Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC)

Are intranets becoming more collaborative and accessible?

       

by Andrew Wright

Despite the hype around the social intranet, mobile access and enterprise collaboration; according to the latest data from the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC), intranets aren't any more collaborative, interactive or mobile than they were 3 or 4 years ago. 

The graphs below show:

• The average ratings for the WIC survey questions related to collaboration and access for the last four years (Note: data is based on the following number of organisations for each year: 2009 = 30, 2010 = 17, 2011 = 39, 2012 = 50, 2013 = 4).
• The average rating of the first 70 surveys (25-May-09 to 20-Sep-11) and the average rating of the 2nd 70 surveys (25-Sep-11 to 11-Feb-13) 

The graphs below show the average response to the question:
"How often do you use the intranet to:"
where the possible options and allocated points are: More than once a day = 4  |   2-3 times a week = 3  |   2-3 times a month = 2  |  Infrequently = 1  | Never = 0

As can be seen from the above graphs, the numbers indicate a pretty low level of intranet interaction within organisations, with most numbers landing between "Infrequently" and "Never" (with the exception of online forms).

 

The graphs below show the average response to the question:
"Rate the following statement about the performance of the intranet:"
where the possible options and points are: Agree = 2  |   Not sure = 1   |    Disagree = 0

Why is this case?
There is no clear reason why online communication, collaboration and interactivity hasn't gained the same traction within the enterprise as it has in the mainstream. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media tools are signing up members at rapid rates. We've all seen the graphs showing that if Facebook was a country it would be bigger than India, China and Indonesia combined.

Some possible theories for this lack of uptake include:

• Social tools are primarily 'social' - for sharing photos, playing games, gossiping, meeting people - work is work. Just because people spend hours on Facebook is no guarantee that they will be similarly engaged during work
• Senior Management is old school - many people feel a little guilty responding to discussion forums, posting questions, and 'chatting' via electronic channels. What will the boss think? Much better to organise a real meeting so that everyone can see I am working.
• Senior management don't set the example - nothing sends a more powerful message than senior staff not actively participating in this new world
• Business value not clear - many of the arguments supporting the increased use of social media type tools at work are a little ephemeral. Improving employee engagement, encouraging better communication and collaboration, share knowledge - the value of these is a little hard to prove. 
• Asking for help or wanting to collaborate can be seen as a sign of weakness in the workplace - 'why doesn't Bob know the answer to that question - he must be stupid!'
• People don't want to share their knowledge - 'knowledge is power' as the saying goes - some people do not want to give up this power!

A recent Deloitte report titled, Social software for business performance,  says that focussing on adoption metrics, rather than real performance improvements was also part of the problem. The report says, "Focussing on adoption as a success metric will likely lead to failure because it engenders resistance. A recent survey found that 64% of companies implementing social software faced resistance from management and 72% faced resistance from users. Many senior executives are skeptical that social software can improve performance and are concerned it will be a distraction and undermine traditional authority structures".

 

What can be done about this situation?

While the above data may make for depressing reading for the enterprise social media evangelists out there, it can also represent a great opportunity for organisations willing to commit to enterprise 2.0 to get a head start on their competitors. There is compelling evidence that shows an interactive, collaborative organisation can be significantly more productive than those that follow the traditional 'command and control' model.

For example, recent research from the McKinsey Global Institute says that 'by fully implementing social technologies, companies have an opportunity to raise the productivity of interaction workers - high skill knowledge workers, including managers and professionals - by 20-25 percent." The report goes on to say that "Two-thirds of this potential value lies in improving collaboration and communication within and across enterprises."

Also the Deloitte research - how to translate social business into bottom line results - says that: "Social software has potential to address operational 'pain points' and significantly enhance business performance in the short term and transform it in the long term. Companies that embrace this opportunity will have a distinct advantage over their competitors; skeptics will likely finish last".

In addition, research from the WIC has shown that if your intranet is more interactive, staff consider it more valuable. 

A recent CMS Wire article - Collaboration Isn't Working: What We Have Here is a Chasm - also talks about how collaboration is failing to gain traction in the workplace and discusses a possible approach for improving this situation.

