Intranet Management Software Blog

Within many global 2000 companies, the journey to create Social Enterprises (also referred to as Enterprise 2.0) is underway, set against a backdrop of hopelessly outdated methods for employee collaboration & communications.

There’s a lot at stake. Companies that make a smooth transition to a social enterprise can unlock innovation more quickly, capture & share knowledge more effectively and harness their global networks of talent to outwit the competition. But the transition is complicated, requiring not just adoption of new technologies but significant changes in culture and working behaviour.

So how do you set about achieving a smooth transition, preferably before your competition? This is where Microsoft’s Sharepoint looms large, as the intranet collaboration platform of choice across many large enterprises today.

Read more at Knowledge Board

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You might be wondering what on earth such title for a software company blog, in fact there are many similarities when you compare family trip to IKEA and delivering IT project for an organisation.

I begin with a little story that the state of my kitchen is dreadful, the look is so dated and it needs total refurbishment and I’ve been promising my wife a trip to IKEA so we can have one of those shinny looking kitchen just like the one in the brochure.

So we take a look on the brochure and we really like this one.  At £860 It’s a bargain! So let’s go and get it!

Then the reality starts to emerge you don’t came out the store with that kitchen; in fact you ended up with these.

All the good things isn’t included, definitely not the coffee and the laptop, but fittings and lighting, all the things that make it looks good.

If you think about isn’t it an elaborate con? They are selling you the picture with the price tag but you ended up with pile of flat pack?

Have we actually factor-in the cost and time required for transport, unpack, build, other fittings, disposal of the old kitchen units, daily disruption, and possible error?
Of course not we are so blinded with the image in the brochure and the low price!

It makes me wonder how many of the proud purchaser that successfully ended up with the picture just like in the brochure. Perhaps the percentage is not dissimilar to the percentage of successful IT projects.

Now back on the software business. I am seeing the similar attitude of “Honey let’s go to IKEA’ to sort out problem within an organisation.  Many of us still believe that to sort out internal communication problem is to go out just buy the software.

How about that “intranet” Dear? It looks sexy and cheap? Surely it’s within our budget.

How about other things, which we need to factor-in? Such as Planning, resources, preparation Check out 10 steps planning your intranet project.

At Claromentis our attitude is always to go for extra miles, we believe unique solution is required for unique problem, the value it’s not in the product but in the complete solution based on our experience that we’ve learnt deploying more than 100 intranets and bespoke web-based software across the world.

The reality is we are only one side of the coin; the other side is you Mr Customer. We can’t solve your problem if you don’t want it to be solved.

No offense to Mr IKEA, I still think your business model is brilliant, and this post is based on my personal view.

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Image Credit: Disney & Wikipedia

I’ve just got back from watching Tim Burton’s remake Alice in Wonderland in 3D. What a visual masterpiece with amazing attention to details. It feels like immersing into an art form created by 20th century design technology.  I couldn’t believe that original animation, which I watched in my childhood, was created in 1951; even more amazing the story was first published in 1865!

You might be asking, what this movie has to do with Intranet Blog?

Before the Internet

Well the idea of internal communication is not new, since the beginning of civilization people are gathering and exchange knowledge, ideas and collaborate in many forms.  Remember pen and papers?

Your first Intranet

Your first intranet might be old fashioned by today’s standard, you might hate it, It is slow, looks ugly and doesn’t do what you wanted to do. Updating information is painful and there are many more.
But hey, this is a milestone just like the first Alice movie for the first time words comes to live, we may not have 3D technology just yet but hand drawn animation does the job!

Your Intranet – “Remake!”

Fast forward today the Internet is now teaming with real time collaboration, social networking, web application to do almost anything you can think of, computing power, cheaper storage, faster broadband, multi-touch and portable devices, which blur the boundaries between PC, laptop, & phone.

Claromentis is currently developing cool new communication tools with codename “innovate”.  We will be launching this application with an exciting release of Claromentis 6, leveraging what’s possible in web technologies.

Just like the visual masterpiece of Alice in Wonderland, perhaps it’s time to make your Intranet a communication art form.

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As a web development company we still get involved in numerous projects where the likely engagement or traction of an idea is overestimated by our customer to a significant degree.

This is surprising given the economic climate we are fast becoming used to operating in, but perhaps it is just the nature of certain types of entrepreneurs to believe those columns of excel data which based on simple projections extend ever higher  over time – reaching total world dominance in just a couple of nimble tabs.

As a contrast those of us that work in intranet projects know how hard you have to work to capture and retain users, and how easy it is to disappoint them and lose them for long periods of time.

