Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC)

Delivering an interactive intranet: case study from #1 ranked interactive intranet: nSynergy

A poll conducted by the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) LinkedIn group showed that 34% of the 305 respondents wanted a more interactive and collaborative intranet as the one improvement for 2012. This was the most popular response from the 5 options available.

This is backed up by WIC research which shows that interactive intranets are more valuable than those that simply provide static content.

So what is the secret to delivering a more interactive and dynamic intranet?

nSynergy, an Australian based global consulting company specialising in Information Management, recently participated in the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) (the WIC is an online survey that allows organisations to obtain feedback from their intranet end users and then compare this feedback with other participating organisations). 

Perhaps, not too surprisingly, nSynergy dominated the rankings for questions related to the interactivity.  In fact, of the 8 questions about intranet interactivity, nSynergy ranked either 1 or 2 (from more than 100+ organisations) in 5 of them.

The following list shows nSynergy's rankings for questions about interactivity:

• Publish Content - #2
• Upload or download documents - #2
• Discuss work topics (eg. Using discussion forums or blogs) - #1
• Collaborate with other staff (eg. Using online work spaces) - #1
• Provide feedback or comments about intranet content - #2

The WIC spoke to Peter Nguyen-Brown (left), nSynergy’s Practice Manager about what it takes to deliver an interactive intranet.

 

 

 WIC:

Were you surprised that nSynergy ranked so well in these questions?

PNB:

Specifically in relation to interactivity, we weren’t surprised, but we were certainly pleased to know that we ranked number 1 globally in this area against some highly reputable organisations.  Our core business includes delivering effective Intranets for organisations – and just like the advice we give our customers, we also have to incorporate a phased approach for our own Intranet. 

Connecting our eight offices globally with the best available collaborative tools was our primary focus, so we are very pleased to have achieved our internal goals.

 

WIC:

Why do you think you received such a good response from your end users for these questions?

PNB:

For our business to succeed we rely on maximising the expertise across our teams globally, rather than on any one individual or project team.  The culture we continually look to improve focuses on the power of team dynamics regardless of location, so I think our consultants really appreciate being able to call on others for their opinions and expertise wherever they may be located. 

Given we have offices in locations that enable us to provide 24 hour support to our customers, being able to interact and collaborate consistently and instantly via our Intranet and collaboration tools is vital.

 

WIC:

What was the process or steps you went through to improve interactivity of the intranet? Was there much focus on training, communication, or change management? Or was it case of build it and they will come?

PNB:

We identified as a business in 2009 that Enterprise Social Collaboration was going to be a hot trending topic in the years to come based on the way we saw social collaboration impacting people’s lives outside of work.  We implemented SharePoint 2010, and worked closely with our now partner Newsgator to implement their Social Sites add-on to extend the existinginteractive collaborative features of SharePoint. 

We certainly kept communications high leading up to the deployment, but the key to success of Enterprise Social Collaboration is in simplicity to ensure User Adoption, and providing a familiar User Experience which minimises the need for training– we achieved this very successfully.

 

WIC:

What do you think is the relevant importance of providing the technical capability for interactivity versus non-technical qualities such as culture, training, incentives, etc?

PNB:

We have a business philosophy which extends to our customer projects, in that the true measure of success of deploying a business solution such as Intranet is ultimately about User Adoption and interaction.  This makes the technology less important in our opinion, however we do feel that starting with a SharePoint platform is a great start. 

Users shouldn’t need to know what technology they are using to make the solution effective, users should feel comfortable in the solution and instinctively know how to use it.  As per our company vision, we believe that “enabling” technical solutions form a part of overall company culture, our people are absolutely the centre of our business and we constantly train, incentivise and encourage better use of our technology.

 

WIC:

What benefit or value to your organisation do you think this provides to nSynergy? Do you have any stories or examples of how the intranet has added real or measureable value?

PNB:

There are some great stories of how the Intranet has added real measurable value, but perhaps the best examples are by referring to scenarios we find ourselves in quite a lot.  Consultants often ask a question via our Intranet or search for specific expertise.  It is amazing the number of times this process has led to 2 consultants who previously didn’t know each other, to learn more about other people’s experiences and capabilities which has then led to other discussions about completely different topics than what the original process was intending to find. 