A recent presentation by Toby Ward discusses the State of the Social Intranet. It shows that social media and mobile access both rank poorly within organisations but social media tools are also widely available within organisations. So it would seem that it's organisational culture and adoption that is the barrier. The presentation then goes on to provide some tips for putting together a business case to support the social intranet.

 

In many cases, the use of these technologies require a 'leap of faith'. Those organisations that believe in the possibilities of a different collaboration model and have real commitment from their leaders will gain a significant head start over their competitors.

 

How interactive is your intranet - and what you can do to improve it?

If you are interested in finding out exactly how interactive your intranet is in comparison with over 120 other organisations, why not participate in the WIC? The WIC is a free online benchmark survey that asks your end users what they think about your intranet and then allows you to benchmark this information against other participating organisations. So why not register for the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC).

 

You may also want to read:

• If employees spend more time on the intranet, does this mean it's more valuable?
• Delivering an interactive intranet: case study from #1 ranked interactive intranet: nSynergy 
• Is the size of intranet teams growing?

Is the size of intranet teams growing?

       

By Andrew Wright

NNG released their annual top 10 intranet awards earlier this year. One of the main findings about the 10 winning entries is that 'although organization size has been decreasing, the average intranet team size is increasing—this year to an impressive all-time Design Annual high of 27 people working on the intranet". 

The report goes on to say that "Intranet teams equal 0.14% of the organizations’ entire employee pool (i,.e., 1.4 intranet staff members per thousand employees). This is double the previous high of 0.07% last year."

 

According to the WIC, the size of intranet teams is stable

To provide some comparative data, I compiled the following information about intranet team size based on the 454 organisations who have registered for the free online web based intranet benchmarking service, the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC).

The data from these registrations shows that intranet team size has remained steady over the last 4 years and that the ratio of intranet team members per 1000 staff is most likely around 0.2  to 0.3 (1 staff member per 4,000 - 5,000 employees). 

As can be seen from the following chart that shows the average number of intranet team members per 1000 employees over the last four years, there has been little change in this percentage.

The above data is based on the following number of organisations who have registered for the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) since 2009:

• 2009 - 106
• 2010 - 73
• 2011 - 127
• 2012 - 148
• Total = 454

 

Notes on how data was compiled

The initial data is obtained when potential WIC participants answer the following two questions as part of the WIC registration process:

• Size of organisation (nbr of staff) - where the options are: 
  • 0-100
  • 101-1000
  • 1001-10,000
  • 10,001-50,000
  • Over 50,000
• Size of intranet team 
  • 0-3
  • 4-10
  • Over 10

 

Because the questions require respondents to choose a selection from a range (rather than providing a specific number), it is necessary to make an assumption to calculate the number of intranet resources per 1000 staff. For example, if 0-3 is selected as the size of the intranet team, this could mean that there are 0 or 3 intranet team members OR somewhere in between. To determine the ratio of intranet team members to staff, an actual number needs to be chosen. 

To compensate for this wide range of possibilities, I used the following table to calculate the most likely scenario, as well as the best and worst case scenarios. From this we can say that the real ratio lies somwhere in between.

	Best Case	Most likely	Worst case
	Number of employees
0-100	20	50	100
101-1000	100	500	1000
1001-10,000	1000	5000	10000
10,001-50,000	10000	30000	50000
50,000+	50000	80000	150000
	Number of intranet team members
0-3	3	1.5	0
4-10	10	7	4
Over 10	30	15	11

 

Best case scenario for intranet team size

The following chart assumes that intranet teams are at the maximum value (eg. for a team size selection of 4-10, assumes 10 intranet team members) and that organisation size is at the minimum value (eg. for an organisation size of between 1001-10,000, assumes 1000 people in the organisation). 

 

Worst case scenario for intranet team size

The following chart assumes that intranet teams are at the minimum value (eg. for a team size selection of 0-3, assumes 0 intranet team members) and that organisation size is at the maximum value (eg. for an organisation size of between 10,001-50,000, assumes 50,000 people in the organisation)

As can be seen from the above two charts, there is a wide range of possibile ratios! This is not surprising given that respondents choose from a range of options. However, what is not affected by the different assumptions, is the degree of change in the size of the intranet team for each year. This will remain consistent, regardless of the numbers used to calculate the ratio.

