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

Was führende Intranets von der Masse abhebt

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Bereits zum fünften Mal führte Jane McConnell, NetStrategy/JMC dieses Jahr die Studie „Global Intranet Trends“ durch – mit einer Rekordbeteiligung von 440 Organisationen.

Der Report liefert viele wissenswerte Aufschlüsse über den aktuellen Status von Intranets weltweit. Insbesondere erlaubt er jedoch einen Einblick in Erfolgsfaktoren, die führende Intranets auszeichnen. Eine Nachahmung der festgestellten Prinzipien – natürlich unter Anpassung auf die eigenen, individuellen Gegebenheiten – dürfte für weniger weit fortgeschrittene Intranets die Erschliessung von grossen Optimierungspotentialen ermöglichen.

Die vier wichtigsten Aspekte, in denen führende Intranets sich klar vom Mittelmass unterscheiden:

· Definierte Entscheidungskompetenzen

· Integration von Collaboration und Social Media

· Intranet ist Bestandteil der Ziele des Managements

· Verbreitung und Reifegrad von Social Media

Entscheidungskompetenzen

Wenn klar definiert ist, wer für was verantwortlich ist und wie Entscheidungen getroffen werden, kann das Intranet-Team seine Energie auf die Vorbereitung und Ausführung von Entscheidungen konzentrieren und muss nicht bei jeder zu treffenden Entscheidung erneut mit dem mühsamen Suchen nach den zuständigen Entscheidungsträgern beginnen.
Klare Zuständigkeiten fördern weiterhin die Entscheidungsgeschwindigkeit und vermeiden langatmige Diskussionen.

Führende Intranets haben in diesem Bereich doppelt so häufig eine organisationsübergreifende Steuerung, wobei insbesondere auch das „Business“ einen deutlich stärken Einbezug erfährt als bei durchschnittlichen Intranets. Weiterhin wird auch dem Einbezug von wichtigen Stakeholdern im Unternehmen ein höherer Stellenwert beigemessen und Routineangelegenheiten können direkt von den entsprechenden Funktionsinhabern ohne Einbezug weiterer Instanzen entschieden werden.

Integration von Collaboration und Social Media

Wenn diese „Kanäle“ nicht sinnvoll integriert werden, verliert das Intranet an Bedeutung. Kein Wunder, denn das Intranet als reines Informationsmedium ist meist nur von untergeordneter Bedeutung für die Erledigung der täglichen Aufgaben. Weiterhin führen solche Silos insbesondere zu einer weiteren Verschlechterung der Auffindbarkeit und Verwendbarkeit von Informationen.

Sogar bei den führenden Intranets ist dies heute noch nicht zufriedenstellend gelöst, dennoch zeichnen sie sich gegenüber dem Rest bspw. durch eine deutliche bessere Verknüpfung der unterschiedlichen Kanäle aus.

Intranet als Bestandteil der Ziele des Managements

Was nicht in den Zielen von Management und Mitarbeitern verankert ist, dem wird meist nur nachrangige Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. Ein fest in die Ziele des Managements und der betroffenen Mitarbeiter (z.B. Autoren) eingebundenes Intranet wird automatisch eine viel höhere geschäftliche Bedeutung erlangen, als wenn das nicht der Fall ist.

So wird bei den führenden Intranets vom Top Management bspw. erwartet, dass die verschiedenen Funktionsbereiche des Unternehmens (wie z.B. HR, IT, Einkauf, etc.) ihre internen Services hauptsächlich über das Intranet anbieten und abwickeln. Ebenso, dass Autoren Ziele hinsichtlich der Bereitstellung von Content in ihren Jahreszielen wiederfinden. Auch die Integration in weitere Steuerungsmechanismen, wie z.B. bestehende Regelungen der Organisation, sind bei führenden Intranets deutlich häufiger anzutreffen.

Verbreitung und Reifegrad von Social Media

In diesem Bereich zeichnen sich führende Intranets dadurch aus, dass sie mehr unterschiedliche Funktionen anbieten, diese häufiger auch tatsächlich unternehmensweit genutzt werden, besser integriert sind und aufgrund längerer Nutzung auch einen höheren Reifegrad in der Nutzung aufweisen können.

