Are Intranets stagnating?

November 4, 2008 at 10:56 pm · Filed under Reviews

Earlier today I was a special guest on the very first Intranet Live show hosted by the Intranet Benchmarking Forum. I shared details of the Razorfish wiki and discussed how in a downturn companies spend more on improving productivity as they need to depend on fewer employees to do more. 

As I reflected on the conversation a little later in the day, I realized that not enough has changed in the intranet world over the last few years. When I compare Intranets today to those that were designed and launched in early 2000, they don’t look that different. People Finders, HR information, corporate news and organizational charts still reign supreme. Yes, social media has had an influence and we are collaborating in new ways but the changes don’t appear that transformative. In fact, social media has often meant that employees now have less time for the intranet.

Am I missing something? Are we as intranet designers, managers and thought leaders not doing our job properly? I don’t know. But what I do believe is that we’re maybe too focused on a traditional definition of the intranet. And that’s something we need to move beyond.

I’m waiting for the case study where a whole intranet is reduced to an iPhone or a Blackberry application, to a time when Microsoft Office blurs the lines between the desktop and the intranet, and to the scenario where an Intranet truly integrates with a LinkedIn and leverages peer influence dynamically. We’re not there yet. But hopefully we will be soon. 

Intranets in a Profile. LinkedIn to shake up things?

November 2, 2008 at 10:54 am · Filed under Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Intranets

Not surprisingly and in a very smart move, LinkedIn has expanded its platform to allow professionals to add specific applications to their profile. On the surface, this appears to be just a copy of the Facebook Application Platform strategy, but in reality its quite different. And it marks LinkedIn’s most major assault on the traditional intranet.

So first some facts about LinkedIn Apps. It launched with 10 applications from 8 big time developers. LinkedIn users (and there are 30 million of them) can now add SlideShare and Google presentations,  Amazon reading lists, Huddle Workspaces, Wordpress blog posts and Box.net applications among others. If you look at the list carefully, you’ll notice that many of these applications when stitched together form the core of an enterprise intranet. Especially when you add the fact that LinkedIn itself is a living people finder that’s more complete than anything behind the firewall. 

Why does this matter? It’s not going do very much for the largest of enterprises. They still need their secure intranets, with their dashboards and business applications. But for everyone else, this becomes a much easier way to collaborate and share information especially among small and medium sized businesses. Given that the smaller you are, the more you need to collaborate with people outside your company, LinkedIn Apps provides the perfect platform. Everybody already has a username and password and are familiar with the interface.

I’m willing to bet that within the next year if LinkedIn Apps plays its cards right, players like Zoho, Basecamp, Intranet Dashboard, WebExOffice and Intranets.com will find themselves losing customers. Now, the current version of LinkedIn Apps is quite light and unlike Facebook which allowed anyone to build an application on the platform, LinkedIn has been very selective in who they partner with. In its current incarnation, LinkedIn Apps can’t compete with any of those other hosted intranet solutions. But that can change quickly. And when it does, those competitors will be in trouble especially because everyone is already using LinkedIn for some purpose or the other and it allows its users to collaborate with people outside the firewall too. 

In a nutshell, this is a great move by LinkedIn and with their cautious approach similar to Apple’s first iPhone launch with its limited applications, they’re being sensible and strategic in how they play in this space. Now lets see how many of the 30 million LinkedIn users adopt these applications or should I say “Intranet in a Profile” offerings? 

Breaking the monopolization on programming

October 27, 2008 at 9:45 am · Filed under Web Apps, Web Commuting, Work Design

The Economist Magazine has a 14 page special report on Corporate IT in its latest issue. Most of the articles invariably talk about the “cloud” and how it along with software as a service is changing technology. The key point is that software as a service is transforming the technology industry and its importance cannot be overestimated. Whether it be Google App Engine, Salesforce.com, Netweaver and Windows Strata, all the major technology players are doing more with software as a service in the cloud.

But a critical question is what does this mean for the future of productivity in the workplace? Given less attention in the special section, was a thought that I found rather compelling. The notion that anyone can start programming (in less than 20 minutes!) using a new generation of cloud based, software as as service  tools that make development easy.

Think about that for a moment. Just as finger touch typing is becoming pervasive among the Gen X and Gen Ys so too may basic programming. Imagine the next time an employee needs to mash together data from different databases, visualize them and host a provocative discussion about the implications, he can do so by creating his own program on the fly. As the Economist article emphasized, the geeks would lose their monopoly on programming with these easy tools and employees could dramatically increase their productivity.

