Digital Workplace and Intranet Employee Benchmarking

The WIC's most valuable intranets of 2013 (based on end user feedback)

by Andrew Wright

The Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) is a free web based survey that allows organisations to obtain feedback about their intranets from the people that matter the most - their intranet end users. The WIC team then benchmarks the feedback from all participating organisations, enabling a comparative score and rank for each survey question to be given.

In 2013, 61 organisations from 9 different countries participated in the WIC, bringing the total number of organisations who have participated to 179.

Note: Total surveys completed = 193. Some organisations have completed the WIC twice.

This article lists those organisations from 2013 who received the highest rankings in a range of categories, based on feedback from their own staff (you may also wish to view 2012's top ranked intranets). 

 

2013 top ranked intranet - Milan Chamber of Commerce (Italy)

For 2013, the overall top ranked intranet was from the Milan Chamber of Commerce (Italy). The Chamber of Commerce supports and promotes the general interests of local businesses and markets through in-house functions or others delegated to it by the national or regional governments or deriving from international conventions.

The Milan Chamber of Commerce also ranked #1 in many of the survey questions including: Value, Look and feel, Home Page, Understanding culture and values, Finding information, Search, Managing documents, Re-usable documents, Policies and procedures, and Reports and/or dashboards. 

See the case study - Leading intranets - Milan Chamber of Commerce.

Milan Chamber of Commerce Home page

 

2nd ranked intranet - QIC (Australia)

The second ranked intranet was from QIC. Established in 1991 by the Queensland Government to manage its long-term investments, QIC has grown to be one of the largest institutional investment managers in Australia, with more than 90 local and international clients and $70.1 billion in funds under management as at 30 June 2013.

QIC rated well in the following questions: #1 in Australia, #2 home page, information easy to read, publishing content, managing documents, policies and procedures, content, reports and/or dashboards, and #3 value of the intranet, look and feel. access to business applications,

 Sample comments from staff about the intranet:

We have seen dramatic improvements in the intranet over the last year - the intranet is much more user friendly. I see benefit in the continued development of this channel as a place for employee interaction, toolkit for resources, information and how to guidance and to promote 'connective' stories that promote QIC values and culture.

Being a new starter to the business, I have found the intranet to be great in helping me with every-day tasks. It is very easy to find your way around and provides me with the information required.

Keep up the good work. A huge improvement. Everything should always be a work in progress, most things can always be improved upon.

QIC Intranet Home Page

 

 

3rd ranked intranet - Prophet (USA)

Prophet is the third ranked intranet for 2013. Prophet is a strategic brand and marketing consultancy with offices around the globe. Clients include BMW, Cisco, GE, Johnson and Johnson, Kellogg’s, McDonald’s, The Cosmopolitan, Visa, and Zurich Financial.

Prophet rated well in the following questions: #1 online discussions, staff details, access to business applications, #1 in the United States, #2 value of the intranet, look and feel, re-usable documents, providing feedback, notification of changes to intranet content, #3 finding information, publishing content, provision of intranet training.

Prophet home page

Sample comments from staff:

I think the team has done an awesome job with the redesign -- the broader thing to tackle is our culture of sharing knowledge - really getting people to dig in with this -- we are all responsible for this -- but in the end the team has done an outstanding job of giving us an environment to do this well

The recent changes to our intranet, especially the elements of gamification, make engagement with the company, content and culture almost second-nature. The photos and personal profiles add an excellent element of social media.

I LOVE THE INTRANET. It's super collaborative, and I really like the ability to talk to colleagues across different offices. The visibility on the pipeline is brilliant, as are the staff profiles.

Prophet was also a gold winner in the 2009 intranet innovation awards.

 

Other highly ranked organisations

The following organisations also ranked in the top 3 (top 5%) in one or more of the survey questions or categories:

• AmBank Group (M) Bhd (Malaysia), #2 for completing work tasks

• Beaver Street Fisheries (United States), #2 for online forms

• British Gas, (UK) #1 UK intranet, #1 10,000+ employees, #3 online discussions

• Socialministeriet (Denmark), #1 for completing work tasks

• Department of Transport (Australia), #3 information for new starters

• Endress+Hauser (Switzerland), #2 information about products/services, #2 search

• ERM (UK), #1 off-site access, #3 personalisation

• Home Assistance UK Ltd (UK), #3 intranet availability

• JT International (Switzerland), #3 understanding values & culture

• Køge Kommune (Denmark), #3 ease of reading information

• Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (Australia),  #2 new starter information, #2 content accuracy, #2 understand culture and values, #2 finding information, #3 home page, #3 news, #3 policies and procedures, #3 product/service information, #3 feedback about intranet, #3 mobile access

• Nestlé (Switzerland), #2 collaboration

• NNE Pharmaplan (Denmark), #2 personalisation, #1 1000 - 10,000 employees

• PinnacleHealth System (USA), #2 complete work tasks

• Queensland Country Credit Union (Australia), #1 online forms, #3 managing documents, #2 intranet training

• State of Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles (USA), #2 work instructions

• Simpson Grierson (New Zealand), #3 content, #3 change notification, #2 intranet availability, #3 staff details, #2 news

• SNL Financial (USA), #3 collaboration, #3 reports & dashboards

• St Barbara (Australia), #3 search, #3 re-usable documents

• Swisscom AG (Switzerland), #1 collaboration, #1 mobile access, #1 content easy to read, #3 content accuracy, #3 off-site access

• Tiscali Spa (Italy), #3 work instructions

 

Characteristics of highly ranked intranets

The following characteristics were common among the leading WIC intranets.

 

Staff spend more time using them

Staff from the top 6 most valuable intranets (ie. the top 10%) spent an average of 43.1 minutes each day on the intranet. While staff from the bottom 6 organisations spent on average just 18.1 minutes - less than half.