Dadurch unterscheidet sich der Fokus zwischen „Social Media Anfängern“ und Fortgeschrittenen bspw. hinsichtlich der Beurteilung von Risiken und möglichen Problemen deutlich:

Typische «Ängste der Anfänger»:

· Zweifel an Wert und Relevanz von Social Media für das Unternehmen

· Zeitverschwendung

Typische «Ängste der Praktizierenden»:

· Auffindbarkeit der mit Social Media kreierten Informationen

· Sicherheit

· Sprachen-Silos

Anhand dieser Unterschiede wird auch deutlich, welche häufig geäusserten Vorbehalte gegenüber Social Media in der Praxis tatsächlich von Relevanz sind und welche vernachlässigt werden können.

Organisatorische Grundlagen sind erfolgsentscheidend

Bei zusammenfassender Betrachtung der vier festgestellten Erfolgsfaktoren wird wieder einmal deutlich, dass der Erfolg von fortgeschrittenen Intranets hauptsächlich auf organisatorische Aspekte gründet. Dementsprechend stellen eine klare und breit getragene Intranet Strategie, die entsprechenden Steuerungsmechanismen (Governance, Rollen, Ziele) und eine gezielte Ausrichtung auf ein integriertes Intranet, das als universelles Arbeitsmittel die Wissens-/Mitarbeiter in Zukunft möglichst umfassend in ihrer Aufgabe unterstützt („Digital Workplace“), die Grundlage von fortgeschrittenen, erfolgreichen Intranets dar.

Weitere Informationen

Der Report ist für Teilnehmer kostenlos verfügbar, für alle anderen Interessenten für 550.- € käuflich direkt von der Autorin erwerbbar: Global Intranet Trends for 2011

7 key messages Intranet Managers took away from Swiss Intranet Summit

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The 3rd Swiss Intranet Summit took place two weeks ago in Zurich. After the two conference days I asked the participants in a final interactive round what the key take-aways for them were:

  • A transition from an “Intranet” to a “Digital Workplace” has to happen along 4 dimensions: Community & Collaboration, Communication & Information, Intranet Services and Structure (acc. to IBF’s Digital Workplace Maturity Model)
  • The Intranet Manager is mainly a “Self Service Manager” (enabling people to do things, seeing to people getting served, …)
  • The importance of a good balance between (classical) requirements analysis and workplace observation in order to discover the real needs of employees
  • The importance of the factor “speed” in getting to information
  • That ownership is a key success factors for internal use of Social Media
  • That user’s and stakeholder’s expectations have to be actively managed
  • That a task-based approach is a pre-requisite to really supporting employees in what they are doing day by day

Vorschau auf Top-Trends für Intranets in diesem Jahr

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Den fundiertesten Überblick über die Entwicklung von Intranets weltweit gibt Jane McConnell’s (NetStrategy/JMC) jährliche Studie “Global Intranet Trends”. Noch läuft die diesjährige Studie (Teilnahme ist noch möglich, s.u.), einige exklusive Voreindrucke sind jedoch bereits verfügbar:

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Social Media hat sich zum Standard entwickelt: 70% aller Teilnehmer setzen intern Social Media ein, das sind 10% mehr als letztes Jahr.

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Mobile Intranets kommen nicht von der Stelle: die Umsetzungsrate ist mit nur 7% auf gleich niedrigem Niveau wie letztes Jahr.

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Collaboration noch nicht “at your fingertips”: Funktionen zur Erleichterung der elektronischen Zusammenarbeit gehören zwar mittlerweile zum Standard, in ca. jedem zweiten Unternehmen steht jedoch die IT-Abteilung als Gatekeeper zwischen den (potentiellen) Benutzern und dem tatsächlichem Einsatz.

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Grenzen verschwimmen: der Blick richtet sich immer stärker auch nach aussen, so sagen bereits 40% aller Teilnehmer, dass sie sich offiziell auch an externen Plattform beteiligten.

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Auch “exotische” Funktionen gewinnen an Bedeutung: abseits der vieldiskutierten Ansätze existieren weniger bekannte Funktionen, wie bspw. “Prediction Markets” (“Vorhersagemärkte”). Letztes Jahr mit nur 3% Adaptionsrate noch ein völliger Aussenseiter ist dieser vielversprechende Ansatz heute bereits bei 17% aller Teilnehmer im Einsatz oder in der Pilotphase.

Diese Angaben beruhen auf der Auswertung der ersten 300 Teilnehmer der Studie. Die Studie läuft noch bis zum 1. September 2010. Die Teilnahme daran ist bis dahin noch möglich. Teilnehmer erhalten den finalen Report kostenlos (der sonst zu 550.- € verkauft wird).

