Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC)

Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) Webinar: Weston Solutions Case Study

Preview the #1 ranked WIC intranet. Reserve your free WICinar seat now at: https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/352570535

Late in 2010, Weston Solutions participated in the web based intranet benchmarking service, the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC). Feedback from the end users about their intranet was fairly average, with an overall ranking of 47 out of 101 surveys. 

In the following 12 months, Bob Hackett, VP of Information Services, led an intranet transformation project that revitalised the intranet. Late last year, Weston Solutions again participated in the WIC, with intranet end users responding to exactly the same questions they were asked the previous year.

The results were nothing short of spectacular.

Not only did the Weston Solutions intranet rank #1 overall but also ranked #1 in 80% of the questions. The chart below shows the comparative rankings for each survey question before and after the transformation. 

 

So what happened between November 2010 and October 2011?

That's exactly the question Bob will be answering at the first ever Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) webinar - (a WICinar :-)

During the WICinar, Bob will talk about and demonstrate:

• Some of the unique and interesting intranet features including interactive maps and the popular special interest groups
• The 8 stage transformation process he followed based on John Kotter's seminal work
• How the WIC helped motivate and focus the project team's efforts

Bob kindly gave me a tour of the intranet and I can tell you it is very impressive. He could quite easily spend a day demonstrating its many features. So if you want to see an intranet that is valued very highly by its end users (in comparison to 100 other intranets) then do not miss this session. There is no cost to attend.

Reserve your free WICinar seat now at ( numbers are limited):
https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/352570535

 

Discovery Health staff say their intranet is the best

From the 60+ organisations who have taken part in the web based intranet benchmarking service, the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC), the Discovery Health intranet has recently become the new #1 ranked intranet. 

Comments from Discovery Health staff about their intranet include: “I love the intranet we have”, “Our intranet is the best!”, “Overall I think DNA is an awesome tool.”, “Well done for the good work and making our work simple.”, “The Intranet system is great compared to other companies”.

Discovery Health is the largest private health care insurer in South Africa. Major products include life insurance, health insurance, the DiscoveryCard and Vitality – a program which rewards healthy behaviour.

The main reasons staff love their intranet include:

• It is essential for doing daily work. Detailed product information needed to support Discovery Health’s customers and the wider community is provided on the intranet.
• Many processes are automated, such as career management, employee recognition and leave management
• The home page is highly customisable using 'widgets'. This means that most of this valuable intranet real estate provides content that is directly relevant to each individual staff member
• Content quality is rigorously managed through regular audits, restricting the number of authors, work flows and approval. Staff can rely on the content
• Collaboration spaces have been separated from the intranet ensuring the content quality of the intranet is maintained but still supports ongoing feedback loops
• All business applications are accessible through the intranet

Of the 44 questions that comprise the WIC survey, Discovery Health rated either #1 or #2 in the following:

• Intranet home page
• Overall look and feel
• Ability to complete forms online
• Access to policies and procedures
• Information about our products and services
• Understanding of the organisation’s values and culture
• Using menus to find information
• Access to templates
• Access to reports
• Access to business applications
• Ability to personalise the intranet

Top intranet tips from Discovery Health Involve end users in identifying and implementing intranet requirements Continually work on obtaining executive buy-in Ensure functionality is relevant to a large number of users – avoid implementing fluffy stuff that won’t get used Give staff the ability personalise their home page by adding information most relevant to them. Make it easy to personalise. Give staff the ability to select their own home page Provide quality content. Consider reducing the number of authors that can publish content and make it their primary function Distinguish between ‘informal’ collaboration type work spaces and the intranet Be vigilant in keeping content up-to-date. Get authors to review content regularly to ensure it is still current Manage important content changes through the use of alerts that staff must acknowledge Provide the ability to rate content provides a way for good (and poor) quality content to be identified Provide access to all your business applications through your intranet Talk to your end users regularly to find out what they do and what applications will help them work more effectively

So how did they do it?

The Discovery Health Intranet, known as Discovery Net Access (DNA), supports approximately 6,500 employees. 2,500 of these staff comprise the Discovery Health call centre.