As can be seen, the change in the ratio for each year for the best, worst and most likely scenarios, is of the same proportion. 

This ratio indicates that size of your average intranet team is not increasing.

 

Assumptions and comments about data accuracy

The above data may be influenced by how people interpret the definition of 'Intranet Team'.

For example, some people might include contractors and part timers as part of the intranet team, while other people may consider the intranet team to be just full time staff. 

It is up to the person who registers as to how they define the term 'Intranet Team' so there is the possibility of a variation in responses to this question. 

Also it is interesting to note that from the 454 registrations, only 33 have more than 10 people as part of the intranet team - approximately 7%. This is in sharp contrast to the findings of the NNG report where the average intranet team size of the 10 award winning intranets is 27.

A possible reason for this difference may be the definition of 'Intranet Team' used by NNG. The NNG summary doesn't go into detail about what 'working in the intranet' means exactly - but it could include part time content contributers, IT staff and internal communication staff as well as dedicated intranet resources.

Another consideration is that the intranets listed in the NNG report are all award winning intranets - so they are not your average intranet. Perhaps this is an indication that there is a relationship between the number of intranet resources and quality of the intranet.

 

Source data

To view the source data used for the above calculations, view the WIC Registrations Source Data Google spreadsheet.

 

Related articles

The organic intranet

The organic intranet

       

by Andrew Wright

I read a good quote on Twitter last week posted by Pauli Kongas (@pkongas). He said "Intranets are not built - they are grown. More like plants, not like buildings".

I like this quote because it gave me the answer to something that has been nagging at me since I read the NNG annual 10 best intranets report article earlier this month.

In this report, one of the conclusions is that "Great intranets require years to create". The report goes on to say that "Since 2001 , we’ve tracked the length of time it takes to create a great intranet from inception to launch. On average, the process lasts for 42 months—or about 3.5 years . This year, the average was 27 months, or about 2.3 years to create the winning designs."

Something about this conclusion didn't seem quite right to me (and was also slightly depressing!).

There was a discussion on LinkedIn about whether 3.5 years to create a great intranet was right. Maybe the answer was here? Some people felt that great intranets can be developed more quickly than that, others questioned exactly what was meant by a great intranet, while a few more people felt that user adoption and change management was the time consuming part and could possibly justify this lengthy time frame.

 

The organic intranet is an intranet that grows and evolves

I posted a comment to the discussion where I mentioned that the #1 ranked Worldwide Intranet Challenge intranet - Weston Solutions only took 12 months to develop their award winning intranet. However, I have since looked at the case study again and realised that in fact the Weston Solutions intranet had existed since the late 1990's. So in fact from 'inception to launch' - which is how the NNG report defines the time frame - it has really taken around 15 years to build a great intranet (not the 12 month SharePoint upgrade project that is the topic of the case study). 

But what is interesting is that the Weston Solution's intranet greatness wasn't a linear path where it gradually went from inception, to good and then to great. It was more of a sine wave.

They did in fact already have a great, award winning intranet in the early 2000's. However, over time the intranet was neglected, technology moved on, end user expectations changed and the quality of the intranet declined until they launched a project to re-build the intranet in 2011. 

 

The answer!

I then realised what had been nagging me about the NNG article - the implicit notion of the intranet as a big 'project'.

A project where there is a start date, a launch date, some activities in between, a time frame for achieving an end result and then the intranet is 'finished'. Done! 

Intranets are not like this - they are organic, like the Weston Solutions intranet. They ebb and flow. Intranets are more like children or plants than buildings or projects. They need plenty of attention and maintenance. Without this constant attention, the quality of an intranet can decline pretty quickly - just as the Weston Solutions intranet did in the mid 2000s.

So putting a time frame to create a great intranet is like saying it takes 3.5 years to raise a great kid. While it does obviously take time to develop a child's character, time is not something that is usually a major consideration.

As Chris Wright comments in his recent CMS Wire article - 3 Steps to a Great SharePoint Intranet - "Don't ever finish your SharePoint intranet project. If you disband the project team once your Intranet is built, your project will ultimately fail. If you ever even consider an Intranet finished, you might have well not have bothered in the first place."