Registrierung unter: Global Intranet Trends Report

5 Thesen zur Zukunft des Intranets als universelles Arbeitsmittel

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Ich wurde gebeten, am Intranet Summit (19.-20. Mai in Frankfurt) den Eröffnungsvortrag zu halten. Die Konferenz steht dieses Jahr unter dem Motto der Weiterentwicklung des Intranets vom heute häufig stark auf die Informationsbereitstellung beschränkten Instrument hin zu einem universellen Arbeitsmittel (das z.B. als eWorkplace oder Web Workplace bezeichnet wird). Dieses ermöglicht u.a. Collaboration, Unterstützung von Wertschöpfungsprozessen, Applikationsintegration, Social Networking und vieles mehr.

Die zahlreichen Best Practise Fallstudien, die auf dem Intranet Summit 2010 vorgestellt werden, beleuchten viele dieser Facetten des Intranets der Zukunft (u.a. bei E.ON, Sixt, BASF, Burda, WWF, HP, …).

Vor diesem Hintergrund wird meine Präsentation den Fokus auf die Rahmenbedingungen des Intranets als universelles Arbeitsmittel legen.

Hier ein kleiner Vorgeschmack auf meine 5 Thesen dazu:

(1) Gute Intranet Manager müssen neue Wege gehen
Die Grundprobleme von heute, sind die noch viel schwerer ins Gewicht fallenden Probleme von morgen – bspw. die mangelnde Unterstützung von oben. Hier sind neue Ansätze gefragt, um das Intranet in eine andere Liga aufsteigen zu lassen. Einer davon ist bspw. die chinesische Philosophie des “Reifen lassen”, die für die Herausforderungen eines Intranets bessere Antworten anbieten kann als kurzfristige Zielorientierung.

(2) Produktive Wissensarbeiter fallen nicht vom Himmel
Tools haben wir alle schon zur Genüge. Woran es jedoch mangelt ist das Wissen um den richtigen Umgang damit zur Bewältigung der Herausforderungen des Informationszeitalters. Soll das Intranet das wichtigste Werkzeug der Wissensarbeiter werden, müssen diese auch auf ganz anderen Ebenen als bisher Unterstützung erfahren. Wie ein Schmied in einem mittelalterlichen Dorf zur Technologisierung und Produktivitätssteigerung der ganzen Gemeinschaft beigetragen hat, so müssen Intranet Teams das Unternehmen erst zur produktiven Wissensarbeit befähigen.

(3) Mangelnde Usability erstickt das Verhältnis Intranet & Unternehmenskultur im Keim
 Die Beziehung zwischen einem Intranet und der Kultur seines Unternehmens ist delikat. Zudem haben erst wenige Organisationen das Potential des Intranets für die Kulturentwicklung erkannt. Doch bevor hochtrabende Träume von der kulturellen Veränderung des Unternehmens mithilfe des Intranets gesponnen werden, stehen ganz profane Basisarbeiten an: Design und Usability des Intranets müssen durchgängig auf ein derart hohes Niveau gebracht werden, dass jeder Mausklick zum Ausdruck von Werten wie Respekt, Kundenorientierung, Servicebereitschaft und dem Streben nach Exzellenz wird.

(4) Nutzbare Informationen setzen ein neues Architekturverständnis voraus
Unaufindbare Informationen sind nutz- und wertlose Informationen. So, wie der Weg von der Steinzeithöhle zum Burj Khalifa nur über eine sich ständig verfeinernde Architektur möglich geworden ist, so führt der Weg zu nutzbaren Informationen nur über eine sich weiterentwickelnde Informationsarchitektur. Statische Navigationsmenüs und der “Verzicht” auf Anreicherung unstrukturierter Informationen mit Metadaten sind vor diesem Hintergrund nicht mehr zeitgemäss.

(5) Überlegene Intranets brauchen sorgfältig ausgewählte Technologie
Solange ein Intranet nur rudimentäre CMS-Grundfunktionalitäten benötigt, fährt man gut mit einer nicht auf Technologie fokussierten Vorgehensweise. Mittlerweile sind jedoch wichtige Technologien, die typische Problembereiche von Intranets adressieren, so weit ausgereift, dass ein Ignorieren der verfügbaren Möglichkeiten zu klar suboptimalen Lösungen führt. Eine neue Herangehensweise ist also auch hier gefragt, um einen soliden “Unterbau” für das Intranet als universelles Arbeitsmittel in die Realität umsetzen zu können.

Weitere Informationen zum Kongress und Anmeldung unter: www.intranet-summit.de