The intranet consists of two main sections:

• Discovery Net Access (DNA) – includes the home page used by most staff. This provides typical intranet type content such as policies, forms, standard operating procedures,  news, and access to business applications
• PinPoint – is a knowledge repository specifically for customer support staff.  It contains all the information staff need to answer customer queries, including a detailed breakdown of every product provided by Discovery. This includes advice on how best to explain the products to members, brokers, health professionals, and other employees. It is used heavily on a continuous basis by around 2,500 call centre staff.

The intranet was developed in-house using a Weblogic backend, Java frontend and Apache webservers. Much of the infrastructure that was developed for the public facing web site was re-used on the intranet. This helped minimise development and support costs.

The team

The new intranet was launched in February 2010. 

Jamie Whittaker is the Development Manager who was responsible for this launch. Jamie manages the web development and content management teams. They are responsible for Web content management (Documentum), Discovery.co.za, Discovery Net Access (DNA), and the enterprise content management system (SharePoint).  

Note: SharePoint is used as an unstructured collaboration tool and information repository. It is not part of the intranet. 

 

Odette Fenix is the Knowledge Manager. She is responsible for managing the team who maintain the product knowledge repository (Pinpoint) and the management of the information architecture. 

She is also the business owner driving the strategy of digital servicing channels within the intranet, web, mobile and email communication systems. 

 

Approach to intranet design

The first phase in designing the new intranet consisted of base-lining the current intranet. Key findings from this baseline showed that:

• There was a lack of trust in the information – staff were not sure if information was accurate and up-to-date
• Staff wanted to find information more quickly and be sure the information they had was correct,  trusted & complete

The development approach taken was a mixture of the agile and waterfall methodologies. A formal scope and requirements document was defined at the beginning of the project but most of the functionality was implemented incrementally.  The main benefit of this approach was to ensure regular progress was made throughout the project, while at the same time clearly defining the scope of the project.

The primary stakeholder for the project was the COO. Other stakeholders included Human Resources and business representatives. The project was driven primarily by the Knowledge Management team together with Systems.

Approach to authoring

Discovery Health use a centralised approach to creating content.  Only a small group of nominated staff can add content. The advantages of this approach include:

• Reduces the risk of exposure of providing incorrect information to customers (which has the potential to be costly)
• Reduces CMS licensing costs (less authors require fewer licences)
• More rigorous controls - through structured work flow and approval processes - can be applied to the way content is published, ensuring a higher level of quality
• Makes the review of content quality easier - content is reviewed each 6 months to ensure it is still valid. If not validated by content owner, it is removed.

As a result of this approach, the quality of content has improved (in the previous intranet - pre – February 2010 - there were approximately 150 authors. This was reduced to 18).  

Since this new approach to content quality, the number of reports of out-of-date or inaccurate content has decreased dramatically.

Home page, look and feel and personalisation

Discovery Health rated number #1 for both the questions:  ‘I like the intranet home page’ and ‘I like the look and feel of the intranet’.  They also ranked number #2 for the question, ‘I can personalise the intranet’.

We asked Jamie the reasons why he thought this was the case. His key points include:

• The home page is fully customisable with ‘widgets’ that can be dragged and dropped and placed where staff want them.  There are 3 basic types of widgets available to staff:
  • Human Resources – this includes a prosperity point counter where staff earn points for living a healthy life, leave information, and a career and training information
  • External feeds – this includes local and international  news and social media RSS feeds
  • Internal content – this includes recently updated content, content that is rated highly by staff and content that appears often in search results
• Staff can choose their own home page – they are not forced to view the same ‘corporate’ intranet page. There are a number of potential home pages that staff are likely to choose including DNA, PinPoint (for call centre staff) and TechPoint (for technical information)
• The PinPoint page provides an alerts widget that cannot be moved. The Alerts widget provides updates about key content that has changed such as a product description updates or the addition of a new product. This content is pushed out by knowledge management team. Staff have 2 options available when dealing with alerts:
  • They can acknowledge the alert which is then archived (reports are pulled on all reports to assess compliance)
  • They can indicate they don’t understand the alert and someone will get back to them and provide them with more information

The home page was designed by an internal graphics team including usability experts. Several wireframes were proposed to users and eventually narrowed down to the final solution. The usability people conducted some testing by asking staff to complete tasks using the proposed wireframes.

