© Copyright 2014, Step Two Designs Pty Ltd • www.steptwo.com.auintranets • usability • information architecture • knowledge management • content management

KMCOLUMN

OCTOBER 2014

Intranet Innovations 2014: key themes from this year’s awards

2014’s Intranet Innovation Awards was an-other bumper year for showcasing inspiringand innovative intranets.

Now in its eighth year, the competition, runby Step Two Designs, celebrates the most in-novative intranets from all over the globe.This year we received over 50 entries, withthe high standard of submissions confirmingagain that intranets and the teams behindthem are in a very good place.

From classic intranet design to process im-provement to social collaboration to mobileapps to engagement-led initiatives, intranetteams are delivering great solutions whichare having an impact on organisations andimproving the way employees work.

Out of all the winners, the Platinum awardgoes to the most exceptional entry. This yearit was awarded to Lakewood High School’sCenter for Advanced Technologies (CAT)program.

In addition we awarded:

• Nine gold award winners: Accolade (Netherlands), Deloitte LLP (USA), PwC, Johnson & Johnson Asia-Pacific (Singapore), Coles (Australia), University of Liverpool (UK), BSI (UK), NNE Pharmaplan (Denmark) and Ogletree Deakins (USA).

• Seven commended entries: PUB (Singapore), Rugby Football Union (UK), Prophet (USA), Australia (Telstra), Bajaj Finance (India), Minter Ellison (Australia) and ITARICON (Germany).

From the winning entries and across thesubmissions in general we are able to see

where leading-edge intranets are heading.This article explores six of those key themes.

17 case studies, 200 screen shots!The full annual Intranet Innovations 2014report features detailed case studies of all 17winning and commended entries andaround 200 intranet screen shots of the sitesin question. At $89 it’s exceptional value,helping to both inform and inspire intranetteams. Report sales also support the effort ittakes us to keep on running the Awards.

Obtain the report from our online store:store.steptwo.com.au/product/intranet-innovations/

(If you’re new to the Awards, obtain the bun-dle of reports, providing all eight years ofwinners for just $100 extra.)

Leading intranets focus on user and organisational needsThe most successful intranets are firmly fo-cused on the everyday needs of their users,but also deliver organisational benefits. Byimproving the way employees work, compa-nies can also meet their wider objectives,such as increasing productivity or liftingmorale.

The best intranets demonstrate how taking auser-centred view of the intranet reaps ben-efits. This must be founded on a thoroughunderstanding of how users actually work,and what they need to do it well.

This principle of individual and organisa-tional level benefits was clearly demonstrat-ed by a truly extraordinary intranet. It was acomplete surprise that the 2014 PlatinumAward would go to a high school in Florida,but the Center for Advanced Technologies(CAT) at Lakewood High School is a highlyunusual and indeed inspirational program.

The CAT program delivers a SharePoint2013 environment with a variety of very spe-cific custom applications to help studentsand staff learn and work.

Steve Bynghall is a freelance con-sultant and writer specialising inintranets, collaboration and KM.He coordinates the Intranet Inno-vation Awards and writes the ac-companying report. He is based inthe UK, and you can follow Steveon Twitter at @bynghall.

Lakewood High School’s LHSnet intranet provides an array of useful tools for staff and students, some available on mobile devices. Amazingly the environment is designed, programmed and maintained by the students themselves.

Johnson & Johnson Asia-Pacific’s ‘Making Smiles, Changing Lives’ intranet microsite supported the firm’s CSR programme to support the “Operation Smile” charity which raises awareness and performs operations for children with cleft lips and palates. Using social features, employees could send photos of fundraising events and volunteering efforts directly from their mobile phones.

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These include a hall-pass system to coordi-nate student movements through the school,a lesson planner and other useful tools. Thesystem’s very well-designed interface andmobile access would be the envy of manycommercial organisations.

This is a platform on a mission to improvethe school environment. This has been wellarticulated as “Every solution in this pro-gram has to help solve a problem or need.”

What is even more impressive is that all thedesign work, requirements gathering, pro-gramming and day-to-day management ofthe platform is performed by the studentsthemselves. The CAT program is helping toestablish the next generation of tech- and in-tranet-savvy teams, and the fact that anumber of former students are already work-ing at Microsoft HQ is no surprise.