Both as users and as customers we are increasingly demanding and sensitive – if we cant find exactly what we want with minimum effort we will just go to where we can – without leaving a trace in a project that tried hard to work out what we might be looking for, but didn’t get it quite perfect.

My question is why some people are so optimistic about the external world but so realistic about the likely behaviour of our colleagues. Perhaps this is nothing more than replacing some idealized version of a dissatisfied and excited consumer with reality, having got to know our workmates over extended periods of time.

But perhaps the workplace constrains both our imagination and our behaviour – it places us in a routine where we will simply not respond and change only because we did not do that yesterday.

If that is the case then intranet project teams need to bring a dose of external optimism into their projects, work hard to deliver exactly what their colleagues need and not let old practices continue to constrain both behaviour and innovation.

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We’ve been working on this feature for several weeks and now I am delighted to reveal what is “Discuss” to you all.

Discuss is chat feature built right in the Claromentis Intranet Manager. There is no additional configuration or chat client install like Yahoo, or MSN, it just works straight on your browser.

Simply click discuss bar to initiate Discuss and then choose the person you wish to have a chat with. You can hide the discuss window if you want to carry on working.

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During early phases of intranet deployment, we are frequently asked by our clients “what do I need to prepare or plan in advance to guarantee a successful of intranet deployment project”.

In our opinion, an intranet project is all about dialog. It’s a dialog between ‘us’ the software vendor with our expertise and know-how and ‘you’ who know the most about your business or organisation.

Step1. Setup a Goal

The first step is determining the goals of your Intranet project. Why do you want an intranet? Some typical reasons:

• Improving and providing a communication and collaboration tool.
• Our existing Intranet is old and dysfunctional.
• Distribute corporate news (electronic newsletter)
• Providing self service staff contact details which are always up-to-date
• Make our company policies and procedures available online
• Sharing documents online instead of using shared drives
• Enabling staff to work from home
• Better searching and easier way finding key documents

Step2. Define the scope & audience

Have you got an answer for these questions?

• Is it just an Intranet for staff or it is also an extranet for partners and contractors?
• Do you want to allow your staff access to the intranet even when they’re at home or client’s site?
• How about mobile access?
• Have you asked representative from each department on what they want to see or get on the Intranet?
• How people currently finding information, which you think should be on the intranet? What are their common pains?
• Would you like to store sensitive information on the Intranet such as payroll ?
• What about chat and commenting? How open is your company culture?

Step 3. Build a SiteMap

Build a sitemap, using your favorite tools such as Visio or simply hand drawn, create draft of Intranet sitemap, typically the main branch are represented by each department, you can see various examples below:

Example Sitemap with colour coded permission

Example of Intranet Site Map using colour to identify launch phase

Step 4. What are key application do you want to use?

This step is simply determining what are the main application do you want to use on the Intranet, Claromentis provide these following applications,  you can simply choose which one to use.

News and Blog– Share and distribute company news and blog
Documents – Document collaboration with version control
Publish – Page creator, a content management system
People – Self service personnel database
Calendar – Shared company calendar
Image Gallery – Corporate image database
Bookshelf – Online Policies & Procedures
Policy Manager – Managing lifecycle of the company policies
Holiday planner – manage corporate holiday and absence
Room booking – book a meeting room and office facilities
InfoCapture – Electronic e-forms builder and workflows
Project – Manage project online
CRM – Opportunity Management

Outside these applications we built many other bespoke applications to suit your need

Step 5. Understanding Permissions

Permission Group & Role

A scalable intranet should have a strong permission system, it also helps to distribute information easily. For example you may want to have area where only people in your department can produce or edit its content while everyone else simply just view.

This can be done easily by setting up permission, ie : Roles, Group and Sub-Groups.

To make our job easier when configuring your system, have you got a Company org-chart available?

Step 6. Create Homepage Wireframe

As you know the homepage is the first page everyone is going to see, it’s worth the extra effort to design this carefully after all it is a gateway to all other content within the Intranet. Look at several examples for inspiration and decide what you want to see on the homepage, my advice is to keep it clean and simple.

UBS Intranet homepage wireframe

Colchester NHS Intranet wireframe

Step 7. Budget & Resources

How many users will be using the Intranet? Many Intranet software vendors  price their products by number of users.

Hardware, who is going to provide you with the hardware?  If you don’t have any we’re happy to source this for you or you can take the SaaS model.