One of our Principal Consultants (Ali) in London has recently completed his Masters in Entrepreneurship, and when one of our Managers in Australia was searching our Intranet for people with expertise in Information Architecture, the search led him to Ali’s user profile page which highlighted his recent Masters completion - this then led to further discussion between the two which enabled them to solve other relevant business needs relating to Ali’s recent Masters program. 

A good Intranet is not just about helping to find information you are looking for, it is also about connecting you to information you didn’t necessarily intend to find that can be used for other purposes. 

 

WIC:

What tips or advice can you give other organisations who wish to make their intranet more interactive and dynamic?  Both from a technical and non-technical point of view?

PNB:

There are some really interesting trends in the modern Intranet, and they often focus on providing a comfortable and familiar User Experience.  In relation to technology, definitely consider the use of an Enterprise Social Collaboration tool - we however would not recommend using any tool that is free and cloud based as you lose the benefits of connecting internal information such as documents and tasks with the social collaboration elements. 

We would highly recommend the use of Newsgator with SharePoint due to the way the 2 platforms seamlessly integrate.  Also seriously consider a Unified Communications platform that integrates with SharePoint such as Lync for enabling Instant Messaging, Video Conferencing, Desktop Sharing and people search – in our opinion if you mix SharePoint with Social Collaboration and Unified Communications, you really can’t get much more interactive and dynamic. 

From a non-technical point of view, setting up an internal “Steering Committee” or similar is vital to continually review and improve the platform.  These are often the times when discussion on new ideas comes up for the creation of sites and content for areas such as internal Social Groups, fund raisers, company initiatives etc – keeping the platform evolving maintains interest with end users, but most importantly the Intranet needs to be relevant to the user and intrinsically linked to their productivity tools and solutions. 

Intranets should not be a burden, they should be relevant to how a user does their job.  There are many other techniques which we are happy to share with interested organisations.

 

WIC:

Do you have any plans for the future to ensure you continue to receive good feedback from your end users for this question?

PNB:

We continually ask for informal feedback, but we will be leveraging the WIC for further benchmarking and analysis.  The only true way in our opinion to measure the success of an Intranet is to ask the users and to look for both intangible and tangible impacts. 

To this extent, we are highly recommending the WIC to our customers before beginning Intranet projects to measure their current Intranet, and to re-survey users after we assist with building and deployment their new Intranet – this is a real tangible measurement of how we have improved the way our customers do business and service their teams. 

We also have persistent global icons from the Intranet that allows users to provide feedback at any time. 

And finally, we have implemented an Innovation Centre which we call “Think Tank”, which allows any person in the business to submit ideas on how they would like to see the business improve – others can then vote on these ideas and the business can then respond to what is most important to everyone.

 

nSynergy intranet - NewsFeed and Communities screen shot

Could this be the world's most effective intranet?

       

Weston Solutions Intranet Case Study: helping staff to be more productive

The Weston Solution's intranet is currently the #1 ranked intranet (from over 120 participating organisations) in the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) web based benchmarking service. This means that the people who use the intranet - their own employees - believe their intranet delivers real value to the organisation. Typical comments from staff include:

I love this new version of the Portal!

I think that the new portal is a quantum leap improvement over the old portal and it will be key to our success in collaboration.

New Portal is Great !!! It has great potential to use as a platform to solve several business problems.

The people function is the best part of the new intranet. Being able to see people and how they fall within the organization will really help my day to day work.

 

 

Join Bob Hackett, VP of Information Systems, as he takes you through the journey of how Weston Solutions transformed their intranet from middle-of-the-road to top-of-the-class.

The following 10 part video series (based on the webinar run in June 2012) is MUST SEE viewing for any organisation wishing to deliver an intranet that staff will find business critical. 