Social tools are becoming embedded in processes

In leading organisations, social and collabo-rative tools are now maturing and are start-ing to be incorporated into more formalprocesses.

Up to now the implementation of socialtools has been widespread, but adoption hasbeen patchy. The emergence of a more di-rectly quantifiable contribution to businessvalue will be welcome news to anybodymaking a business case for social tools.

One of the best examples of socially pow-ered processes is at Dutch social housing or-ganisation Accolade, in a process it hascalled ‘Social Task Management’.

Using extensive integration between thefirm’s intranet Pluk and the CRM system, thebusy customer-facing front office uses theintranet to pass on customer queries it can-not answer to other parts of the organisation.Workflow, notifications, deadlines andnominated users act like a more formal tasksystem.

Microblogging is then used to actually an-swer the query and other colleagues who canhelp contribute can be easily brought in.Tasks are also visible to all, bringing a socialapproach to directly helping customers.

Another advantage of social tools is theirability to be used for a range of different pur-poses.

German consulting firm ITARICON uses in-tegration between the firm’s SAP Jam collab-oration platform and the CRM system todrive a new sales approach. Collaborative ar-eas are helping coordinate efforts to win newclients and tenders.

At the Rugby Football Union, Yammer is be-ing leveraged for internal communicationsacross a number of different groups. At Aus-tralian law firm Minter Ellison, differentgroups of staff are using their social intranetfor many activities, including current aware-ness, collaborating on documents and more.

Social is now touching a range of activitiesand subsequently realising value.

Intranets can transform HR processes and servicesLeading-edge intranets are now improvingHR processes and delivering self-servicetransactions more successfully than ever be-fore. This is having a significant impact forHR functions and organisations.

As more transactions are carried out onlineby employees themselves, intranets arehelping to reduce costs and allowing HRprofessionals to focus on providing morecomplex, value-added services. Intranet-driven solutions are also resulting in im-provements to key organisational KPIs suchas employee retention.

At the heart of this are sophisticated levels ofintegration, aggregating data into the intran-et from multiple HR systems to deliver a per-sonalised and consistent experience.

An example of a key HR process which canbenefit is onboarding. By focusing on theneeds of new hires, companies can increaseemployee retention, resulting in huge costsavings as well as a better informed andmore engaged workforce.

Onboarding has rarely been delivered as ef-fectively as at Danish pharmaceutical firmNNE Pharmaplan.

New hires experience the environment be-fore their first day. They must completethree ‘missions’ incorporating various

Social tools are maturing and improving processes

Intranets are improving key organisational KPIs around HR

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Social housing organisation Accolade uses the intranet to answer customer queries. With extensive integration with the firm’s CRM software, tasks which can’t be answered by call centre staff are assigned via the intranet to the right department. These queries are then resolved using social tools, in what Accolade have called “Social Task Management.”

Pharmaceutical firm NNE Pharmaplan launched a global onboarding programme. Using extensive integration between intranet, corporate website, HR system and learning management system, new employees must complete three “missions” in their first 90 days. From the control room (pictured above) they learn about the firm and its objectives.

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learning materials, mainly accessed throughthe intranet. A well-thought-out programwith gamification elements is helping thecompany achieve its ambitions for growth.

Another excellent example of HR processimprovement is Deloitte’s US firm. Its ‘Tal-ent on Demand’ HR pages on the intranet aretruly exceptional, integrating with a vastnumber of back-end systems covering multi-ple aspects of benefits and pay, leave, recog-nition, learning and more.

Powerful features include the ability to chatonline with an HR specialist from any pagewithin the site, as well as toolkits whichshow all the steps involved for complex sce-narios.

Design thinking delivers true innovation

Intranet design continues to excel, equallingthe combination of good usability and highquality aesthetics found in the consumerworld. A few intranet teams are also goingbeyond just designing attractive sites, andallowing strong design thinking to specifi-cally fuel innovation. The result is a power-ful user experience with equally powerfulfunctionality.

Frequently the innovation is sparked by thedesign challenges and constraints that needto be overcome, generating interesting andnew solutions.

For example one key design challenge is theneed to present large volumes of data, oftenfrom disparate systems, in one screen whichis not overwhelming for the user. Overcom-ing this challenge has led to some excellentexamples of dashboard views which presentinformation together from multiple systems.

The team at Telstra was expecting to designa more traditional portal, but the team’s de-sign thinking changed the scope of theproject. The end result was a beautiful dash-board which is likely to have more impactthan a traditional HR intranet.

