanted to share some such statements that other industry experts gave on the report:

“Organisations need to act now on the problems highlighted in this report as work shifts to a digital workplace. Acting quickly and clearly now will gain organisations cost savings and competitive advantage. The longer the solution approaches presented are ignored, the higher will be the risk of failure and increased costs.”
Mark Morrell
Intranet Pioneer

 

“This report provides a comprehensive, thought-provoking view on the digital workplace and its impact on organizations. It offers both a broad strategic perspective and plenty of facts and figures. I strongly recommend this report to both executives and practitioners who will find it a valuable source of information and inspiration.”
Jane McConnell
NetStrategy/JMC, author of “Digital Workplace Trends 2012″

 

“The biggest problem with intranets today is that they are primarily used for communication and are owned by communication. Therefore the potential for the intranet is not developed into a digital workplace and used to make organisations more efficiently. I welcome this report and hope that CEO’s will read and understand, that the responsibility for the intranet does not belong in communication, IT or HR but in a department directly under the CEO with the sole purpose of making the organisation more efficient. This is much too important for the organisation to be suboptimised to lower positions in the hiearchy.”
Kurt Kragh Sørensen
IntraTeam

 

“Knowledge work is the foundation of many organizations in the digital age. This report uncovers how we can reshape the view on productivity and transform knowledge into a valuable and sustainable asset. It is a MUST READ for decision makers and communications professionals!”
Reto Stuber, author of the bestselling book “Erfolgreiches Social Media Marketing mit Facebook, Twitter, XING und Co.“

 

“I highly recommend this report. It is based not simply on opinion and conjecture, but on solid research and facts. It will provide organizations with much needed evidence that their internal information systems and practices are in drastic need of an overhaul. It offers a solution which has the potential to fundamentally change the way work gets done in organizations.”
Andrew Wright
Worldwide Intranet Challenge

 

If you haven’t got the report yet, registration for a free PDF-copy is still open at: http://www.infocentricresearch.com/Research/Publications/The-Digital-Workplace.aspx

 

 

The Digital Workplace – Building Blocks

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This is the final part of a mini-series giving a preview on our whitepaper about the Digital Workplace. The whitepaper which covers all the topics in detail is available for download from Friday (Oct. 14th) and you can pre-register for it using the link that you will find at the bottom of this post.

 

The previous posts looked at the vastly changed nature of work in organizations today and the massive problems this has brought along with it. It is now time to look at the instrument to change this situation a bit more in detail.

As already mentioned earlier, the Digital Workplace is not primarily an IT-system. While technology ultimately is the indispensable enabler a Digital Workplace is made up of, it can only be effective when completely embedded into all aspects of an organization. This of course is only possible if fully backed by management and accompanied by substantial change management activities. Both work and management practices need to adapt for the better in order for the Digital Workplace to live up to its full promise. Furthermore, a “logical infrastructure” (e.g. enterprise-wide information architectures) has to be in place just as much as the technical one.

 

Supporting all aspects of information work

Today’s situation in information work can be compared to an ill organized workshop where tools lie about all over the place and workers constantly have to look how and with which tool to best do their next task. What we should be having instead is a highly automated assembly line with everything in place and manual activity focussed on what human intervention is required for.

In order to deliver on that promise, the Digital Workplace has to support information work from end-to-end instead of just being a repository that can be accessed when needed. Given the broad spectrum that information work has in organizations, also the scope of the Digital Workplace needs to be comprehensively covering that spectrum.
This “holistic” approach can make it hard to grasp what the Digital Workplace actually is.

In order to make sense of the multitude of disciplines and functionalities involved in the Digital Workplace, it should be seen as a framework that is made up of different building blocks. Organizations can make us of these in accordance to their respective needs. There are three types of building blocks:

  • Work Performance Building Blocks: there are 4 building blocks in this area, covering all aspects directly related to performance in information work. They include personal performance, team performance, organizational performance and process performance.
    Personal performance for instance is about having a central place where all the information and functions relevant to a person come together. This includes having a single repository for all personal and team or project tasks combined, seeing at a glance what is currently happening in all the projects and activities you are associated with, having overview panels for all metrics relevant to you (from target achievement to expenses reimbursement status) or direct access to information from any sources important to you whether in- or external. It also provides resources to draw upon in regard to continuous learning, organizing information relevant to you, getting paper-based information in and out of the Digital Workplace and many more utilities that enable a true one-stop-shop experience for everything a person needs to get their job done.
  • Generic Building Blocks: this includes 2 areas only indirectly related to performance and tasks, namely “Communication & Information” and “Culture & Relations”. Both are aimed at providing resources for all things not directly embedded in an employee’s work tasks, like for instance everything relating to corporate culture.
    In the Digital Workplace this will become even more important, as the tools we do our work with are an integral part of our day-to-day experience of the company we work for. Naturally, a professional, well-designed, ergonomic tool will allow for a more positive experience than one which is unpleasant to look at, cumbersome to use and frequently frustrates you as it doesn’t support you in your tasks as it should do.
  • Foundational Building Block: this provides the structures, context and services that build the foundation of the Digital Workplace and that are offered to and used in the other building blocks. This is the “engine” below the components described above. Unlike in current systems (where for instance the intranet has its own distinct search engine) it provides its services to all the components. This is a key distinction in order to make services available truly cross-system. Without them, a unified user experience and “single-point-of-working” is not possible.

