Artificial Intelligence (AI) has received a lot of attention in the media and now seems to be a feature in many digital products. This focus (and hype) has meant that many organisations, support functions, lines of business and teams are actively considering how to use AI and what their corresponding strategy should be. Of course, intranet and digital workplace teams will want to think about how they are going to use AI.
In some respects, the hype and noise about AI is a distraction, and can even be off-putting. However, once you take away the exaggerated claims, unpack the term a little and look to its genuine potential, we can see that AI will be making a real difference in the digital workplace in the very near future.
Unpacking AI
Its worth considering what AI actually means. You can take your pick from various definitions such as quite specific academic meanings; however when most of us use the term AI we think of computers, machines or robots carrying out actions that mimic human intelligence, for example when they can learn to be more effective at solving problems, deliver insights or understand the more subtle nuances of human language.
This means that AI isnt actually one specific technology; its actually an umbrella term which could be applied to anything from natural language processing to machine learning to autonomous vehicles to even just some very smart algorithms.
Its also worth remembering that what we regard as AI today might not be regarded as AI tomorrow. For example, we might regard the improved ability of dictation software to automatically capture what we say as text as an example of artificial intelligence. But we might not regard Optical Character Recognition (OCR) where scanned documents are turned into text as AI now, although perhaps we would have done so in the past.
What technologies constitute AI is therefore quite subjective and can change. It also means that every product under the sun can claim to have AI, potentially reducing AI to a marketing label akin to a term like hand-made or organic.
Where are we with AI in the digital workplace?
As a rule, AI is still not that advanced in the everyday digital workplace. There are a few organisations who may be considering their approach and strategy to AI, but in reality, AI tends to be apparent in separate use cases or as a feature of different products. As far as I am aware, there is nobody who can say AI is a constant and convincing thread through the standard digital workplace accessed by most employees.
Also, while there is something which still sounds quite futuristic about AI, actually most of the active use cases for it in the digital workplace are generally every day needs which we all face. For example, AI might provide suggestions for content youre interested in, help you to tag articles, provide suggestions for responses in online conversations or to anticipate the tasks you need to complete.
In particular, lets look at five areas where AI is having an impact on the digital workplace now and in the future.
1. Understanding and responding with natural language
Understanding, interpreting and responding to our natural speech is one of the most exciting areas of AI. Many of us have experienced the power of conversations with Siri or Alexa in the consumer world; thats rapidly coming to the digital workplace through chatbots that can help employees answer questions, find items, complete transactions and semi-automate processes.
For example, here at Content Formula weve worked with Microsofts language understanding service (LUIS) in helping to implement a chatbot at accountancy firm Haines Watts. The bot can be trained to understand more and more and learns as more employees converse with it.
Digital workplace virtual assistants that help us with the more routine tasks may well become commonplace. There is also likely to be more voice activation involved, for example some companies are experimenting with an Alexa in meeting rooms to take requests.
2. Making sense out of data
AI in the digital workplace has a major role in trying to make sense of a lot of potentially disparate data from different systems. This has the power to give us insights into things we didnt know or didnt notice such as patterns in user behaviour or how to optimise the workplace to support better productivity.
Where the fields of data analytics and AI start and finish is difficult to ascertain, but this is an area where we are bound to see more growth as the analytical engines of different products become sharper and use machine learning to recognise patterns which we can act upon.
One element of the digital workplace where AI is likely to have an impact is the Internet of Things with more connected devices and sensors around the building providing data which can be turned into insights into workplace behaviour and design.
3. Extracting meaning from content
Another way AI is helping to make sense out of data is extracting meaning from content. Using natural language processing and machine learning means that more effective sentiment or text analysis can be applied to individual pages or even whole document libraries.
This is already a core feature of some products, but improved capabilities have a whole range of potential uses. These include improving search and findability, automatically tagging content, suggesting relationships between documents and items based on meaning, supportinga barometer of employee sentiment, identifying common issues coming from customers and many more besides.
There are also other highly targeted uses ranging from building model documents such as contracts, identifying fraud, producing automated synopses, spotting reputational risks and more.
4. Anticipating what you need
In the consumer world we are very used to powerful suggestion engines on Netflix or Amazon which seem to know exactly what our tastes are when viewing or buying suggestions. Powerful AI and a massive dataset have made these suggestions for our tastes remarkably accurate.
Suggested content or actions is a common feature on many digital workplace products and channels; from related items on an intranet page to Workplace by Facebook offering suggestions for groups to follow to Delve presenting the information youre likely to be interested in.
AI has the power to make these suggestion engines more powerful, anticipating what we need every day as we carry out different processes in the digital workplace. For example, the Wizdom intranet uses AI to suggest tags for content. saving time and effort for content owners. Imagine, this taken further with AI, suggesting everything we need to attend to, view and worry about at the start of the working day.
5. Learning to do things better
All of the above elements of AI assume some machine learning, so that processes improve, building on the cumulative data, inputs and preferences. AI in the digital workplace can only get better.
What about the future?
In this article weve tried to look at AI in the digital workplace today and what it might being in the near future. Of course, in the more distant future, the possibilities are endless. Personalised workplace robots? Maybe! Some kind of weird-augmented-reality-thing that seems to read your mind? Who knows!
By its very definition AI will change, as the things that raise our eyebrows today become normalised tomorrow. But currently AI is an exciting prospect for the digital workplace which will have real world impact sooner than we think.
The use of Microsoft Teams is growing very rapidly , with over 300,000 organisations already using the tool, but like any part of the digital workplace or any collaboration platform, you still need to work hard to drive adoption. This is particularly the case as the use of Teams in most organisations will be largely voluntary few employees are forced to use it and therefore there must be an effort to promote and support Teams. There are also many other tools which teams can use to communicate and collaborate effectively; from Slack to other tools within the Office 365 suite to the use of email. So, adoption efforts also need to work in reference to the other options available.
What is Microsoft Teams?
Teams is a messaging and collaboration tool designed to allow teams to communicate with each other, share documents, add discussions and carry out tasks. Its an important tool within the Office 365 suite and is where Microsoft is investing much of its efforts by integrating communication capability such as Skype. Initially it was launched as a rival to Slack, but it has started to assume a greater role.
There is never one single approach which successfully drives adoption of digital workplace tools; a range of approaches works best. Here are thirteen ideas which weve seen our clients try in helping to drive the adoption of Microsoft Teams.
1. Work out what adoption means to you
Before you can drive adoption of Microsoft Teams you need to work out what successful adoption looks like for you. Working out what you want to achieve for your business, and then defining the kind of adoption and usage patterns that will help you achieve those goals, will help you to focus on the right adoption tactics for Teams.