 

The long wow

Luke Mepham also makes the  point in his excellent article, Big Bang Theory for Intranets, that a big bang approach to delivering intranets is not advisable. He says "A long period without any improvement means the perception of the intranet is poor and getting worse. Every week that passes people become more disillusioned."

He goes on to say that "It seems that a big part of the problem with big bang is that the size of the change is too high, and the frequency too low. The obvious alternative is small frequent change. An approach known as ‘the long wow’ is about implementing changes more regularly. This approach is popular with many highly successful and admired brands. Nike+, Google and Apple are all renowned for their regular,incremental upgrades or feature releases."

 

Eric Ries and the Lean Startup movement

Eric Ries, author of the best selling book - The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses - and now leader of the Lean Startup global movement, is also an advocate of the 'long wow'. I have written before about intranet lessons that can be learnt from successful web startups and I believe many of the ideas in Eric's book can be also applied to intranets.

In his book, Ries argues that many startups (and this also applies to intranet owners) waste time and energy implementing ideas and features that people don't want (for intranets, this could be content that never gets read or online discussion forums that no-one uses). And that there is a better - leaner- approach to decide what should be implemented and what should be discarded.

Three of the basic principles of the Lean Startup are below:

• Minimum viable product (MVP) - what is the maximum amount of validated feedback you can obtain from your customers (staff) with the least amount of effort.
• Continuous deployment - updates and changes should be continuously implemented - the long wow. Facebook, Google, LinkedIn - many successful websites continuously implement new features. This approach would bring many benefits to intranets.
• Split testing - offer different versions of a feature or product to staff at the same time to determine which one is most effective.

You can read about other techniques at The Lean Startup Movement web page.

 

Conclusion

The important thing to emphasise when delivering successful intranets is not a pre-occupation with a long-term project mentality. Instead, it is more important is to focus on ensuring effective systems and processes are in place so that the right features are being continuously & quickly implemented and that your intranet is evolving & improving to meet your changing user needs.

 

You may also like to read:

• 7 Intranet Lessons to be Learned From Successful Web Startups
• Could this be the world's most effective intranet
• Big bang theory for intranets

 

 

 

If employees spend more time on the intranet, does this mean it's more valuable?

       

If employees spend more time on the intranet, is it a good or bad thing?

An argument can be made for both sides of the fence. For example, more time spent on the intranet may mean people can't find what they want and spend a lot of time browsing around or searching. Or perhaps the system is so slow it takes forever to log-on and download a document. (Jonathan Philips, from the team at Intranetizen, gives a nice description of this dilemma in his article, It’s not about the outputs, it’s about the outcomes).

 

Are intranets a waste of time?

Well known intranet thought leader, Gerry McGovern also notes in his article, How to measure the success of your intranet, "I've been working with intranets since 1997. I have observed behaviour and seen feedback from thousands of employees from all over the world. The number one complaint, by a huge margin, that employees have of their intranets is: "It's a WASTE OF TIME!".  

Gerry then goes on to say, "Focus on your employees' time. Be relentless in seeking to save it. If you do you will create a great intranet. It's as simple and as difficult as that." 

Based on these statements, it's tempting to think that getting your employees to spend even MORE time on the intranet may not be the most effective strategy.

 

On the other hand...

On the other hand, logic would seem to say that if people are spending time using a particular tool, there must be something of value there.

So what do the intranet end users from the 100 organisations who have completed the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) web based benchmark say?

The following scatter chart shows the relationship between the two WIC survey questions "How much time in total do you spend on the intranet each day on average?" and  "I would rate the value of the intranet as?".

The number of minutes end users spend per day on the intranet is shown on the vertical axis and a score between 0 (low) to 4 (highest) for the value of the intranet is shown on the horizontal axis. The trend line and the R-Squared value provide an estimation of the strength of the relationship (where 0= no relationship 1=perfect relationship) between the two lists.

As can be seen from the trend line, there is clearly a relationship that shows that:

"The more valuable an intranet, the more time employees will spend using it"

So what intranet services can be provided to encourage employees to spend more time on the intranet? The following diagram shows the relationship between the questions:

"How much time in total would you spend on the intranet each day on average?" and questions about using the intranet for interactive tasks such as completing on-line forms, participating in discussion forums and collaborating on-line.