 

The report contains detailed descriptions and sample scenarios for all building blocks.

 

A place for all your information, messages and notifications

While the Digital Workplace consists of many parts and pieces, some such elements that are key to the success of the Digital Workplace are outlined in a separate chapter of the whitepaper. One such key element is the Universal Inbox.

There is a strong motivation behind this, as it is not sheer information volumes alone that impact employee productivity and frustration most, but diversity of channels, information types, systems and media. In that environment, today’s number one information management tool, the e-mail inbox constitutes but one of many channels that employees constantly (have to) check for messages, news and notifications of all sorts. And with each new system an additional place to check is introduced, further impacting productivity and stress through constant system change.

Rather than further adding to the already high levels of information sprawl, the Digital Workplace needs to do away with that burden by bringing together all messages, news streams, alerts and notifications an employee receives across all systems, channels and devices in a single place.

This place can be thought of as a personal, fully customized “Universal Inbox”. It is likely to be one of the most important factors for employee acceptance of any Digital Workplace as its benefits are clearly obvious upon first use. All information relevant to a person is aggregated in a single place with rich capabilities for filtering and acting on the respective messages and notifications.

Until now the role of the universal inbox has been delegated to the email software for lack of alternatives. Many systems for instance send emails to users to notify them about news and changes that occur in that system (e.g. a workflow system sending a notification about a new task a person has been assigned with). Lack of integration, interactivity and control make this concept no longer an option in the Digital Workplace.

 

The next step

I hope this series of teasers to the whitepaper “The Digital Workplace – Redefining Productivity in the Information Age” has sparked your interest in the topic.

From Friday, October 14th, you can download the full whitepaper free of charge from the website of Infocentric Research or order a paper copy there. Pre-registration is already open.

Link: The Digital Workplace – Redefining Productivity in the Information Age

The Digital Workplace – the problem with information work

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The 1st part of this series gave a brief introduction into what the Digital Workplace is and why new approaches to managing information and designing information work are desperately needed. This post will look at the overwhelming problems organization have today because of information mis-management.

Organizations of all sizes and sectors are quick to admit that they have a problem with information. Few, however, can name the root-causes of the problem or quantify its size, reach and impact. In fact, most organizations just take information related problems, such as information overload, for granted (i.e. as a problem they just have to live with) and think of it as an issue with only minor relevance for the business.

They couldn’t be more wrong!

In order to realize the full impact that the problems with information have on a business, one has to look at the very nature of work in organizations today. The last post gave some insight into this and the report will elaborate on this in more detail. In short it can be said that information work constitutes the most relevant kind of work in organizations today both from a quantitative and qualitative perspective. There is proof that information and its flows are the number one factor to enable a business achieve its strategy and goals. Yet, information work is probably the most underestimated and worst managed kind of work that ever existed in organizations.

“If the CEO only knew …”

For this whitepaper we looked at more than 2 dozens studies available on the market that cover problems in information work form different perspectives. And while information related problems come in many shapes, the issue of “looking for information” seems to be the one best analyzed by research. In fact, “searching” in all its forms is the most ubiquitous activity that information workers perform in their jobs.

Being very generic, we often don’t recognize “searching” as such. And it is not only “using a search engine” (or any other kind of navigation mechanism for that matter) but includes emailing or asking around for information, assigning someone else to gather information, checking whether the version you have is the current one, trying to locate that email, browsing the web, etc.

Productivity is affected in two main ways by issues related to this omnipresent task:

  • time loss in searching and finding information (and related effects such as employee frustration by long and unsuccessful searches)
  • quality loss by not having the right information, where, when and in the appropriate format and detail needed (e.g. incomplete, inaccurate, untimely, too complex, … information) for the respective task (and therefore for instance making a bad decision)

This has drastic effects on employees, managers, organizational performance and even the economy as a whole. While the report will present many (rather shocking) facts on this, I want to use just one analogy here: if we take the time that the average information worker is wasting in “looking for information” and spread it out over the time span of a year, then from October 1st to December 31st he would be doing nothing else but searching for information.
I wonder how many CEOs would think of this as an acceptable situation if its full impact would be known to them?