For example, you may wish to specifically drive better project management in your organisation, and therefore successful adoption might be a greater number of project teams working with Teams. Or you may have a more general goal to make communication more efficient across functions spread across different locations, and therefore your aim may just to drive the number of users in this group. Having the right focus for adoption and knowing what success looks like will help you achieve your aims.
2. Use targeted communications
Traditional change management efforts are very likely to be part of your drive for adoption. As with any efforts, the more targeted the messages to different groups, the better. For example, communications should be framed in the perspective of the needs of specific groups. Your messaging may also need to explore the bigger picture; communications need to explain the what and the how, but also why employees should use Teams, to win hearts and minds.
3. Give support resources
While communications help to drive awareness and buy-in, and usually give some advice on how to get started, support resources need to help users once they start using Teams. A dedicated area on your intranet, with some self-service resources such as FAQs, short instructional videos and even a support community where questions can be asked to super-users, provides an excellent backbone for driving sustainable adoption.
4. Get the right team behind Teams
Driving adoption for any tool is usually a sustained effort and you need the right team behind it. Factors to consider are whether people have the right skills and know-how to drive adoption, whether they have time and whether they have the right commitment. Its also worth thinking about who owns Teams and which departments are involved. For example, its not uncommon for IT functions to drive the usage of collaboration tools, but in our experience, they are not always the best equipped to lead what is a business change rather than a technological one.
5. Use peer-to -peer recommendation
Using peer recommendation through a formal network of local champions is often a successful tactic used by intranet and digital workplace teams to help drive the adoption of different tools. Like other parts of the digital workplace, local champions recommending the use of Teams can really help support usage.
Usually recommendations from peers may be taken more seriously from users, and come framed in the specific needs and of local teams, as well as potentially in their native language. To support a successful champions network, however, you need to get the right people on board, and engage your champions through recognition and engagement efforts.
6. Use Teams for specific use cases
People get Teams far more easily when they can see specific uses for it. If you can use Teams for tangible use cases with obvious successful outcomes, then adoption becomes a much easier sell. Work out the use cases which are going to resonate with your organisation such as using Teams to:
co-ordinate activities within a department
help those working on a project
streamline activities for those working on a client account
drive communications which are too local to place on the intranet.
If you have very specific ways of working, its also possible to customise Teams see point number 10.
7. Get managers to experiences using it
Getting buy-in from managers is essential to encourage their team members to use Teams. A great way to achieve this is try and get managers to experience Teams early on. If there are use cases where your managers collaborate with each other, consider setting up Teams spaces for them so they are part of the set of early adopters and can get to know its possibilities and potential uses within their own functions.
8. Make it available and remove barriers
A key adoption approach for any part of the digital workplace is to remove any associated barriers for usage. Users wont use something which is too difficult to use or reach. With Teams, there are some baseline approaches that really help drive adoption, including:
Using Single Sign-On so users dont have to authenticate once on the network
Ensuring performance and load times are fast enough
Allowing access from mobile devices by encouraging use of the Teams app
Using the desktop app, if relevant for your organisation
Ensuring its easy to find Team spaces, for example via the intranet or via Office 365 (see below).
9. Integrate Teams into your intranet
Increasingly intranets are evolving into digital workplaces; acting as the front door to the wider portfolio of applications used across the enterprise as well as integrating with other applications. If you have a SharePoint Online intranet product like Wizdom you can integrate Teams into your intranet so that employees can find the spaces they need and keep on top of updates, all in their daily flow of work.
For example, to help drive adoption, we integrated Teams into Mulberrys intranet so that employees can reach the spaces they are assigned to via a landing page. There may also be opportunities to add updates from Teams as web parts on different pages.
10. Configure or customise Teams to your way of working
Because Teams is part of the wider Office 365 suite and because there are also a range of apps which you can integrate into the tool its possible to configure and even customise Teams so it delivers more value. For example, if you have very specific use cases and ways of doing things, some customisation can be enormously powerful. For example, we have worked with clients to build workflows, create templates and even introduced knowledge management features and processes to make Teams even more business-relevant, helping to drive adoption. We recently ran a webinar about customising Team to your way of working.
11. Make sure there are notifications
Notifications for users are an essential way to help drive adoption of Teams. Were all for reducing the amount of email in the world, but the truth is that many employees still rely on email for their updates. If this is the case, enabling email notifications for Teams may prove to be important for driving usage.
12. Put some process and governance around it
Generally, Teams doesnt necessarily have to have significant governance around how it is used, but putting in just the right amount of process and rules can really help to support adoption efforts. For example, some form of site provisioning process can help ensure that each Teams space has a dedicated owner and manager who will help to drive adoption. (Site provisioning for Teams is possible using the Wizdom intranet product, and separately weve worked with clients to even create provisioning for different templated Teams spaces.) It can also help to keep the number of sites down, aiding findability.
13. Give it time
Getting users to adopt new tools doesnt happen overnight. People are busy and there are always going to be laggards and sceptics who are highly unlikely to use it. However, the majority of users will come around and use Teams if you are realistic and give your adoption efforts sufficient time to really embed use of the tool within your organisation.
We love Teams!
At Content Formula we love teams and were confident your users will too. Use some of the approaches and ideas in this post to help drive adoption and get everybody communicating and collaborating. And if you need any advice on how your organisation can use Teams effectively, then get in touch.
I was browsing the app store on my iPhone the other day and I came across an app called “Tornado Guard” which, apparently, alerts you when there is a tornado warning in your area.
It had an average rating of 4/5 stars based on 4 reviews.
Admittedly, there arent many tornadoes in South West London, but it was the first time Id seen an app for predicting or warning about natural disasters, so I had a look.
Here are the 4 user reviews:
5 stars. “Amazing user interface design. Lots of choices for alert tones.”
5 stars. “Runs like a dream. Very fast and no crashes.”
5 stars. “I like how you can set multiple locations.”
And finally…
1 star. “Did not warn me about tornado.”
Now, obviously this highlights a problem with average ratings, but also something else:
The initial reviews are focused on something called Surface Delight. A user experience can include elements of surface delight. These are usually local, contextual and isolated components of the overall user experience. They provide a brief sensation of delight in the user. Some examples include:
Beautiful photography or graphics used in the content of the user interface
The travel website AirBnB is a great exponent of this with large enticing photos of interesting and beautiful destinations, but also people enjoying holiday experiences.