Have you got an internal project team?  Usually we recommend a project sponsor, an internal project manager as the main contact, a technical contact, and a rep from marketing or communication as a minimum team – smaller companies might have fewer people involved.

Step 8. Timeline

Plan your project timeline carefully.  Each company is different – an Intranet can be deployed from 2 weeks up to a year, these are some key points worth considering which may cause delays:

• Sourcing hardware
• Getting access through your office network
• Finalising design
• Updating user list
• Content population
• Content migration.

Like everything else in life, execution is quick, preparation is the key so do your homework!

Step 9. Future plans (keep evolving!)

I’ve seen many intranet projects loose momentum after the initial launch phase. A successful intranet is something that grows over time, start simple and add new features gradually. Learn from  user feedback and implement user requests wherever feasible.

Small improvements can make a huge different – it’s like the breath of fresh air. Keep the original team and meet regularly for project reviews and brainstorming of new ideas.

Here are some ideas to think about once you have your initila intranet.

• Is there any business processes which can be done electronically?
• Such as overtime request, time cards, new hire.
• Is there a database, which is currently in Excel, and you think it will be much better if it is an online application?
• Any existing system, which can be better integrated with the Intranet?
• Thinking of deploying corporate micro-blogging? Online videos?

Step 10. Do it now!

This final step is the most important of all. You can make all the planning you need but without execution it is still a plan. Get the ball rolling now, gather your team, email them now, start researching or simply drop us a line to discuss your requirement, or book an online demo!

Good luck with your Intranet project!

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The recent personal ordeals of Danah Boyd at Web2.0 Expo resulted in a Blog that is a real revelation about what it is like to present at an innovation based event with a public-facing twitter stream projected behind you that destroys your connection with the audience and in turn your own self-confidence.

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/11/24/spectacle_at_we.html

This blog of such an emotional experience fortunately links back to the excellent text that the actual presentation was attempting to deliver. Within that I just want to focus on one quote :

“Thus, the power is no longer in the hands of those who control the channels of distribution, but those who control the limited resource of attention”.

I continually explore this idea internally when we describe where Claromentis is heading and where intranets offer real value. I find the continual differential in the understanding of this message across different companies and cultures both puzzling and frustrating.

On the one sense of course this is just about push versus pull. In the wider world of the general internet, this is totally understandable – and indeed, almost verging on yesterdays news.

But in the world of the corporate intranet if we discuss these ideas it is as if we are promoting some brave new paradigm.

For many companies even creating a new intranet to ease the outward flow of communication feels like breaking some innovative ground – after all they are embracing a new, attractive, internet based platform to distribute their message.

They are just pushing.

Often they don’t measure value and engagement with their platform based on the fact that they offer such a broad choice of interactive communications that stakeholders are continually – actively – selecting which  information to pull from an ever widening choice of interactions, information streams and enriched media.

They just selectively push information to staff

As Claromentis starts the delivery process for Innovate – the central application of the Claromentis 6.0 platform – we are really optimistic that we are delivering tools that will promote corporate innovation through individuals proactively allocating their attention within a truly rich information stream that is a mile away from simply pushing corporate information.

Lets see if we are right, or like Danah our important message risks getting lost in the delivery.

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I was at a meeting today with some key staff from one of the UKs largest companies, kicking off the deployment of Claromentis for the holding company.

The deployment is for 10-20,000 staff, and during the meeting the CIO made an interesting side comment about smaller collaboration systems, saying “who needs an intranet when you only have 200 users – you can just shout”.

This is something we have often discussed internally as very small companies deploy intranets and collaboration software – in fact the smallest Claromentis license is for just 25 users – at which level you would think you wouldn’t even need to raise your voice.

But of course some very small companies in terms of staff numbers – such as consultancy practices we have worked with – might have onsite and global staff in almost as many locations as they have people – as teams are deployed to various client offices to provide professional services. These individuals, by the nature of their job, absolutely do need secure web based access to version controlled best practice guidelines, white papers, templates and collateral from the company intranet.

Using out of date information can adversely impact their ability to provide advice that represents the current view of their organization – and conversely not being able to write results back to the intranet will constrain the growth in IP of the company as consultants gain expertise in their relevant sectors. So in these, and many other similar cases, intranets for very small companies become very meaningful and material to the company’s ability to deliver results.

As we have engaged with companies to provide social networking portals we have of course come across the theoretical limit of Dunbar’s number – the supposedly cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain a meaningful and stable social relationship.

These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person. A commonly referenced limit for Dunbar’s number is 150.