And to make things even worse, “searching” is of course only one of many problematic areas in information work. It can be estimated that activities like for instance recreating already existing information, having to deal with different versions of a document or secondary effects due to wrong or not up to date information will often turn out to have even more negative impacts on employee productivity than even that of searching.

As already noted, information problems of course don’t exist in isolation but directly affect those who use the information and their respective work results in mayor ways. Information problems therefore also substantially affect the performance of an organization itself. Some sources estimate this impact to be as high as 29% of the overall performance.

“How can it be, with all our IT…?”

Lack of awareness is one of the key root-causes for information related performance issues. As a “mass phenomena” information work is relatively new and current work practices are highly immature and largely unmanaged. Information work is also distinctly different from the dominant forms of work of the past and therefore has to be approached in a different manner. For instance, even most information systems are still based on the logics and restrictions of paper handling instead of the possibilities of digital media. The same goes for current approaches to leadership which typically are still based on industrial age principles. These often fully contradict the work reality and requirements of information based work.

Being so fundamental in nature, these problems of course cannot be addressed by simply introducing an intranet, a collaboration platform, social media or any other tool. It is the organization and the “way of working” that has to adapt in order to stop wasting time and resources.
Unfortunately, problems with information aren’t even on the agenda in most organizations, as they turn a (giant) blind eye on them, so far.

Current information management systems don’t come to the rescue, either, as the way technology is designed and put to use today is also part of the problem. Some of the key shortcomings in this area include:

  • Lack of logical, enterprise-wide architectures
  • No clear distinction between tool and business need
  • Users not educated in information management
  • Technology not embedded into the way of working

 

The report will give more details on these points and their importance in addressing the problems in information work.

 

The final part of this mini-series of blog posts will look at the building blocks of a Digital Workplace. It will be published here on Monday, Oct. 10th.

The Digital Workplace – just the next generation of your good old Intranet?

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This is the 1st part of a series of three blog posts giving a preview to the business whitepaper “The Digital Workplace: Redefining Productivity in the Information Age” due for publication on October 10th (rescheduled from Sept. 30th). Please also see the introductory post for more information.

 

What is a Digital Workplace?

It can be quite a challenge to describe what the Digital Workplace really is about (thanks to the initiative of Mark Morrell we now at least have a first definition of the term in Wikipedia). For instance: is the Digital Workplace just a cooler name for the next generation of intranets? Or is it simply the sum of all (digital) systems you use at work (and consequentially, have we all been working with Digital Workplaces for years)? Or maybe is it the ability to work anywhere and on any device?

While all these aspects have their place, they don’t represent mayor steps forward in relation to the problem to be solved. Therefore, from the point of view established in the whitepaper, the Digital Workplace has to offer a new approach which actually has the potential to substantially impact how work can be done in a better way in the digital age.

So, instead of trying to give a definition, let’s approach this by asking: what business problem is the Digital Workplace going to tackle? The answer to this is surprisingly simple: the Digital Workplace is going to solve the huge problems organizations of all sizes and industries currently have in information work.

To fully appreciate what this means, we have to talk a little bit about what information work really is. And that’s where the problem begins. There is an almost total lack of awareness for the relevance, scale and impact this type of work has in any given organization. Without much notice, Information work has become the most universal, most relevant and most impactful kind of all work types. Whether it is management taking a decision, a product responsible analyzing competitive data, a nurse checking the latest medical regulations or a sales rep preparing for a meeting with a potential client– all this is based on information, all this is information work. Whenever human cognitive processes occur in a work task (e.g. communication, decision making, reading, analyzing, solving problems …), information is involved (as an input, as a output) and what you have is information work.

With information work being such a ubiquitous element, it should be obvious that information is a key organizational resource. This resource needs to be properly managed just like any other resource in organizations (like for instance managing money, machines, employees, etc.). But the sad truth is that information is not managed like these other assets but rather left to its own fate (and the “care” of technology) instead.

Further lack of awareness exists when it comes to the effects that problems in information work have on productivity and work outcomes. Also the extent of these problems is largely unknown. The next post will look at these points in more detail. But the situation is so serious that senior management worrying about their employees wasting time on Facebook and Twitter is nothing short of ridiculous in contrast to the productivity lost in information work.