Meanwhile US consulting firm Prophet hascreated a dashboard for business develop-ment-related data, which can be viewed atan individual, team or firmwide level.

A growing area is innovative mobile design.Designing satisfying responsive environ-ments for the smaller screen is challenging,but the focus on usability can result in pow-erful outcomes.

The University of Liverpool took a hard-to-use desktop application used by students tofind spare PCs on campus, and turned it intoa very simple but beautifully designed mo-bile app. The combination of clear straight-forward interfaces and presentation of theinformation that really mattered to studentsdelivers a great user experience that far ex-ceeds the previous iteration.The integrationof GPS data and maps also plays to thestrength of the smartphone.

Change management is critical for successIn large organisations, having a coordinatedand targeted change management program isvital for the successful launch of an intranet.There also needs to be a sustained effort afterlaunch to drive adoption and embed goodpractices.

In the huge majority of work environmentsusers are extremely busy. Careful thoughtmust be given to how to best get their atten-tion and frame messages about using the in-tranet that illustrate the benefits for eachindividual user.

Being able to take an iterative approach tochange management means teams can learnas they go, and react to feedback and events.Coles, an Australian retailer with 100,000employees mainly working in stores, had tolaunch a new HR and communications-ledintranet.

A phased approach of ‘Crawl – Walk – Run’meant the team could see what worked andwhat didn’t. This enabled them to design anexceptionally energetic launch centred onmessages that they knew would resonatewith the workforce.

Global accounting and consulting firm PwCalso demonstrated the importance of a well-considered adoption strategy. When theteam launched a social collaboration plat-form, Spark, to 180,000 employees acrossmultiple territories, they used a variety oftactics.

Design challenges and constraints can spark innovation

Having a targeted change management program is vital

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The launch of mycoles, a cloud-based intranet for Australian retailer Coles, involved an energetic set of events including lots of cake baking!

Telstra’s ME HR dashboard brings together information from multiple systems. A particularly innovative feature was that sensitive pay information is hidden by default so that the page can be safely used in an open office environment.

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At the centre of this was an advocate strategywhich leveraged the enthusiasm, energy andknowledge of a network of global supporters.The central team also worked closely witheach individual territory, giving them auton-omy in how they wanted to launch their ownversion of Spark, and installing a local senseof ownership.

Successful intranets deliver critical enterprise-level content

To succeed, intranets must be truly indis-pensable to the way organisations and em-ployees work. This involves deliveringcritical enterprise-level content which em-ployees need to make key decisions, performcore operations or serve customers.

Intranet content needs to be much morethan communications-led corporate content,or personal HR-led information. Because it isgenerally an enterprise-wide channel, theintranet is the perfect place to store collec-tions of content or data which need to be ac-cessed by large proportions of the workforceso they can do their jobs.

All too often this critical enterprise-levelcontent is hidden in other systems and ap-plications. Leading intranets offer a moreuser-friendly interface with greater reachthan any back-end system.

UK-based standards organisation BSI re-quires that employees have constant accessto the core process documentation con-

tained in its Business Management System(BMS).

These documents are critical for BSI’s certi-fication business, which accounts for half itsrevenue. BSI is using its intranet as the gate-way to the BMS, and has recently reorgan-ised the system so documents are far moreeasily accessed and filtered. This provides afar superior user experience than more tradi-tional approaches to document manage-ment.

Meanwhile US law firm Ogletree Deakins isusing the intranet as the foundation for itsKnowledge Management efforts, providingaccess to curated content such as its ‘50States’ application which collates laws andregulations organised by jurisdiction andtopic.

It has also taken client and project informa-tion from five back-end systems and present-ed this by client in one simple place. Bypresenting this collection of data, the intran-et has become integral and essential to theway lawyers work.

The 2015 awardsWe’ll be running the Intranet InnovationAwards again next year, and we’re alreadylooking forward to the submissions. Willthere be new design concepts? A new twiston the digital workplace? Something whichredefines the use of tablets? We look forwardto reading about your innovations in April2015!

Get the case studies and screen shotsYou can purchase the full Intranet Innova-tions 2014 report online:

store.steptwo.com.au/product/intranet-innovations/

Enterprise-level content can make intranets indispensable

www.steptwo.com.au contact@steptwo.com.au•

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