Work tasks/forms/templates

Discovery Health rated highly in many of the questions related to using the intranet to complete work tasks, including the use of online forms (#1), templates (#2), policies & procedures (#1), access to business applications (#2) & completing tasks online (#3).

The high rankings can be attributed to the following reasons:

• PinPoint is needed to process all customer calls. It provides the detailed product and process knowledge needed to respond correctly to customer questions.
• Staff rely heavily on online content. Printing is discouraged because content can change and there is no guarantee that the printed version is the latest.
• DNA contains all the standard operating procedures – for example, applying for leave, approving leave, updating personal details and monitoring health. Many of these procedures can be completed online.
• A Learning Management System enables staff to manage their own training and  career development
• All internal applications are accessible through DNA. They are not all necessarily built and hosted using the intranet technology but they are accessible through the intranet. Examples of these applications include the internal recognition system (the Star Awards) career management, book a meeting room, Lexus Nexus (a news service), lead management, SMS management, a prescription calculator and crime reporting.

Search/menus

Discovery Health rated in the top 4 for each of the four survey questions about finding information. Tips about how to improve the way staff find information include:

Search

The intranet menu has two navigation tabs – menu and index.  Staff can navigate using either tab

• The index list provides a predictive search – after staff have entered the first 3 letters, the predictive search narrows the number of matches in the index list to match what staff have entered
• The search technology used is Google minis.  This also provides predictive text after 3 letters – more letters will minimise the list. Matching terms can then be further filtered by content type or category
• The new intranet replaced a cumbersome ‘fly out’ method with a modern ‘ipod’ like functionality.
  • A marker at the top of the navigation tells you where you are in the intranet hierarchy
  • A breadcrumb trail shows where you have come from.  Staff are able to click on the each item in the trail of the breadcrumb and a drop down of menu list items appears.
  • A limitation of the old site was that it was only possible to navigate 3 levels in the hierarchy – this was not enough. The new intranet enables the hierarchy to go beyond 3 levels
  • In effect they have moved from 2 methods of finding information to 4, and have tried to cater for all of our users navigation and search preferences without making the site cumbersome or cluttered.
• The DNA menu was aligned with an existing structure identified by the HR Group. This consisted of grouping content by:
  • You – benefits specific to staff
  • Your work – tools and applications – profiled to the user and the team and function they perform
  • Your Company– general information about the company, including policies and procedures
• PinPoint comprises 80,000 content items. High-level navigation is classified according to the various products offered by Discovery.  Sub-level navigation items were classified according to the card sorting technique and a team of information architects categorised every item over 5 full working days. After the content was mapped, it was audited to ensure that it was still relevant. This resulted in a reduction in the amount of content by around 20%.
• Every page on intranet can be rated.  The benefits of rating content are that:
  • Good content can be found more easily
  • Poor quality content can be detected and remedial action taken
  • A widget is available from the home page shows highest rated content and topics that people are searching for the most.
• Quick link tabs are available on every page – content that is referred to on a daily basis can be easily added to quick links

Browsing or navigating

• The new intranet replaced a cumbersome ‘fly out’ method with a modern ‘ipod’ like functionality.
  • A marker at the top of the navigation tells you where you are in the intranet hierarchy
  • A breadcrumb trail shows where you have come from.  Staff are able to click on the each item in the trail of the breadcrumb and a drop down of menu list items appears.
• A limitation of the old site was that it was only possible to navigate 3 levels in the hierarchy – this was not enough. The new intranet enables the hierarchy to go beyond 3 levels
• In effect they have moved from 2 methods of finding information to 4. They have tried to cater for all of our users navigation and search preferences without making the site cumbersome or cluttered.

Other comments

• Every page on intranet can be rated.  The benefits of rating content are that:
  • Good content can be found more easily
  • Poor quality content can be detected and remedial action taken
• A widget is available from the home page shows highest rated content and topics that people are searching for the most.
• Quick links tab on every page – content that is referred to on a daily basis can be added to quick links

Summary

The Discovery Health intranet provides an impressive range of services and functionality that clearly meets the needs of its staff.