Admittedly, this is a lot harder to do on a digital workplace, unless you have a professional photographer on your team. But there are ways to borrow some inspiration from sites like AirBnB.
For this client we created an interactive header element that made use of some really nice brand imagery, but also housed a photography competition where employees who were keen amateur photographers could submit their own photos. The only constraint was that they had to embody the brand slogan Never stop moving.
The intranet header had a brand photo that you could interact withClicking the photo in the header opened up a new panel with information overlays explaining the productsEmployees saw their brand relevant photography and customer stories appearing in the banner
Subtle animations that add an additional layer of visual clarity
Again these are used really well on some websites. For example, http://rollpark.us/. This site uses some really nice animations to explain how Rollpark works and the benefits. Some are key to the explanation like the one that shows the layers of the carpark surface and explains what they are. Others are just for decoration, but add a touch of fun to the graphics. Its all done very tastefully.
This is really much less common on intranets and its because it can feel really tacky and in bad taste if money is invested in animations when other aspects of the experience are left wanting. But, some subtle loading effects and transitions on carousels etc can add a premium feel without breaking the budget.
Heres an example of a nice scrolling animation effect we implemented on a customer intranet. This was to promote a fundraising initiative that involved a sponsored walk. The key thing is that these little embellishments dont get in the way of the user doing what they need to do and that they dont delay them in any way.
Well written micro-copy potentially with appropriate touches of humour
I have noticed that MailChimp do this really well. MailChimp is an email marketing tool and they have really embraced a clean UX concept, with touches of humor. This extends to the micro-copy the small bits of text that appear throughout the site, such as form validation messages, signposts etc.
If you have a talented writer, then why not add thoughtful microcopy it can really add a human touch to the digital workplace, through the use of humor and friendly non-technical language. You dont want your digital workplace microcopy to read like it was written by developers.
These types of UI elements are a bit gimmicky, but if the underlying product is excellent, then they can be the finishing touch the icing on the cake. However, if the underlying product is poor, they can feel tacky and incongruous.
Theres something that contributes much more to a truly delightful user experience than Surface Delight:
Deep Delight.
Unlike Surface Delight, which is pretty superficial stuff, Deep Delight is much more fundamental and holistic. It can really only be achieved when all or the vast majority of – user needs are being met.
What do those needs look like?
Youve probably heard of Maslows Hierarchy of Needs. Well theres one for user experience too:
Functional thats the base of the pyramid. The system does something that is useful to users.
Reliable When users want to use it, its available and it doesnt crash etc
Usable The system is easy to use
Pleasurable Having fulfilled the bottom 3 foundational elements, the system does something extra to improve the user experience even further
Now the delightful experiences can come only when you are operating in that 4th layer (at least the more meaningful deep delight ones). Most digital workspaces today are operating in the usable layer. But, we should really aspire to more.
Were going to explore some ways to achieve delightful experiences for users. Some are about surface delight, but some are about achieving that delight at a deeper more meaningful level. For inspiration, were going to look to an unusual place… Hollywood.
1. Do thorough user research
Can you name the TV show or Movie from this screengrab?
Thats right Columbo! Hes an LA cop, but he doesnt carry a gun. All he needs is a notebook.
He disarms his interviewees with his non-threatening non-judgemental demeanour. People warm to him and dont see him as a threat. But he combines perseverance and thoroughness to really get to the bottom of what happened. He is extremely curious, he leaves no stone unturned and no pertinent question un-posed. All the while remaining extremely polite and courteous towards his interviewees. He never pushes too hard, but always comes back to ask more questions if he needs to.
And thats how he solves the case he learns so much about everyone involved and their motivations as well as the events that led up to the murder. And bam the answer comes to him the hole in the story of someone becomes obvious. He knows the answer.
If he turned his hand at interviewing users, he would surely be the most informed UX practitioner around. He would know everything about what users are trying to achieve, how they work, the barriers they face and so on. And this intimate knowledge is vital in setting the right course at the very beginning of the journey to a delightful user experience.
By adopting a Columbo style approach to user research, you will be in a much stronger position initially to deliver a delightful user experience. Because you will understand your users and what they truly need perhaps better than they do themselves.
Make time to talk to a wide range of users. Dont just ask them what they want they often dont really know whats possible and feasible. Ask them about their role, who they interact with and how, processes they follow and how they access the information they need.
You can capture detail of processes in process flows or user journeys. Capturing this info, you can then look for opportunities to improve a single step in the process, or the whole process and youll be able to add value.
Mapping out processes can help you to identify areas that can be easily improved
Also, having spoken to real users, you can create personas like the one below These serve as a reminder when you are designing or building out new features a reminder of who you audience is and what their needs and frustrations are.
2. Make new mistakes
Can you name this movie?
After the spectacular failure of his Jurassic Park experience, creator John Hammond went back to the drawing board.
When he told Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) about his plans for a second park he said Dont worry we wont make the same mistakes again
And Dr. Malcolm responded: No no no, youre making all new ones
Like John Hammond, you must avoid making the same mistakes again and again with the digital workplace. Here are a few common mistakes that we see organisations making over and over again:
Not paying attention to search. Just leaving it as is and wondering why users hate it. Theres lots you can do with search if you configure it correctly. But, you also have to refine it over time review the search logs and they can tell you a lot about what people are searching for and how you can improve the experience. A really simple one that often gets overlooked is promoted results or best bets. These are manually curated search results for common search phrases. You might have noticed this, but the majority of users are terrible searchers! They often enter one really generic key phrase and expect the search engine to know exactly what they are looking for. These search experiences are exactly the kind that you can improve with carefully curated promoted results.
Not being disciplined about governance and ongoing research and improvements. When the new digital workplace is being launched everyone has good intentions about governance and continuous improvement. But, it too often loses momentum usually when the vision holder, the driving force behind everything, leaves the business. And the digital workplace falls in to 5 yearly cycle of boom and bust. Well, this is going to sound like a sales pitch, but you should really consider having a consultancy organise and chair your governance committee. If you find one worth their salt, theyll be keen to keep the business and will be proactively driving things forward come rain or shine.
Not giving things silly names. Its too tempting to brand everything. The policy library doesnt need to be called The BPK Bible, or whatever. Just call it something that someone who walked in the business yesterday would understand. Calling things odd names creates something we call Mystery Meat in UX navigation items that youre not sure about what is in them, and youre hesitant to try.
Agonising over graphics or the look and feel. Dont get me wrong, I totally endorse having professional graphic design for any digital workplace, but the level of attention and budget it often gets relative to the other aspects of the experience. Its just insane. Keep it clean leave it to the professional UX designers, try not to make it your baby.