Part 1 - (7 mins, 47secs)

• Welcome 
• What is the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC)?
• Introduction to Bob Hackett and Weston Solutions
• Overview of the 8 step transformation process
• How the Weston Solutions intranet went from good to not-so-good
• Some familiar SharePoint problems

Part 2 - (5 mins, 21 secs)

• The Weston Solutions visioning process
• John Kotter - Leading Change
• Step 1: Create urgency - how the WIC can help
• Step 2: Form a powerful coalition - need buy-in from the top
• About the Portal Advisory Group (PAG)

Part 3 - (5 mins, 11 secs)

• Step 3: Create a vision for change
• Step 4: Communicate the vision
• Portal design challenges
• How the WIC helped focus intranet improvement activities

Part 4 - (7 mins, 49 secs)

• Step 5: Remove obtacles
• Use of Newsgator
• Newsgator critical to making intranet a success
• Step 6: Create short term wins
• Getting users to update their profiles

Part 5 - (2.49 mins)

• Step 7: Build on the change
• Step 8: Anchor the changes in corporate culture
• What is the Weston Solutions killer intranet app?

Part 6 - (4 mins, 27 secs)

• Home page overview
• Home page changes throughout the day
• Activity stream
• News
• Company corner
• Employee spotlight

Part 7 - (7 mins, 23 secs)

• Intranet demonstration
• Home page
• Order business cards application
• Who is the team
• Search

Part 8 - (4 mins, 17 secs)

• Intranet demonstration
• How to update staff profile pages
• Personalised news feeds
• Filtering news feeds
• Getting started wizard

Part 9 - (4 mins, 48 secs)

• Intranet demonstration
• Mapping grid - able to view various activities on a map
• Communities
• Visual representation of what is happening in the communities

Part 10 - (5 mins, 35 secs)

• Questions
• How do non-desk based employees access the intranet?
• How to build an intranet community
• How to govern your SharePoint site
• How to prevent site creep?

 

Summary of intranet features

The following list of features are discussed and/or demonstrated throughout the videos:

• Killer intranet app - provide a section of the home page that provides people with a list of all their outstanding actions - eg. approve expense claims
• Mega menus - access to over 100 different links or applications just one click away
• Recent activity section - lists 3 most recent activity posts on the home page. Changes constantly throughout the day.
• Content on the home page changes continually - keeps people coming back
• Enable staff to provide commenting on news stories
• Company corner - rotate the 3 most important things happening in the organisation on the home page
• Employee spotlight - very powerful within the organisation. Gets refreshed everytime employees vist the home page. Helps build engagement.
• Organise menu by the key tasks the company needs to do get our jobs done
• Links to internal applications - one click away
• Information from different applications rendered back through the portal
• Search for people using a variety of characterists such as job title or skill
• Staff profiles are maintained by a combination of staff manually updating their profiles and integration with the HR System
• Personalised newsfeeds & filtering of newsfeeds
• Integration of email with the portal
• "Getting started" wizard to seet up your own profile
• Provide commenting on news stories
• Able to view Weston Solutions activities on a map
• Special interest communities
• Visual representation of what is happening in the communities
• Portal help site
• Provide 5 minute training videos
• Online form for setting up a community - training provided for community managers
• Document explains how to get the community ready for going live

 

Summary of intranet tips from Weston Solutions

• Obtain buy-in from the top
• Form a steering committee of senior management
• Align your intranet with key organisational drivers
• Link your intranet to the business strategy
• Read John Kotter's book - Leading Change
• Collaboration is critical if you are going to be a successful business in the future
• Form a Portal Advisory Group (PAG) for your intranet
• Aim high - stretch your vision
• "Portal to be the first stop personalized gateway to the people, information, tools, and applications so we can work together collaboratively, creatively, and seamlessly"
• Develop an intranet communication strategy
• Engage the organisation continually in developing your intranet
• Always give people the option to be involved in the project
• Provide similiar functionality to what's available in the consumer world - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn
• Show success as soon as you can
• Run an early adopter program
• Provide short training videos - no longer than 5 minutes
• Organise a profile week - provide an incentive for staff to update their profiles during a particular week
• Track and show progress against your goals
• Provide portal minutes for managers
• Provide quick start guides
• Introduce a 5 for 5 program - 5 minutes of people's time for a $5 gift card
• 30 portal tips in 30 minutes
• Build a culture of recognition
• Provide online training and support for your site managers
• Aggressive governance - every site has a site owner and an admin, every admin must go through a certification & training

 

Interested in participating in the WIC?

Register for the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) if you would also like some help prioritising your intranet improvement initiatives. 

 

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.

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.