On that basis maybe the CIO today had it just about right – in the hopefully unlikely event that you have no other friends outside work then once you get over a couple of hundred staff you absolutely do need some technical help to remember who they all are, how they relate to each other and what they all do.

Standing by the water cooler and shouting is officially no longer an option.

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Choosing the right name for your intranet is probably one of the most exciting tasks for the Intranet Development Team. (By the time I am writing this I am still struggling to choose name for my baby, perhaps it’s not quite the same

I am seeing there are few interesting patterns based on what our clients decide at the end, here is some example:

1. Greek mythology

Intranet system named after a Greek gods and goddesses, or Greek influence  is definitely the most popular.
Athena - from the Greek goddess of wisdom, the arts, industry, justice and skill, It is the name of Intranet system at Nominet UK.
Atlas -  Atlas was made to bear the weight of the heavens, or was it the earth, this is what will become our own Intranet, and perhaps we’re hoping atlas can help us bear the weight of daily project work and pressure from clients.
Odyssey – An ancient Greek epic poem attributed to Homer. Is the name of intranet for Prometheus Real Estate Company, keep it in-line with Greek theme.
Eureka – (I have found it) exclamation used by ancient Greek scholar Archimedes, appropriate name for Care UK intranet, it certainly has scholar and research flavour to it. Care UK  is hoping their intranet will become  the source of finding information for the entire organisation where every member of staff can say ‘eureka!’.

2. Net-isation

Putting ‘net’ at the end of a choosen word seems quite popular, it’s a hint to network, transmission, exchange information.  Here is some popular example  Infonet, datanet, skynet.

Or you can simply attach the company name with ‘net’ such as intranet for Hanover housing is called the h-net.

3. Synonyms & Popular Culture

Intranet is a virtual place where information is stored; recently many companies are pushing collaboration and application through their intranet. Given this nature these are of popular word to represent the Intranet itself:

he Matrix – Albany Group named their Intranet “The Matrix”  apart from influence from popular sci-fi movie, in cyber culture matrix also means the Internet and other networks that flow into it are altogether.

Nexus - One of the most popular name for the Intranet adopted by many clients. It comes from the Latin “nectere” meaning “to bind.”. The Intranet is a collaboration hub.

Dimensions - Babcock Infrastructure Services named their intranet “Dimensions” Perhaps their vision is to make a multi-dimensional working space.

Basecamp – is the name of The North Face intranet where they visualise their intranet is the a basecamp of outdoor lifes.

4. “My”

Adding “my” in front of company name emphasise on the sense of belonging and ownership. There are several companies who named their intranet with MY+Company name, such as  MySunPower  or  MyGFI.

5. Play with words & accronyms

Tiggle – is a clever acronym from “Tussauds Intranet Global Gateway Linking Everyone” – an Intranet name for Tussauds Group.

Inflo – Interesting play on word. It sounded like “Info”, Inflo is the name of the Intranet/Extranet system of Prefered Brands where they do flooring franchise business.

I am hoping this post will inspire many companies who are thinking about choosing name of the Intranet, why not run a naming competition to find out who comes up with the best idea within your company.

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We are often asked how long a ‘typical’ intranet project takes to launch, and what factors can speed up the process.

Well of course firstly it is really hard to find a typical project, but we do know  that from choosing Claromentis to be your provider to deploying phase 1 has over the last 5 years taken an average of 7 weeks.

Software as a service can be deployed within one day, using standard designs and our own infrastructure, if the requirements are simple.

I believe our world record is one week and I will refrain from discussing some of the longer projects, always extended by the demands of assembling and validating content, and nothing to do with technology.

In terms of what factors can speed this up, here are some of the most important :

• Provide a style guide and general instructions but let our team provide the interface. We have an established process and are just so fast at working within Claromentis.
• Restrict your project team to a manageable number.
• Expedite your sign off procedures for approval of designs or if relevant development.
• Keep phase 1 to what is really important, and not a very long list of functionality that is really only there ‘because we can’. This provides a sense of business focus and urgency.
• Provide a project manager yourselves and take the project management service from Claromentis. Then focus on the critical path, especially early on – prepare for all tasks that are on that path at the expense, if necessary – of those that are not.
• Use telephone conferences and webinars over physical meetings whenever appropriate to do so, they help preserve the focus on what needs to be done and are much shorter.

Finally – if it makes sense for your business to consider our Intranet Software as a Service solution that is the factor that above all else speeds up delivery – mainly because we don’t have to deal with your infrastructure, IT and active directory – but also because the lack of upfront investment makes it a less political project for our customers internally – freeing up motivated staff to just get the job done!

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