There are many areas like this where companies fall into the same traps again and again. So, be careful not to do that.
However, unlike Jurassic Park, you shouldnt worry about making all new mistakes. In fact, you should be prepared to make them continually, but have the right feedback mechanisms in place to learn and correct them quickly. This often doesnt involve scrapping an idea or part of a system, but simply shaping it in a slightly different direction. The result of doing this continually will be an evolution towards something better than what came before. And users will see continuous progress. They wont assume it will never work well, or theyll have to wait for some upgrade in 5 years time.
As Thomas Edison once said I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that wont work.
3. Personalisation
Truman Burbank was the unsuspecting star of his own TV show. From the day he was born, his whole world was designed around him, and full of actors. But, at eventually he began to notice that something wasnt quite right that people always seemed to appear at the exact same time, and traffic would always materialise to block his exit from the city. When he was feeling down, his best friend would always just happen to turn up with a few beers. For Truman it became a nightmare that he must escape from.
But, this experience would be a nirvana for your users. Imagine feeling like the digital workplace was all choreographed and organised around your needs and your personal priorities.
Wizdom gives you a lot of power to tailor the experience for different users based on what they do or where they are based and so on. But, to make this personalisation and targeting work well, it requires a lot of work behind the scenes. You need to make sure your Active Directory is in good shape and has accurate information on people. And you need people who know the content to make decisions about what is relevant to whom and, even at what time. But, get it right, and it can feel really special to your users.
When designing a digital workplace for a UK university, we designed the navigation entirely around roles and timings. A first year student would see a set of guidance in the navigation that was specific to them during those first few weeks of study, such as how to enrol. Whereas a third year part time masters student in a different faculty would see a completely different set of guidance.
4. Why so serious?
Why so serious?
The Joker character in the Batman films and comics has always added a touch of humour despite his sinister motives and actions.
The audience can chuckle at his gags, but still see him as a serious threat.
Something that can really make a digital workplace feel more like an extension of human society is a bit of humour, especially people not taking things too seriously or even making fun of themselves.
Its interesting to employees on two levels. Firstly, people are interesting to people. When you look at analytics reports for intranets youll notice how frequently visited content is that involves people winning awards or getting promoted, and seemingly trivial stuff like photos from the annual conference. Secondly, the humour adds a level of humanity and emotional engagement.
We have run a few campaigns for companies that involved generating interest in a new initiative or in the organisations core values and so on. One of the most successful ones included an animation that kicked off a peer recognition competition. Employees were encouraged to nominate colleagues who embodied the company values in their actions. Senior leaders in the organisation agreed for their faces to appear on little characters and they even voiced the roles themselves. As you can probably imagine, the acting was of a pretty low standard but it generated real interest as it was very authentic. That campaign ended up achieving 80% participation across the whole business. Thats participation, not just reach. It reached literally everyone in the company and 80% of them actually took part by nominating someone either via video or written nomination.
Also, we had some fun on the intranet homepage on the launch day of the campaign:
Its really worth looking for opportunities like this to add emotion to your digital workplace don’t make it too clinical and humourless.
5. Shop windows?
There was a movie released in the 80s called ‘Mannequin’ which was about a department store window dresser and his mannequin.
When nobody was around except for the window dresser, the mannequin would come to life and they ended up falling in love.
The mannequin was played by Kim Katrall of Sex and the City fame. Thats not her in the photo by the way.
Can you imagine the moment when she told her family she just won a part in her first Hollywood movie…
Fantastic! Oh well done! So whats the role?
A mannequin
… Great!
At least she didnt have to worry about her acting being too wooden.
But anyway, shop windows is a term we often hear in relation to sections on the intranet. That the landing page should act like a shop window.
NO the landing page shouldnt be a shop window.
Shop windows either look like this:
Arty farty and only tells me about 3 garments they are currently selling.
Or this.
A complete sensory overload. Too many intranets look like this, by the way.
No, no, no. What users really need a section landing page to be like is a Store Directory!
The one you see on a big board once you are inside the store. This tells you everything you can expect to find in a neat and logically organised fashion.
Heres an example:
Base your landing page designs around the store directories concept.
Dont let anyone tell you that it looks too text heavy theyre talking nonsense.
Sit and watch someone take a usability test using pages like the ones below and watch them breeze through it:
6. Greed is good
Gordon Gecko was famous for his ability to pull together a huge intranet budget.
In 1985s Wall Street, Gordon Gecko addresses the stockholders of Teldar Paper after just buying a majority stake in the company. He famously states:
Greed is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit
And if youre going to deliver a delightful user experience, youd better get greedy. There are so many areas that you will need to invest time and budget. You wont achieve delightful user experience on a shoestring.
You cant just accept what you are given. Someone with no understanding of whats required or whats at stake will normally have put an arbitrary number down and that became your budget. You will need to make your case. Demonstrate return on investment.
If youve done your user research right like Columbo would then youll be aware of many processes that users are completing. You can calculate how long they take, how often they are performed and by how many people. You can then put a financial cost on the total time taken across a year.
Then you can highlight the changes you plan to make to the process, and the new time it will take (based some quick and dirty prototype testing you did). Voila! you have a monetary figure in terms of cost savings something to bolster your case.
If the process is not of interest to the intranet sponsor because its not their department, then go to the person whos department it is. Why not get a budget from every dept in the organisation?
And you need to do it regularly. Not once every 5 years. How can you evolve the digital workplace if the budget goes into hibernation for years at a time?
We have a customer that is involved in the UK property market we designed and built their digital workplace for them and help them to evolve it. Our main point of contact at that business has been very successful in getting lots of continuous investment. After the initial launch, rather than saying job done, he went to the board and gave them a very simple message:
We used to need three people to manage 30 property deals a month now we only need one. Imagine what we can do with other parts of the business.
Recently this project won an Intranet Innovation Award.
7. Speed matters
You gotta be gone in 60 seconds
That was the rule of master car thief Randall Raines. If he couldn’t steal a car in under 60 seconds, then he shouldnt attempt it or risk getting caught.
Speed is important in the digital workplace too. But, your users wont give you 60 seconds probably less than 10.
Getting pages to load quickly can be difficult it relies on so many factors:
Computer performance
Local network bandwidth
Internet bandwidth
Contention ration (how many people are using the connection)
Server performance
Server bandwidth
Server location
Apps running on server
Calls to other services
Efficiency of coding
And so on.
If youre having problems with reported speed issues, you need to get an understanding of each of these areas and the impact (if any) it is having on the performance.