Maybe this is a little far fetched, but then again the thought of a computer on every employee’s desk was as well not too long ago. And some of the tools that make programming user friendly, already exist today. Its just a question of whether “self service” can be extended to the domain of employees creating their own programs to meet their immediate business needs.

Intranets are not just intranets anymore

October 21, 2008 at 9:25 am · Filed under Collaboration, Intranets

I spent the better part of yesterday locked in a brainstorming room with a client and my team as we discussed what a next generation intranet should look like. I was struck by how little some business assumptions have changed in the last few years. We forget these assumptions as we strategize, design and build next generation intranets. Here are a few of those assumptions.

 1. Intranets are about Lunch Menus and People Finders. Everyday intranet managers around the world try to make a strong case for why the intranet is a strategic tool. Why its about collaboration and insights and how it can transform an organization bottom up. Unfortunately, many senior managers and employees across the board still think of it just in terms of lunch menus, people finders and human resources information.

 2. Intranets are an HR & and Corporate Communications asset. Intranets are very important to HR and Corporate Communications, but its extremely important to other departments and teams as well. It can be an effective medium for employees to share information and collaborate among themselves. That doesn’t have to happen outside the intranet.

3. Intranets aren’t mission critical business applications. Here’s the biggest misnomer. Intranets can be mission critical and they can and should integrate business applications. Remember the portal craze of the late 1990s? That wasn’t a mistake, it was just ahead of its time. Employees are demanding single, consolidated, dashboard interfaces that serve as a true virtual desktop. Some intranets play that role. Others can too as well.

4.  Intranets are browser based and top down in nature. Who’s to say that intranets need to be browser based. The best intranets take advantage of social technologies, desktop applications (like widgets) and mobile solutions to provide greater value to employees where and when they want it. Its not about the intranet, but about employee productivity using digital technologies.

Intranets have a long history in most organizations dating back to the mid 1990s. That’s what drives its current perception. The organizational silos within IT departments that separated intranet ownership from other business applications made sense at the time but don’t anymore. Today, employees demand more consolidated interfaces where all the information, collaboration, self service and business application access needs are met.  Its probably time for the departments to reorganize to more directly align with employee expectations and less by application ownership.

Yammer, Twitter plus the corporate directory

September 13, 2008 at 6:19 pm · Filed under Reviews

Sometimes it takes longer than it should for a consumer innovation to gravitate into the enterprise. And Yammer which took the top prize at Techcrunch 50 is a perfect example.

We all know Twitter and it has been around for a few years. Twitter is a remarkable success and has been adopted by millions of people around the world. And as a first of its kind microblogging tool Twitter has jump started a whole new form of asynchronous communication. But it has also been missing something – missing an enterprise component.

Enter Yammer.Yammer takes the Twitter format and puts in the enterprise. It does this by restricting your network based on email addresses. You can join a company network only if you have an active corporate email address. And when you join, you can of course invite others from your company to join too. All communications are restricted to people within the company. It is beautiful and with a business model supporting it, will probably be successful. But the fact that I am asked to enter my contact details is what makes it most interesting for me. It also makes Yammer a corporate telephone directory. It asks me who I report into and who reports into me as well which makes it an organizational chart too. Very clever.

The Yammer concept has some shortcomings though. For example, can I deal with having two microblogging accounts? A professional one like Yammer and then my Twitter account? I’m not so sure. In fact, Yammer and Twitter should merge or at the very least allow users to consolidate their microblogging views into one single interface. Another potential issue, is what happens when an employee leaves the organization. He’ll still have access to the Yammer network and all the information that people are publishing. That’s not safe. Yammer must think of a work around to this. And easy solution not a manual one.

A few months ago, I setup my company president on Twitter with a password protected account. Only employees (who’s usernames are verified) can follow him. He uses it to share insights, case studies, opinions and breaking news. His Twitter usage has encouraged hundreds of employees to sign up for Twitter too. They’ve begun experimenting with the platform. All in all, its been a success. The model isn’t perfect, but it is working.

Yammer can potentially make this easier but until an administrator can automatically (or at least manually) remove ex-employees from the network, serious adoption may not happen. At the moment, everybody is in the “lets test this thing out” phase. Moving beyond that maybe a challenge for Yammer without a few more enterprise management tools.

Web 2.0 in the Enterprise. From Dilbert to Dude

June 22, 2008 at 12:21 pm · Filed under Collaboration, Communities, Enterprise 2.0, Intranets, Web 2.0

Earlier this week I was on a panel at a Churchill Club event in Silicon Valley. Hosted by Charlene Li of Forrester, the panel discussed web 2.0 in the enterprise and how social media is changing collaboration behind the firewall. On the panel with me were leaders from Best Buy, Serena Software and Oracle. Titled “From Dilbert to Dude: Succeeding with Web 2.0 Within the Enterprise” the panel discussed how grass roots social media efforts take on a life of their own as they move from being “under the desk server” initiatives to enterprise wide programs.