A new approach for information work and information management

Intranets have hardly ever been positioned as instruments to optimize information work. While they of course provide information that is used in information work, they are rather information repositories than tools that directly support information work, let alone help to design information work in a better way.
These characteristics are something that intranets have in common with the many other information management tools present in organizations today. They all suffer from a number of fundamental shortcomings, for instance:

  • They address information work with isolated solutions and without a common, organization-wide architecture
  • They try to support information work in isolation from the work processes in which information is used
  • They (passively) hold information available for access by the user instead of delivering it in the context in which it is needed

There are many more reasons why the approaches to information work and information technology that were applied so far have led us into a desolate state of affairs. The report also looks at how the persistence of industrial age business principles in organization plays its part in this as well.

In addressing these issues, the Digital Workplace will represent a fundamental shift for organizations. Mike Wing, VP of Strategic Communications at IBM put it this way: “Your goal is not running the intranet, but rather unleashing the capacity of the organization”. Up until now, this hardly ever was the focus of intranets and other information management initiatives. Intranets et al. have enabled better communication, better information provisioning etc. but not considerable better organizations or ways of working. Tools typically have been at the center of information work. Instead, work processes and business logic have to be there. It is not better information technology that is going to solve information (work) issues but better information management and better information work practices.

The Digital Workplace is the “master key” to information work

If we take a pure “tool perspective” to get a grip on the scope of the Digital Workplace, then it encompasses all systems and technologies used to handle information of any kind. This includes not only unstructured information (as typically present in intranets, collaboration tools, document management systems, etc.) but also semi-structured and structured information or data (as typically present in databases, business intelligence systems (BI), customer relationship management systems (CRM), etc.).
This already is quite a change in perspective: instead of asking “what kind of information is this?” (to determine whether it is something that for instance has its place on an intranet), now the question would be “what information and functionality do we need in this step of the process (or to execute this task)?” (and then delivering it independently of format and source when needed).

In order for the Digital Workplace to be successful (i.e. solve the problems of information work) things have to be approached in a very different manner: we need to start designing information work from the ground up, from a holistic viewpoint and with information management (and not information technology) playing the mayor role.

This also implies that the Digital Workplace should not be thought of as an IT-system but as a work ecosystem. From an organizational viewpoint there are four dimensions to this:

  • Work practices (how we do work)
  • Management practices (how we lead, what the culture should be like, …)
  • Logical infrastructure (what enterprise-wide elements have to be in place, like e.g. a master information architecture, governance, roles, …)
  • Technical infrastructure (e.g. systems, integration, physical work environments, …)

This is critical. And current approaches typically have addressed work practices, management practices and logical infrastructure only to a very limited extent (if at all), especially when viewed from an organization-wide perspective.

So, what will the Digital Workplace really be like? Information will come to you in the context that you need it in order to do what you are currently working on. You will spent the dominant part of your time in just one user interface (that will seem to be just one system) in which you have full control over all your work tasks, all information needed and all functionality required to do your job in the best possible manner.

The report presents concrete examples how the Digital Workplace supports people in various typical work areas. Also, the third part of this blog series will give more insight into this. Before that, however, more light has to be shed on the problems in information work and information management. Look for the next post towards the end of this week.

The Digital Workplace – the enabling environment for information work

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Today, information-related work constitutes the number one activity for any organization – both from a quantitative as well as from a qualitative perspective. And despite decades of investment in information technology, information and information work is still badly managed and a source of unparalleled waste in employee productivity.

This situation serves as the basis for an upcoming whitepaper about the “Digital Workplace” which I have been working on. It is to be published at the end of this month. While in layout and production, I want to share some previews into the content of the report.

The whitepaper makes a strong case for why we need to completely change our perspective when it comes to intranets and the many other tools and work practices we use when dealing with information. It does so by first establishing just how big today’s problems in information related work are and why current approaches don’t get to the root-causes of these problems. It goes on to describe the building blocks a Digital Workplace is made up of as well as to outline a number of key elements required for success (most of which are largely non-existent in current information systems like intranets et al.). This is followed by an extensive overview of the business benefits a Digital Workplace will bring to an organization and advice on how to get going into the right direction.

The report, which is titled “The Digital Workplace: Redefining Productivity in the Information Age” will be made available free of charge (as PDF).

The “preview” for the report will be made up of three parts:

  1. The scope of the Digital Workplace
  2. The giant problem the Digital Workplace addresses
  3. Building Blocks of the Digital Workplace

The first part will be published here towards the end of this week.

For further information and pre-registration please see: The Digital Workplace Report