We recently worked on a digital workplace project that had users connecting from China and they were having problems with speed. We narrowed the problem down to the relay time from the laptops of the Chinese based users to the server, and the additional delay in relay time to other services e.g. stock prices, weather, even Google font libraries.
We minimised the impact of these issues by changing a couple of things:
For Chinese users only (using targeting) we removed some dynamic blocks on the homepage, and replaced them with hardcoded links into that part of the site e.g. Blogs.
We also moved many of the assets regularly used on the site to a Content Delivery Network (CDN) this meant that these files would be delivered from local servers in China meaning less relay time and faster loading.
Essentially we removed some of the non-essential bells and whistles, but improved the User Experience because we fixed a more fundamental issue.
8. Did I say seven?
This is the Jonny Cab from Total Recall – the original starring Arnold Schwarzenegger where he goes on a virtual vacation to Mars, and then ends up going for real.
So, the Johnny Cab – along with a colony on Mars was a vision of the future from 1990. It was basically a self-driving car – that for some odd reason wasted half of the interior space in order to accommodate a spooky dummy as the human driver. Of course, the tech for driver less cars is here now minus the scary dummy, thankfully.
Were obviously still working on colonising Mars. But, another area where we have made progress is Artificial Intelligence (AI) and a subset of that Expert Systems. Expert systems can do things like diagnose diseases based on symptoms and DNA data, but they can also serve you business information typically via a chat bot.
Chat bots are starting to appear in the digital workplace. At the moment they are a bit rudimentary and sort of work like glorified search. But, the beauty is that they improve the more you use them they are built to learn based on inputs and reactions to the responses they provide. And they can be training to be more effective.
Here’s a chat bot that we implemented on a customer intranet its called Cyril. Its early days for this bot and it does things like give you information on people or offices or policies etc when you ask it in the chat window.
But I think what is most exciting about Chat Bots is when they are delivered via your regular messaging apps on your smartphone. That makes it super quick and super easy to interact with the bot and get information quickly when you are on the go.
Were just about to enable access via Skype for Business on Cyril. So you wont need to open the chat window on the intranet anymore. We’re positive that this will deliver a delightful user experience to heavy mobile users.
Remember the pyramid
So, thats 7 ways you can deliver delightful user experience. Though, as weve discussed doing just one of them wont cut it. You need to build up your pyramid and you need to weave all of these things together to achieve Deep Delight. Thats the only way you can achieve a true, deep level, holistic sense of delight in not just one but all your users.
Over the past couple of years Microsoft has been rolling out the SharePoint modern experience and while some parts of it are still in preview, it has been released globally for elements such as Team Sites. New SharePoint features such as Communication Sites and Hub Sites have also been released using modern pages.
What is the modern experience?
Modern pages represent a superior user and content editor experience for SharePoint, fills some of the gaps around publishing that Microsoft probably should have dealt with years ago and has various other advantages.
The Modern Experience is based on the SharePoint Framework, a development framework which presented a fundamental change from the classic platform, with everything developed on the client rather than server side. Without going too much into the technical aspects of this, it basically means developing SharePoint is now much more about configuring the front-end experience than the processes that run in the back end, which was the case for the classic SharePoint of the past.
While inevitably with a new whole development framework and design there have been a few glitches on the way, and there are still occasionally features of classic SharePoint which we miss, overall the introduction of SharePoints modern pages has been highly beneficial. Here are eight things we love about the SharePoints modern experience.
1. Its changed perceptions of SharePoint
Here at Content Formula weve worked with SharePoint for years, and while its always been a platform you can get some incredible results with, project teams and intranet managers who have worked with it closely have often found it frustrating and difficult. And users havent exactly been wild about the classic SharePoint user experience either.
Lets be honest, until a couple of years back, SharePoint was not a very popular platform and was associated with long, complex projects which were over-reliant on development resource and could easily end up with low adoption. But over the last two to three years weve noticed that perceptions of SharePoint have changed to something more favourable. This is down to multiple factors, including Office 365 and more bolt-on options, but also down to the modern experience with its far superior user experience and ease of use. The days of SharePoint regarded as a beast of a platform are disappearing.
2. Modern pages look great for users
While theres always improvements which can be made, generally modern pages look great with clear page layouts, greater use of images and a contemporary feel. They also render very nicely on mobile devices too, another key advantage of modern pages. And thats just right out of the box.
The superior look and feel when compared to the dated and sometimes cluttered feel of classic SharePoint ensures a better reaction to content from users. These are sites employees are far more likely to want to use and will find easier to use.
3. Performance is better
Because the SharePoint framework means all the web parts are executed on the client side rather than the server side it means that generally performance is better, especially for content editors or site administrators. Previously things could be a bit clunky with loads of page reloads, but now SharePoint is faster and smoother.
4. It has given power to content editors (at last)
The lack of a CMS or a decent content editor experience in SharePoint for a long time had left many of us puzzled. Why, when so many intranets use SharePoint, didnt Microsoft invest in developing decent publishing interfaces? To a certain extent, intranet-in-a-box products like SharePoint have bridged that gap, but now the modern experience has opened up SharePoint to content editors who are used to the easy experience of a popular CMS like WordPress.
Modern pages are really easy to edit. For example, with just two clicks you can add the necessary web part and the changes are made there and then on the page. Many of the off-putting elements for content editors such as page reloads, confusing terminology and other frustrating elements of classic SharePoint are gone. This puts SharePoint in the hands of content editors more than ever and opens up the opportunity to publish for all. They need less training, can be more self-sufficient and sites are most sustainable.
5. Less development resource is required
The other benefit of giving more power to content editors is that you need less development resource. Before youd need a .NET developer to achieve some of the things that content editors can do on their own now. Insert a Yammer feed web part? Thats now two clicks away, not a business case which has to be made to the Head of IT Development.
Of course, youll still need developers to do some of the things you need to achieve, but ultimately, youll save money and your IT developers will be freed up to use their time to add more value to more complex projects.
6. Communication and Hub sites add value
Communication sites, and more recently, Hub sites are an integral part of the modern experience and have made it much easier for teams within organisations, as well as smaller companies, to distribute information and communication via a simple intranet-like experience. With web parts for easy publishing of news, promotions and events and an attractive layout, Communication sites do make it easier to communicate!
Hub site also can connect numerous communication sites and present an aggregated view of news and content a little like an intranet homepage and departmental sites, for example. These sites are a useful addition to the tools available within the digital workplace and while they are nowhere near in providing the sophistication of an in a box product such as Wizdom, particularly for internal communicators or knowledge management functions, they give welcome options to teams, departments and smaller companies.