Research from the WIC has shown that an intranet that supports business processes is one of the keys to providing an effective intranet. The Discovery Health intranet clearly meets this requirement through the PinPoint product knowledge repository. This feature alone adds real value to Discovery Health by making sure frontline staff have the ability to effectively support customers.

Interested in benchmarking your own intranet?

If you are interested in obtaining feedback about your own intranet and comparing it anonymously with over 60 organisations, why not register for the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC). This is a free service.

Upcoming Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) workshops

Learn about other leading intranet practices at the upcoming WIC workshops:

Amsterdam
Monday 27th June

London
Thursday, June 30th 
Friday, 1st July 

Manchester
Tuesday, 5th July

Contextual integration: how it can transform your intranet

What is contextual integration?

Contextual integration is a technique for creating meaningful relationships between information types. This makes it much easier for people to find information by allowing them to use a range of entry points to access content, instead of the usual single hierarchical entry point that many intranets provide.

Note: This is one of the topics that is covered in the new Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) workshop, Delivering Successful Intranets.

Why is it important?

The benefits of applying a contextual integration to an intranet are many. These include:

• Providing multiple acess paths for staff to locate content makes the content easier to find. Finding content is the biggest problem end users have with intranets today. This is partly caused by the fact that many intranets only provide a linear or hierarchical way to navigate to content – end uses need to know the single correct path to locate content.
• By contextually integrating content you help ensure that content authors provide additional relevant information necessary to staff. For example, authors can no longer simply add a link to web page and leave it at that. They need to provide additional information about how the website is relevant, to who it is relevant and when it should be used. This is context.
• By providing a context, you are ensuring that staff are not left wondering if they have missed something. For example, you can include tasks that need to be done before or after another task.

Example from the internet

The Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) is an example of how information types have been identified and provided within a context. For example, a movie will usually comprise people (actors, directors, etc) and a soundtrack (and other information types as well but for the sake of this example we will stick to three). This can be represented by the following diagram.

 

What this means is that if you cannot remember the name of an actor but you can remember a movie they were in, you are able to locate the movie and then locate a link to the actor which provides additional information about the actor. And the same applies when searching for a movie or soundtrack. In other words, the three information types give each other a meaningful context that increase the chance that they will be found through one of the other paths.

 

So how does this apply to intranets?

Many intranets comprise documents, links to web sites, procedures and a range of other information types. Usually they are stored in different locations and there is little or no defined relationship between them - any cross links are unstructured. For example, staff may view a list of 'hot links', find the web site they need and then that is the end of the interaction. If there is a relevant document, procedure or policy, related to the web site, they are unlikely to discover this relationship because the web link hasn't been integrated with other content types.

By applying a ‘contextual integration’ to this scenario, we could establish a relationship between the three information types as follows - ie. a task may comprise templates and websites.

 

Intranet example

Let’s say I work for an organisation that offers various workshops to the public and I want to use the intranet to help me organise one of these workshops. There are a range of possible scenarios as follows:

1. I have never organised a public workshop before and I don’t know where to start
2. I want a standard template for inviting people to the workshop - I don't want to have to 'reinvent the wheel'
3. I have organized a workshop before but I can’t remember the name of the website that we use to take workshop bookings

In the typical intranet, the chances are I would have to know the top level menu item to find the information I need. Possible headings that I could be confronted with include templates, hot links, policies, procedures, about you, about me, forms, department (and then I would need to know which department has the information)....  Where do I start?

But by using a contextually integrated model, there are  several starting points and it doesn’t really matter which one I choose because they are all related and I can easily and logically navigate through the different paths.

The following example looks at the 3 scenarios listed above.

From the top level menu, shown below on the left in the diagram below, staff can choose any of the following as the starting point to the search:

1. Search by task name (I would like to...)
2. Search for templates
3. Search by web site 

 

The results of choosing each of these different navigation paths is shown below.

1. Choosing ‘I would like to’

This brings up a list of tasks that the person can view in a variety of ways, depending on the metadata that has been set up. This could include viewing tasks by category, process, department, role, or when the task gets done.

 

From here they can click the task - Organise a Public Workshop - to display more detail.   

 

The main body of the task provides the content needed to complete the task. But because we have also associated templates and web sites with tasks - ie. a structured context - these fields are also available in the right panel. From here, staff can also navigate to:

• Related tasks,
• Email templates, or
• Website.

