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.
- 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
- 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)
- Step 3: Create a vision for change
- Step 4: Communicate the vision
- Portal design challenges
- How the WIC helped focus intranet improvement activities
- 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
- Step 7: Build on the change
- Step 8: Anchor the changes in corporate culture
- What is the Weston Solutions killer intranet app?
- Home page overview
- Home page changes throughout the day
- Activity stream
- News
- Company corner
- Employee spotlight
- Intranet demonstration
- Home page
- Order business cards application
- Who is the team
- Search
- Intranet demonstration
- How to update staff profile pages
- Personalised news feeds
- Filtering news feeds
- Getting started wizard
- Intranet demonstration
- Mapping grid - able to view various activities on a map
- Communities
- Visual representation of what is happening in the communities
- 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.