7. Modern pages are good news for turnkey intranets
Modern pages are also good news for turnkey SharePoint intranets like Wizdom which can utilise the design and approach of modern pages, and even utilise Communication or Hub sites, while still filling the gaps that SharePoint out of the box doesnt provide. In our view, the better SharePoint gets, the better the SharePoint in-a-box products get too.
8. Modern SharePoint web parts wrap themselves around Office 365
One of the obvious advantages of SharePoint Online and the modern experience is that it integrates more easily with the rest of Office 365. By letting content editors easily add templated web parts which enable people to add document libraries, Yammer feeds or the latest updates from a relevant Microsoft Teams site, SharePoint becomes the obvious place to build an integrated experience with the rest of the Office 365 suite. This adds value to Office 365 and your SharePoint intranet and helps to drive adoption.
Make it modern!
SharePoint modern pages bring lots of other advantages which are too numerous to mention here, but including arguably better security, more flexibility and more.
Modern SharePoint irons out many of the issues with classic SharePoint and delivers a great user experience. If you fell out of love with classic SharePoint, then its really worth taking a fresh look at the modern platform for your intranet, collaborative spaces, workflow needs and more. If youd like to discuss any aspect of modern SharePoint modern pages or Office 365 then please get in touch!
Building a true digital workplace is a path which many of our clients are now following. With the help of Wizdom and Office 365, they are going beyond the confines of the traditional intranet and implementing an experience where employees can carry out more and more of their everyday work efficiently and effectively, all wrapped up in an attractive user interface.
Earlier in the year, at our Digital Workplace conference in Copenhagen, we heard from a number of organizations who are on their digital workplace journey, as well as from members of the Wizdom team or trusted partners, about what needs to be done to build a successful digital workplace. Clause Ole Hasle, Wizdoms COO and Christian Larsen, Director of Internal Communication and Corporate Events, and Events, GEA Group presented together about some of the best practices to follow.
Here are some of some observations from that session, which were also reflected in some of the other presentations. Here are six best practices to follow in building a digital workplace.
1. Consider a wide scope which focuses on the full potential of the digital workplace
The digital workplace can have a very wide scope with a broad range of functionality, capabilities and content. Often the wider the scope, the more potential value your digital workplace will deliver to employees.
In working out what you want your digital workplace to be, its critical to not to have a traditional intranet mindset and focus just on news publishing and static content. Consider how employees do their work, what will deliver business value, the key processes in your organization and outcomes such as increased productivity and even digital transformation.
In considering a wide scope of the digital workplace, several elements were outlined including:
Communication
Collaboration
People and communication
Projects
Tools
Standards and procedures
Employee self-service
Processes
If that scope sounds ambitious, thats because it is! But its worth remembering that the digital workplace is a platform which evolves. Having a wide scope from the start means that you can build your platform in a way so that it can keep on expanding and delivering value.
2. Use standard products and limit customization
Office 365 and products like Wizdom keep on adding more and more tools and capabilities. Microsofts investment in the Office 365 toolset is impressive. We also focus much of our effort on making Wizdom better and better.
The sheer scale of the tools available as well as their configurability, means that organizations can usually meet the vast majority of their digital workplace needs out of the box. Theres also a much better user experience compared to a few years back, so organisations dont need to change interfaces.
Using the standard product functionality for your digital workplace has many advantages. Its far easier to maintain and cheaper to run, quicker to introduce changes and your digital workplace keeps on expanding. Youre taking advantage of a platform which keeps on improving, particularly if you are in the cloud rather than on-premises.
Customizing your entire digital workplace comes with risks its expensive, time-consuming and may not be compatible with the latest updates. It will mean there will be more work involved with any upgrade to your platform and a higher risk of issues. We know that in complex organizations or for particular processes sometimes customization is needed. However, we strongly recommend limiting the level of customization to only where your business has particular complex needs and will truly deliver value.
3. Invest in search
Search is an essential part of the digital workplace. As soon as you start building an experience with a wider scope beyond the traditional publishing intranet, you also create an expectation from users that they will be able to search for everything in one place. Your users are also used to using Google and will expect to have a similar ability to tap in just one word and find everything they need.
Unfortunately, many enterprise search tools come nowhere near meeting the expectations of their users. And while some users do have unrealistic expectations of what can be achieved (Google and enterprise search are two very different things!), if you can achieve even just a decent digital workplace search with good findability youll be helping to drive productivity, and already making a massive impact.
SharePoint has a great search engine, which works well out-of-the-box, but you only start really getting the value when you invest some time and resources in configuring the search, establishing some governance and working on a pattern of continuous improvement.
Spend time on:
establishing search refiners
widening the scope of search
tweaking search rules based on metrics
putting governance in place around tagging to improve findability
having a regular process to make improvements,
optimising content and more!
Doing all these things will help make your search better and better. In our view, investing in search is absolutely worth the effort!
4. Work on a task-based information architecture
Along with a decent search, having a great information architecture that mirrors the way employees think will also help them to navigate around your digital workplace and find the information or application they need. Its important that an information architecture is built around the way employees work usually around completing tasks and other common themes with intuitive labelling so it is easy to understand for your employees.
All too often traditional intranets have a navigation based on the organisational structure or full of horrible acronyms, but this means that you then have to know your organisation and systems very well to be able to find what you need. Thats no good for a new employee!
Spend time on developing a good information architecture based on tasks and needs which has been thoroughly tested with your users. Having a task-based information architecture will make your digital workplace much easier to use.
5. Carry out usability testing
Having a strong information architecture, useful content and intuitive interfaces is key for your digital workplace. This can only really be achieved through usability testing. By carrying out ongoing tests with your users you can make sure your digital workplace is meeting your users needs. A common way to do this is to make sure that your users are able to complete particular tasks by finding and using the content they need.
Usability testing not only saves you time and provides better results, but also creates user buy-in as they know an intranet has been centred around their needs. Sometimes those involved in your testing may also become digital workplace champions, helping to support your launch. Having usability data also helps to drive consensus around decision-making and eliminates time-consuming arguments about what should go in the navigation or where content should be placed.
6. Dont get scared off by multi-language challenges
Workforces are diverse, especially in global organisations. Thats something to celebrate and working with colleagues from around the world is one of the most exciting things about modern working life. However, one of the challenges can be around the use of multiple languages. You may have a smaller number of official languages and even just one or two (for example English and Danish), but in your everyday business perhaps employees need some critical content in the digital workplace to be translated into their native tongue.