The relationship between time spent and intranet interactivity is even stronger than the previous diagram.

"To encourage staff to use the intranet more, help facilitate more on-line interaction"

 

Below are the relationships between other variables that could possibly affect the amount of time spent on the intranet.

Finding information

It seems there is virtually no relationship between the amount of time staff spend on the intranet and the quality of the search and navigation.

 

Page loading speed

Similarly page loading speed has virtually no impact on how much time end users spend on the intranet.

 

Based on the data above, a suggested strategy to deliver a more valuable intranet would be to provide services (and training), such as online forms and collaboration tools, that will encourage your employees to visit the intranet more often and stay longer.

What is your experience? If employees are spending more time on the intranet, does this make it more valuable?

 

See also:

• State of the Intranets 2012: How Does Your Intranet Measure Up?
• 5 Steps to Build a 'How To' Intranet
• Do smaller organisations really have better intranets?

 

 

Prioritising your intranet improvement initiatives

   

Overview

These days intranet managers are swamped with ideas and suggestions for improving their intranet. These ideas can come from many sources - executives, senior managers, colleagues, intranet consultants, site visits to other intranet sites and a multitude of other research sources. It is easy to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information and it can be difficult to know where to start... How do you prioritize and schedule intranet improvement activities with limited resources?

Examples

I have just read a great case study about this topic - Save yourself £8m/$13m and 73 years- intranet case study. In the study, an intranet improved it's benchmark ranking from 36 out of 36 to 8 of 36 by implementing the following activities:

• Re-design of intranet publisher training,
• Creation of a community of practice for these publishers,
• Two conferences conducted for the publisher,
• Development of a governance structure, and 
• Clean up of content, removal of content that was out of date, duplicated or substandard. 

This case study highlights the need to decide how you are going measure the success (or otherwise) of any intranet improvement initiatives. I think it was Vince Lombardi who said you can't improve what you don't measure.

Allen Huish in his article, How to prioritize intranet developments, also talks about the importance of measuring the value of intranet initiatives. He lists 3 dimensions he uses to prioritize intranet developments:

• Benefits - is there a measurable benefit?
• Reach - how many people will benefit? 
• Influence - is it going to increase your influence within the organisation?

Another article - Managing SharePoint Feature Requests - asks 4 basic questions before approving a request:

• How will this feature help the business?
• How does this feature contribute to strategic goals?
• How complex is the feature to implement?
• How does the feature align with your overall portal strategy?

Relationship between intranet qualities and intranet value

 The Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) provides you with a way of measuring the effectiveness of your intranet and then prioritizing intranet improvement initiatives. When participating in the WIC, end users indicate the value they believe a specific quality adds to the intranet and then also indicate an overall value of the intranet. With this information, it is possible to determine which qualities end users consider most closely correlate with intranet value.

Correlation Diagrams

 The following diagrams show the relationship between various factors and intranet value (calculated from nearly 7000 end user responses from 23 organisations).

The Correlation Value figure is calculated using the Excel Correl function. This function assigns a value that shows the relationship between two numerical lists. For example if the first list is 1,2,3 and second list is 3, 6, 9 - the correlation value will be 1.0. In other words there is a perfect positive relationship between the two lists.

The lists in the tables below are taken from the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC). The first numerical list contains the intranet factor (eg. Policies and Procedures) and second numerical list is the overall value end users give the intranet. The correlation value reflects the strength of the relationship between these lists.

You can use these table as a guide to identifying activities which have the most impact on improving end user value. Note that these tables are a summary of WIC responses to date and each organisation will have different correlation values.

Content V Intranet Value

The following table shows the relationship between the value of the intranet and different types of content.
 

Intranet Maintenance and Change V Intranet Value

The following table shows the relationship between the value of the intranet and how the intranet is maintained.

 

Intranet Performance V Intranet Value

The following table shows the relationship between the value of the intranet and the performance of the intranet
 

Participate in the Worldwide Intranet Challenge

If you would like to determine the specific correlation values for your intranet, then consider registering for the Worldwide Intranet Challenge.

In addition to English, the WIC is also available in:

• French
• Spanish
• German
• Estonian
• Russian
• Danish