2. Choose Email Templates

This will also display a list of categorised templates in the same way the tasks were displayed in the ‘View topics by’ diagram above. Choosing the appropriate template brings up the following page:

 

Because we have integrated this template with the Task information type, we are able to click the related task to display more information about how this template is used (if required).

3. Choose Web Sites

Just as in the other two cases, selecting this option will bring up a list of categorised web sites. Unlike the standard intranet which generally provide a list of links, the web links listed are associated with one or more tasks. So it a staff member wants more information about what a web site is used for they can click on the Task link for more information.

 

In all of these examples, the primary information need of the end user is satisfied (ie. They have found instructions, the web site, or template that they were initially looking for) BUT they are also provided with additional context to ensure the right level of information is delivered at the right time to the right person.

The above example is a simplistic summary of how a contextually integrated intranet may appear. In reality, there would be many more information types to consider and metadata to be defined for each information type.

Detailed ‘contextual integration’ intranet diagram

The following diagram is an example of a complete intranet information architecture. It shows different information types and how they are related (it doesn’t show the detailed meta-data associated with each information type).

 

Want to know more?

If you are interested in learning more about contextual integration, how it works with card sorting, and how it can seriously improve the way your staff find information on the intranet, the Worldwide Intranet Challenge is running a one day workshop called ‘Delivering successful intranets’ that will cover this topic in more detail (along with a range of other topics).

This workshop is based on research from over 15,000 intranet end users from the 50 different organisations that have participated in the Worldwide Intranet Challenge. You can read more about the workshop or register on the ‘Delivering Successful Intranets’ registration page.

Highlights from 'Intranets that work' event: Melbourne, Oct 2010

It was an informal and relaxed atmosphere at Young & Jacksons Hotel in Melbourne, where around 50 people interested in improving their organisation's intranet attended the event 'Intranets that work: from hobby-horse to work horse'.

The event kicked off with a mystery ice-breaker game that was won by Michelle Goodwin from AGL. Michelle demonstrated her excellent networking and negotiation skills (both important skills in managing an intranet!) to win a signed copy of James Robertson's new book, Designing Intranets: Creating sites that work (highly recommend). Thanks to James for donating the book.

Before the presentations of leading intranets, I explained what the Worldwide Intranet Challenge is all about, what it measures, how to participate and listed the organisations that have participated so far. 

  

Three excellent presentations followed from organisations with leading intranets, as identified by their own end users. Below is a summary of the tips and tricks provided by these organisations for building more effective intranets.

Tips from Brightstar (Katrina Marques) - Strategies for improving user adoption and contribution (rated highly in questions about content contribution)

• Get users actively involved in decision making process for your intranet
• Set up a distributed publishing model with your CMS
• Ensure intranet responsibilities are included in people's KPIs
• Provide the training and support needed to enable users to publish to your intranet
• Develop strategy/clear guidelines how you are going to manage, support and drive Intranet contributions
• Get feedback and implement changes based on feedback

You can read about Katrina's experience with the WIC in more detail and also view her presentation on her latest blog post, WIC Case Study – Part 1: Employee Publishing on the Intranet.

 

Tips from Hexaware Technologies (Shilpa Chengappa) -  the interactive intranet (rated highly in questions about people interacting with your intranet)

• Consider your target audience - what will engage and interest them? An intranet for an people in their early 20s will be different than one for people in their 40s
• Provide incentives for people to participate - consider using a points system to reward participation
• Provide online forms - forms that people can complete and submit online without needing to print anything
• Make it easy for people to post questions and implement processes to ensure a response is provided within 24 hours
• List all your applications in a single location to facilitate easy access
• Make sure you include some fun


Tips from Bupa Australia (Josh Patel) - providing access to key content (rated as the most effective overall intranet by end users)

• Conduct regular audits of your content
• Pro-actively request feedback and implement improvements
• Ensure style guides and best practice guidelines are followed
• Provide training and continuous support to your publishers
• Keep your content fresh - news, features, regular updates
• Nag, chase, bribe, reward & acknowledge to motivate your authors

 

Event feedback

Here is what some of the attendees liked about the event:

• "Informal, great networking"- Simon Rawson, Synergy Corporate Technologies
• "Good venue, access to speakers in a relaxed environment, good variety of topics"- John O'Brien, Foxtel
• "Gaining a perspective on how other organisations operate their intranets, teams and authors"- Sue Falkiner, Australian Catholic University 
• "Informal, fantastic to see other company intranets"- Michelle Goodwin, AGL
• "Informal & local, Great idea to hold it in a pub, great to hear from 3 different orgs with 3 diff intranets"- Rachel Vogel, Thinc
• "Insights and examples of leading edge intranets"- Arnold Florendo, GE Capital


Are you interested in presenting at an 'Intranets that work' event?

If you are interested in showcasing an aspect of your intranet and receiving recognition for your efforts, you will need to register and participate in the WIC. You may then be invited to present your intranet at a future 'intranets that work' event.

End users and experts agree on what makes a good intranet

Guest blog post from Natalia Shvetsova This is a guest blog from Natalia Shvetsova, Intranet expert and Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) representative in Russia. Natalie was involved in the recent 2010 Russian Best Intranet awards. She is based in Moscow. This is a case study about one of the award winners, Ros Business Consulting, who also rated well in many of the WIC questions.

Top Intranet Tips - Tips from RBC about maintaing & providing content (RBC's end users rated its intranet at number 2 in this category from 37 organisations): Categorise your content Create a publishing schedule for each content type Ensure you stick to this schedule Provide all employees with a single weekly email update of recent news, summary of new articles, information about programs and social initiatives, and messages from different departments Ensure you provide a link to the intranet from the articles in the email - provide only a summary of each article in the email Do not send frequent and irregular email updates as these will annoy your staff and they will treat them like spam Providing regular and consistent content updates will increase the level of trust and attention by end users If you are going to have a decentralised publishing model, ensure representatives are prepared for writing intranet content

About the Russian Intranet awards

In early June in Moscow, the 2010 Best Intranet Russia Awards were presented. These awards celebrate intranet teams that achieve great results with their intranets. The competition involved 25 companies from different industries with the number of employees ranging from 100 to 250 000. Winners were identified in 4 categories:

• Intranet as a corporate media
• Intranet as HR tool
• Intranet as management tool
• Intranet Innovations

Second place in the category 'Intranet as a corporate media' was the intranet of RBC Group. RBC also participated in the WIC in 2009. The RBC Group operates in the mass media (an information agency, business television channel RBC TV, online newspapers, and marketing communications) and IT (RBC SOFT) markets. RBC's news strategy is based on the principle that only primary sources of information are proven reliable.

 

How did RBC rate in the Worldwide Intranet Challenge?

The Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) is an opportunity for intranet managers to obtain feedback from their end users and benchmark this against other organisations. Over 12,000 end users from 37 organisations have participated in the WIC since last year. Feedback from the RBC intranet end users shows that their intranet rated well in the following WIC questions:

Ranked 1 in the question:

• Pages on the intranet load quickly (category ‘Рerformance of the intranet’)

Ranked 2 in the questions:

• Content on the intranet is up-to-date (How the intranet is maintained)
• Effectiveness of the intranet in providing a repository of re-usable documents ( eg. completed presentations, case studies or project documents that are shared on department or organization level)
• Effectiveness of the intranet in providing information for new starters

Ranked 3 in the questions:

• Effectiveness of the intranet in providing templates (eg. presentation, report and letter templates)
• I can find the information I need on the intranet
• The intranet menus help me find the information I need
• I know where I am in the intranet hierarchy

The following chart shows how the RBC intranet scored in the question, 'Content on the intranet is up-todate' (note that participating organisations are represented by a randomly generated 8 digit code).

 

Interview with RBC intranet manager Anastasia Dobrovolskaja

It seems logical that RBC, the first Russian news agencies specializing in business information, also has an intranet that is recognized as a quality media channel. RBC intranet manager Anastasia Dobrovolskaja (who now works at another company) spoke about the methods her team put into practice in 2009. These methods have improved employee satisfaction with the intranet and as a result has led to an increase in intranet use by 30% last year.

 

“I think it is the content quality that can raise the value of intranet for business and for end users. We work a lot on maintaining intranet content - ensuring it is always up-to-date. We divide all content by type and keep to the established publishing schedule for each type.