Having a multi-lingual policy and digital workplace that actually works on a day-to-day basis to meet employee needs can have a significant impact on both productivity, but also employee engagement, especially for employees in country offices who may feel disconnected from their global HQ.
There are lots of options for multi-lingual digital workplaces, ranging from auto-translation to language variations of critical pages and documents (e.g. HR information and policies) to personalisation. Make sure you exploit the out of the box functionality in your digital workplace to meet the needs of your employees. Dont get scared off by the challenges of multi-language!
8. Building a great digital workplace
If youve invested in Office 365 and a solution like Wizdom, you certainly have the right tools to build a digital workplace. Its now important to get your approach right. Consider using some of the best practices detailed in this article on your digital workplace journey to achieve the right solution for your employees and your organization.
We ran a free webinar on October 10th 2018 on how to customise MS teams to your ways of working.
Lots of people know that Teams has taken the digital workplace by storm thanks to its easy-to-use collaboration features. But something people are less aware of is its powerful integration capabilities.
Forward-thinking companies who adopted MS Teams early are now making use of these capabilities and customising it to suit their processes and ways of working. We’ve been helping them do this and now have some useful learnings to share with you.
In this webinar we:
– Show you examples of real-life Teams customisations and integrations that go way beyond what’s available in the tabs.
– Discuss some of the technologies that enable customisation and explain the art of the possible.
– Answer your questions about how Teams can be extended and customised
– Discussing Microsoft’s future plans for Teams.
We will run other webinars. If you want to be informed about these then sign up to our mailing list. You can unsubscribe by clicking the link at the foot of every email we send out.
The Step Two Intranet and Digital Workplace Awards are global awards that recognise outstanding contributions to the fields of intranets and digital workplaces. We’re super proud to have won an award this year for our work on Moving Made Easy.
This is what Step Two had to say in their summary of the Moving Made Easy entry:
Moving Made Easy: Using Office 365 for core business processes
Small property company Moving Made Easy has rebuilt its core systems using Office 365, resulting in a new custom-built digital workplace. The new system covers every part of their selling process from logging customer and property details, through to capturing details of the sales process to generating marketing documents. Power BI has been used to deliver an extensive set of management dashboards.
The new system is already supporting enhanced decision-making, delivering significant time savings, supporting a positive shift in culture and providing a springboard for the evolution of the company.
Why this won a Silver award
Its great to see Office 365 used creatively to rebuild core business processes and to be at the centre of the way the organisation works and interacts with clients.
There are significant time savings which have a considerable impact on a small company
The digital workplace is already contributing to a change to a more proactive and learning- centric culture.
The extensive use of Power BI to build management dashboards and expose sales data has already helped in decision-making and focusing sales teams.
We admire the commitment to using the digital workplace as an enabler to move the business forward, from driving further efficiencies to client service innovation, there is already an ambitious roadmap planned.
One of the brilliant things about working at Content Formula is you can get involved with clients who are innovating and experimenting with the digital workplace. Even when implementations are more straightforward, theres often a fresh perspective or a new twist somewhere in the project. Sometimes you experience something new, while at other times you get fresh insight into things you already knew. There is always an opportunity to learn.
Over the past couple of years so weve been doing a lot of work with Wizdom intranets, building custom digital workplaces in Office 365 and SharePoint, implementing Microsoft Teams and deploying chatbots. Weve been busy! Here are five key lessons and takeaways from some of our projects.
1. You need to train your bot
Weve been very proud of our work at UK accountancy firm, Haines Watts. We helped the team introduce a new custom-built intranet based on Office 365, where all the content is tagged with controlled keywords. Our latest project has been to introduce a new chatbot named after the firms founder, Cyril Watts. Employees can access Cyril via every intranet page and through Skype for Business. They can ask it key operational questions, to find information, and even discover a fact or two about the company.
One thing we have learnt is that you need to spend time to train your chatbot. Because the bot uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve performance, the more you talk to it, the more phrases it understands. We worked with the team at Haines Watts to train Cyril to respond to the natural language phrases used by employees. It was important to get Cyrils understanding up to a sufficient level, so that employees can see the value in using the bot, and drive adoption so Cyril keeps on improving. Training your bot is a critical step in any chatbot project.
2. Always plan for the unknown
A key tenet of project management is always to plan for the unknown, for example ensuring you have a little contingency in the budget and flexibility in your timeline. Weve found that to be true for digital workplace projects. With Office 365 such a reliable platform and with a mature, stable platform like Wizdom, its always tempting to assume everything will work like clockwork. And, to be honest, on the technology side of things, theres rarely an issue. But digital workplaces and intranets can be complex and sometimes theres an issue thats hard to spot until youre knee deep in the project.
For example, we recently worked with one client to upload policy information into a central policy library. But the metadata on the documents meant that we had make some modest development changes to make the content migration work. Similarly when we worked with Moving Made Easy to help them build their complex digital workplace, we needed to add additional elements to the design to ensure we ended up with the best possible solution. Luckily both clients made provision for changes and we were able to deliver additional but critical enhancements without troubling budgets and timelines.
3. Carry out a soft launch
In the past there has always been an emphasis on making a big splash when you launch your intranet and digital workplace. And while its great to make some noise, in recent years there has been a move away from big bang releases to more iterative approaches.
I would urge clients to consider a soft launch now. Its just a more intelligent way to launch a digital workplace. We recently worked with UK iconic fashion accessory brand Mulberry and the intranet was initially launched to a much smaller set of users. Seeing the soft launch go smoothly gave confidence to key stakeholders and gave extra time for content owners to finalise their sites. It also gave us very valuable feedback from users and on the back of this we made some tweaks and added a couple of new features which really made a difference. The soft launch also resulted in a ready set of ambassadors whom were more likely to recommend using the intranet to their peers. The result was a better intranet and a head start on adoption.
4. Use offline channels for promotion
Because were producing digital workplaces we tend to think of digital channels as the best option to promote new sites and drive adoption. Were also setting a good example by exhibiting the type of digital behaviour were advocating.
Of course, you must promote digitally, but weve learnt along the way that offline channels can be the best way to promote a digital workplace. For example, when we implemented a new intranet at global technology company Johnson Matthey, the intranet team carried out a highly effective roadshow to promote the intranet in places like China and the US.
Employees get bombarded with emails and information, and it s easy for them to get message blindness. Having a stand in the staff restaurant which tells you about the benefits of the new intranet can sometimes have more impact and drive awareness and adoption.