Steve Bendt of Best Buy talked about Blue Nation, a social networking site that connects employees at the retail outlets to the corporate offices and to each other. Now, the employees who are on the front lines talking to customers everyday, have a platform to discuss new products, exchange ideas and provide feedback to headquarters on what products, display formats and marketing strategies are working. It is a perfect example of a company taking advantage of the wisdom of the crowds concepts. Also, interesting is that after the launch of Blue Nation, employee retention has gotten easier as employees feel a part of something special and important. No thank you email from a CEO can compare to the satisfaction that people get when they feel they have contributed to something larger. Turnover of employees who use the site is just 8 to 12 percent while company turnover is much higher. 

Serena Software is another interesting company and I blogged about them a few years ago (on another blog) when they first rolled out their Facebook Fridays initiative. Rather than trying to build a behind the firewall social networking enabled intranet, Serena chose to build their intranet on the Facebook platform. But not just that, they also built tools to allow the Facebook pages to connect with company data sources in a safe and secure manner. So rather than bringing the employees to the intranet, they went to where their employees were spending most of their time – on Facebook. 

In the case of Oracle, what’s most fascinating was how quickly Connect, the internal social network got adopted. Within an hour of launching the site 270 people were using it. The next morning the site had 8,000 people on it. Currently, the site has 10,000 active users who share information, news articles, powerpoint presentations and discuss budgets. This again was an initiative that began with no funding but tapped into the inherent nature of people to connect with each other in a purposeful and productive manner. Paul Pedrazzi from Oracle also discussed the risks. He mentioned that a person wearing a religious head dress like a turban could claim denial of a job because someone saw his profile picture and refused to interview him.

In discussing the Avenue A|Razorfish wiki and some client examples, I highlighted how understanding the motivations for use are important. We’re not on these social platforms just to socialize. Different people have different motivations and aligning those motivations with the social platform and the business needs is key to success. The wiki is viewed as a marketplace of ideas where people share their best thoughts and expect more in return. Sometimes the sharing even takes the form of bookmarks, blog posts and photographs – not just the regular word documents or powerpoint files. Through use of the wiki, natural experts who are the most passionate about specific topics get the attention and the focus that they deserve. 

The panel was also covered in Infoworld. 

Allowing for Social Influence in the Workplace

June 1, 2008 at 10:46 am · Filed under Collaboration, Collective intelligence, Culture

A much ignored subject in conversations about the workplace is the role that social influence plays. Recent research shows that when making decisions (any kind of decisions) we are much more influenced by known peers than we are by anonymous people or anonymous information inputs. It is the people that we know and trust that we consider the most credible sources of information. Because we’re much more connected to each other online, we’re influencing each other more than we ever used to.

This  simple fact has huge implications for the future of work. With the enterprise going increasingly social, we’re all observing one another much more. Because we’re connected to each other via internal wikis, department blogs and collaborative workspaces, we’re always watching what our peers say. Some of us comment on that and participate in the internal conversations, others just lurk. But lurking too allows for social influence to take place. Since we’re forced to collaborate more, we’re in turn influencing and being influenced by each other much more too. What are the implications of this? Here are three -

a. Greater internal alignment. Call it the result of increased voyeurism or what you like, but the fact that I have a much better sense of what my co-workers in the neighboring cubicles think, influences how I think and act at work. We’re much more in alignment with each other or inversely my workplace behaviour is a negative response to their actions. 

b. Increased external alignment. Not only am I paying more attention to what’s going on in the work lives of my peers, but I’m also paying more attention to peers outside my own company. What they think and say in this social world, influences my actions within my own organization. This is healthy as it makes me a more informed, educated employee but it can also serve as a distraction.

c. Potentially rebellious employees. Since we’re watching each other so much more, we’re also processing a lot more information and thinking harder about our roles in an organization. Questions like why did one peer get a promotion over another or why do the benefits in one department differ from another crop up a lot more. It means that organizations need to think harder about how it manages perceptions among its employees. 

By and large, social influence presents an interesting opportunity for most organizations. They can allow for positive social influence to take place by pointing their employees to positive, thought provoking influences. It also means that that the organizations don’t control their employee base like they once did. Its just how the world has changed. For more on how social influence work, take a look at this article where I discuss the motivations behind influence.