Archive for April, 2011
Another Friday and a few more articles worth reading:
James Robertson (Step Two Designs) produces another winner Column Two blog post with Planning your SharePoint intranet project where he provides best practice methodology as he admonishes:
SharePoint does, however, introduce some new questions into the intranet planning process. The greatest strength of SharePoint is its breadth of functionality, from content publishing and collaboration, to CRM and application development.
It is this wide range of capabilities that can be so daunting for many teams. Without a clear plan, the results can become a little bit of everything, but no one clear and compelling success.
Stephen Byrne (also from Step Two) follows suit with Listening for intranet success. He discusses soft skills needed to create a successful intranet:
- building and maintaining stakeholder relationships and networks
- coaching and inspiring others
- building trust during periods of change
- using people-centred research techniques such as interviewing, focus groups, facilitated workshops or anecdote circles
and points out that listening is the most important skill to use when undertaking the tasks listed above.
While a bit dated (written in Feb) Toby Ward’s CMS Wire article, Small Business Intranets, There’s More Than SharePoint, provides good alternatives for firms that don’t think of their IT departments as development groups. He quotes Michael Jones:
“SharePoint is most certainly overkill in most cases,” says Michael Jones, Marketing Coordinator for The ADWEB Agency that produces Intranet DASHBOARD, an Australian-based intranet solution. “It’s like using a commercial harvester to prune your roses, or implementing SAP at your local convenience store. SharePoint is effectively a development platform which companies can use to create an intranet, but unless they have complex custom requirements (and a large development budget), SharePoint isn’t the right tool to use.”
and points out that ”the price tag of an SP intranet for 100 employees is often in the US$ 10,000 to $30,000 range.”
SharePoint can be a very expensive proposition. I know some larger firms that budgeted $1,000,000+ for their SP initiative. I’ve also heard of other firms that found that SharePoint was a bit like the old house in the movie, The Money Pit.
On his own blog, Intranet Blog, Toby Ward provides tips on how to get support for your project in Selling intranet 2.0 to executives. He followed the post with a webinar, Strategies for Selling Social Media to Target Audiences in Your Organization, where he and Shel Holz covered:
- How exactly engaged employees contribute to your business.
- How to determine the best mix of communications tools to meet the needs of different employees (e.g. which medium for which message).
- Overcoming the challenges of using social media in multinational organizations.
- Different social media platforms for different environments.
- Case studies examples from leading companies
Have you read an article, seen a presentation, etc. that you felt was particularly valuable? If so, I would love to hear about them via the comments!
Another week full of interesting articles and posts about intranets.
Elizabeth Lupfer (The Social Workplace) recent post, Knowledge Management: Creating a Social Intranet Where Your Employees can Learn, reminds us of the capabilities the Ten Best Intranets in 2011 as recognized by the Nielsen Norman Group had in common:
- Knowledge management
- Innovation management
- Comments
- Ratings
- Participation awards
- Customized collections
InformationWeek’s Venkatesh Rao’s post, Hard And Soft Power In Enterprise 2.0, suggests that we are using only part of the persuasion vocabulary we need to describe enterprise 2.0.
Soldiers and diplomats talk about hard power versus soft power. Hard power is all about guns, missiles, threats, and coercion. Soft power, an idea formulated by Harvard’s Joseph Nye in the 1990s, is all about making friends and influencing people through cultural attraction, sharing, and cooperation.
Mark Morrell follows his recent post of the same name with a second post on SharePoint - It’s how you use SharePoint 2010 that decides the value it brings 2. Here, he covers “how vital it is to set the right level of permissions for people using the information published.”
Toby Ward’s post, Social Communications, Social Intranet, reminds of the Social Communications: Delivering winning internal communications programs with Intranet 2.0 seminar presented by Dave Duschene, of InsideEdge and Julian Mills of Precient Digital Media.
I ran across a number of articles this week that I found interesting.
IBF 24 is coming; stock up on those energy drinks! Intranet Benchmarking Forum hosts it annual 24 hour web conference. Free to everyone, it includes tours of some of the best intranets today including tours of Google, BT, IKEA, BP, Abbott, Oxfam International, Barclays, Kellogg, Duke Energy, Reynolds Porter Chamberlain, AMP Asset Management and Booz Allen Hamilton.
Is Business Steering your Digital Workplace? Jane McConnell discusses governance for intranets with a focus on business.
10 Characteristics of a Great Intranet Intranetizen, Jonathan Phillips, posts a great list that demonstrates what makes an intranet great. His definition of great is:
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