In addition there is the practice of weekly newsletters that we email to all employees. Every Friday staff receive a well designed email with company recent news, summary of new articles (links to the intranet are provided), actual information about company’s programs and social initiatives, messages from varies departments."

Tips for ensuring content is up-to-date

"I think there are 3 important factors that contribute to the high rating by end users and experts for our intranet as corporate media:

• High quality content,
• Keeping end users informed about updates on intranet, and
• Regularity of newsletters.

We carefully follow the publishing schedule:

•  News – is published to the intranet as it becomes available
•  Theme columns –one or two columns are updated weekly
•  Articles – 2 new articles are published each month
•  Actions, interactive projects – are timed to the dates or events."

 

Example of a theme column

"An example of a 'theme column; is the 'Kaleidoscope of opinions'. This column talks about various departments, describes what is specific about them, and describes common characteristics with other parts of organization. In this column, the department manager answers the following questions (with some variations):

• What is your unit’s main activity?
• The most important success of your team recently? What else did you achieve last month?
• What is most lacking to you personally and to your unit?
• What would you change in your work (your unit’s work)?
• What mood prevails in the department this month?
• Who do you think is the ‘person of month’ in our company?
• What interesting and ambitious projects do you plan for the near future?

The benefits of this column include

• Staff members get to know each other better and are more aware of what happens in various parts of organization
• Managers (they are interviewed most often) are pleased to be able to talk about their units. This is the opportunity for them to show the success, great results and also to let off steam
• We do not talk about abstract groups, but real people – to congratulate, praise them, recognize their efforts
• For RBC top-managers it is a barometer of organizational ‘health’, they can see the pain points, new opportunities and respond to it in time

The column improved the intranet’s overall popularity and attendance – everyone is keen to read the new content and then discuss the issues. Usually we publish column’s issues and articles on Thursday and then include it in Friday’s newsletter."

Provide regular updates

"It was important for us to find a right way to inform employees about updates on the site. Before we used weekly newsletters we sent announcements more frequently and irregularly. But we found our staff to be discontented. They regarded such letters as spam and dealt with it accordingly: not only not reading it but also complained about being distracted.

The regular content updating increases the level of attention and trust to the information by end users. They know that on Friday they will find latest news and materials on the intranet and can rely on weekly newsletters to be sure they know about all content updates and everything that is ‘must read’."

 

Future plans

"In RBC the intranet currently uses a centralized publishing model. But we plan to introduce decentralized one. For this purpose we plan to establish the 'Institute of corporate journalism'. Every department will have representatives well prepared for writing in intranet.

We would like news to come out more often and to illuminate not only big corporate events, but also smaller ones, that happen in divisions’ life or even in employees’ life."

RBC Intranet Homepage

The following screen shot shows the RBC intranet home page.

2010 Intranet Awards judging criteria

Judges of The 2010 Best Intranet Russia Awards recognized the following aspects of the RBC intranet:

• A consistent page layout,
• Clear and transparent global navigation,
• Accurate labeling of navigation elements, and
• Search field available from every page in standard constant place.

These are also the characteristics that RBC staff have demonstrated high satisfaction with, by participating in the WIC survey.

 

Benefits of using multiple approaches when assessing intranet value

The RBC case is interesting in that there is a agreement between feedback between the 'experts' and the end user ratings. Experts (judges) assessed intranets based on the tasks described in the entry form. And those tasks have been formulated from the perspective of end users. It brought together both points of views.

RBC and other organizations that conduct end users surveys, expert reviews (including Intranet Awards competitions), focus groups, usability testing, etc., are following the best practice of regular intranet research using multiple methods.

It is unusual for one method to give a comprehensive and complete picture of the intranet, but a set of methods allows a deeper understanding of the factors affecting the diverse evaluations and helps to take them into account when developing an improvement program.

Are you interested in obtaining end user feedback about your intranet?

If you are interested in obtaining feedback from your intranet end users and comparing this with nearly 40 other participating organisations such as RBC, you are encouraged to register for the Worldwide Intranet Challenge. You could potentially obtain a benchmark report within 2 weeks. There is no cost to participate.