5. Always do your research
Getting a good understanding of how employees use the digital workplace, what their pain points are and how they work is essential to produce a successful intranet or digital workplace. You must spend time interviewing users, running workshops, observing working patterns and running surveys. Every single project Ive been involved in has always reminded of the importance of this. There are usually some very specific points uncovered in interviews with users and stakeholders which lead to a key detail in how we design the solution.
In virtually all our projects at Content Formula we run a thorough discovery process where we carry out a lot of interviews, crunch the data and gain some insights. This has two additional benefits to driving good requirements. Firstly, it creates trust and engagement with users who feel they are being listened to, and which can directly impact adoption after launch. Secondly, having data can silence uninformed stakeholders who might want to make design decisions based on their assumptions. Again, Im always glad weve undertaken a thorough period of user and stakeholder research.
Learn with us!
As we go forward with Office 365 and the digital workplace therell be more to learn in the coming months. If youve planning a Office 365, intranet or SharePoint project, why not get in touch and benefit from our extensive experience? There may be opportunities to learn together and try out new approaches. The futures looking exciting in the digital workplace!
One of the most valuable aspects of a great intranet is that it allows employees to come together in a single place to communicate and collaborate. This has particular value in global organisations, where employees work in scattered locations across multiple time zones. A global intranet brings employees together and feel more like one company.
Projects to establish a single intranet in large, global organisations can be challenging. The logistics of dealing with a large group of distributed employees, the sheer amount of content on the intranet and potentially merging existing local intranets into one global platform is not always straightforward. And while using a product like Wizdom is much quicker than building a custom platform, projects can still take a long time once you factor in planning, research, testing, content migration and more.
At the recent Wizdom Conference in Copenhagen we had some strong case studies of global intranet projects from companies such as Ørsted, Ramboll and GEA. Here are some of our thoughts on the essential elements of a successful global intranet project.
1. Do your research
Global intranet projects will involve a large number of users and stakeholders, not only from different business divisions but also from locations around the world. Those involved must reflect the diversity of a global workforce with different types of employees in various roles, including those working in offices, production plants and frontline roles.
A successful intranet is designed around a thorough understanding of employees and their needs. Because of the diversity of the workforce who will be using your intranet, it is critical to spend time finding out about different working patterns, needs, pain points and perspectives. This can only be achieved through an extensive discovery and user research period that covers all your different groups of users.
There are multiple techniques to carry out effective research including interviews, workshops, surveys, observation, usability testing, developing personas and more, but it is always worth spending the time and effort. User research also creates buy-in from employees who feel they are being listened to and see that their needs are being considered for the new intranet.
2. Create a vision that everyone can buy into
With so many different stakeholders, inevitably there will be many differing ideas and opinions on what the new intranet should do and deliver. Having a strong vision for the new intranet that everybody can buy into allows all involved to work towards the same end goal. It also helps gets users and stakeholders excited about the project.
At the Wizdom Conference, we heard how Ramboll developed a new vision for the global intranet to be an integrated digital environment, Digital Workspace, that allows employees to communicate, collaborate and deliver excellence whenever and where they may be working. Communicating the vision helped the wider team to deliver a consistent message to users and stakeholders, as well as establish clarity and focus.
3. Work on getting the governance right upfront
Governance is a wide topic covering the various structures, polices, roles, rules and processes to make sure the intranet delivers value and runs efficiently on a day-to-day basis. Establishing governance up-front (and making sure everyone buys into it) will allow your intranet to develop in a more sustainable and successful way, and ensure you have high quality content. The need for robust governance is particularly acute in global intranet projects so it can stop local teams going off and doing their own thing and undermining the high quality of your intranet.
For example, at GEA the team established various different roles with associated responsibilities to provide clarity over intranet, news and content ownership. These included portal owners, task or content owners, local news creators, global news editors, intranet owners and IT.
4. Use personalization to balance global and local content
One of the key capabilities of a modern intranet is to deliver personalized content which is targeted to the individual employees based on their profile. A global intranet should know some details about the person who is viewing the content and then deliver news and pages based on attributes such as the location that person is based, the division or function they work in, the language they speak or their level of seniority. This local content should appear seamlessly together with global content to ensure the intranet is relevant and useful to every employee.
Getting the balance between global and local content is not always easy and requires ensuring all profile data (usually sourced from your HR system and synchronised with Active Directory data) is correct. Teams must also work with local content owners to ensure they produce relevant content, and also deal with the logistics of multi-language content.
5. Focus on content and its findability
An intranet is only as good as its content, and a new intranet project provides the opportunity to make sure content is useful, relevant, well-written, accurate and up-to-date. And of course, getting the content right also means making sure it is easily findable. In global intranet projects two important practices help with these elements.
It is important not to just migrate your existing content. Instead spend time to identify the content that is valuable and rewrite if it necessary. For example, Ørsted used analytics and standard criteria to identify which content should be migrated, reviewed or deleted. If youre migrating content from multiple existing local intranets, its a must to review it carefully.
The second key practice is to develop a global information architecture (navigation) which is based around the way employees think and work rather than organisational structures. The only reliable way to achieve this is to work with users and carry out extensive testing, a practice that both Ørsted and GEA followed to produce intuitive, task-based information architectures that a global workforce understands.
6. Establish a realistic roadmap for launch that also involves change management
Its essential to have a realistic roadmap for the launch of your global intranet. Global intranet launches are often done across multiple phases, either because the central team is too small to fully support a single big bang global roll-out, or because different features and capabilities are being introduced more gradually. At Ramboll the team released several core components of the digital workspace before the full intranet launch and continue to release new features.
Intranets also need ongoing change management efforts to help content owners and users get the best out of the platform. For global intranets it is often best to physically visit some of your key locations to help with launch. For example, at GEA the team carried out a post-launch engagement roadshow covering editor training, feedback sessions, promotional activity and more.
7. Perseverance is key
Because of the complexity and length of a global intranet project, there are going to be times when things dont run so smoothly or take much longer than expected. Project teams running global intranet projects need perseverance and patience.
At the conference we heard first-hand accounts of some of the challenges including one company who had to work at the same time as a major corporate transformation exercise which the new intranet would help support. But the project team had to keep the transformation plans secret, which was very difficult when you are working with hundreds of users to shape the new intranet!
Of course, once you get to the launch of your global intranet and get great feedback from users, it always feels worth all the efforts that youve made!
Global intranets are always worth the effort
Global intranet projects take time but theyre always worth the effort. They provide a fantastic channel to help keep employees informed, support them in their working day and connect with colleagues from all over the world. As well as driving engagement and efficiency, they also provide a springboard to develop global digital workplaces. Using many of the elements above will help teams to deliver highly successful global intranets.
The original article was published here
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