This is consistent with WIC research from last year which shows that the more time staff spend using the intranet, the more valuable they perceive it to be.

The challenge for intranet professionals then is to deliver content and services that will keep staff coming back.

 

They are more interactive

While intranets in the top 10% out-scored those in the bottom 10% in all survey questions, for some questions there was a larger discrepancy than others. This would suggest that, as the highest priority, the biggest opportunity for improving intranets lies in these areas.

The biggest discrepancies were in the four questions (from a total of 50) shown in the chart below.

These questions all relate to making the intranet more interactive and convincing staff to contribute content. For more information about this, see 10 lessons intranets can learn from Wikipedia.

 

They support clear business objectives

There are many articles about intranet strategy that discuss the importance of aligning the intranet with business objectives. After speaking with many of the managers of the leading WIC intranets listed in this article, it appears that most of the business objectives supported by their intranets can generally be placed into three broad categories:

• Innovation and continuous improvement: This includes the ability of intranets to identify and support new ideas, forums for discussing new ideas and for looking at ways to improve things, project & team sites for implementing these ideas, serendipitous connections for fostering innovative & collaborative work environments, and communications to inform people about process changes resulting from the implementation of new ideas

• Operations: This includes the ability of intranets to support call centres and front line staff, to improve customer satisfaction by delivering products and services more quickly, effectively and efficiently, to ensure processes and tasks are completed consistently throughout the organisation and to automate manual processes where possible.

• Employee engagement: This includes the ability of the intranet to provide staff with access to the information and tools they need to their jobs from anywhere at anytime on any device, allowing them greater freedom and flexibility to control their own work more effectively.

For more information about these objectives, including additional examples of how intranets can help, see 3 compelling business reasons for having an intranet.

 

They ‘mine’ their social content

While enterprise social networks (or social intranets, social software,  enterprise 2.0) have been getting a lot of attention lately (partly because of the difficulty in gaining traction), research from Deloitte and McKinsey suggests that this attention is warranted and that those organisations that ‘get it right’ will gain a significant advantage over the competition.

Leading WIC intranets have recognised that greater staff participation and interactivity with the intranet is not only inevitable but is critical to raising the value of the intranet. However with this greater level of input from staff comes a greater need to recognise the ‘signal’ from the ‘noise’. So just as big data has created the need for a data miner, increased online social interactions has created the need for a ‘content miner’ - someone to analyse and identify key nuggets of information and include them in a formal organisational wide information repository.

For more about this topic, see Intranets: the signal and the noise and the need for a 'content miner'

 

 

Participate in the WIC in 2014

If you would like to participate in the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) this year you just need to complete the WIC registration page (or if you are from Denmark, view the Danish WIC site). It takes just a couple of minutes and you could have the benchmark results on your desk within two weeks, for free.

While it can be a little daunting and takes a lot of courage to ask for feedback from your end users, deep down you probably know that it's the first step you need to take to provide a better intranet experience. Without this concrete feedback, you are relying largely on intuition and guesswork to identify improvement activities. In addition to this, past experience has shown that benchmarking your intranet will help improve it.

Nearly 200 organisations from around the world have already benefited from participation and many have provided recommendations for the WIC.

The survey is currently available in 13 languages with others being added as requested. The WIC is also supported by a network of partners from around the world.

 

Other articles you may like

• The WIC's most valuable intranets of 2012 (based on end user feedback)

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

• 50 ways to a better intranet

• Are intranets becoming more collaborative and accessible?

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Feb 5, 2014 11:10:55 PM | Competitions, Intranet Case Studies, Intranet Leading Practices, Intranet Measurement, WIC Updates

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by Andrew Wright

From the 61 organisations who participated in the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) in 2013, the Milan Chamber of Commerce intranet received the most positive feedback from its end users, ranking it at #1 for the year (see The WIC's most valuable intranets of 2013 for a list of all highly ranked organisations).

So what is the secret? We asked Laura Vittani from the Chamber of Commerce for comments and screenshots:

 

Key facts

• The intranet is built with Liferay technology

• There are 1153 end users

• The intranet was developed from May 2012 (beta) and finally launched in September 2012. An external makeover is planned for 2014.

• The 3 most visited areas are:

• Home page: news and information people need can be found here immediately.

• Directory and profiles

• The communications section and provisions (containing detailed information to colleagues)

• In a year and a half over 700 items were created for the “fixed part” of the homepage and more than 300 other content items were generated by editors of the various internal sections.

• The average duration of a visit is about 6 and a half minutes,

• On average 40,000 pages per month are displayed with clear peaks in the most intense periods of work (up to 43,000 in May 2013-37000 in July 2013)

 

Screenshots

Below is the Milan Chamber of Commerce home page (the full background image can be changed according to the season, event or simply for aesthetic purposes.)

Widget page

Each user can create their own widget page. Below is an example page showing possible widgets that staff can choose. From this page it’s possible to move, open or close widgets as required.

HR Page

This page is an example of complex internal section containing links to content and documents.

 

See also

• The WIC's most valuable intranets of 2013
• The WIC's most valuable intranets of 2012

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

       

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. 

 

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

 

Leading Intranets - Milan Chamber of Commerce

by Andrew Wright

From the 61 organisations who participated in the Worldwide Intranet Challenge (WIC) in 2013, the Milan Chamber of Commerce intranet received the most positive feedback from its end users, ranking it at #1 for the year (see The WIC's most valuable intranets of 2013 for a list of all highly ranked organisations).

So what is the secret? We asked Laura Vittani from the Chamber of Commerce for comments and screenshots:

 

Key facts

• The intranet is built with Liferay technology

• There are 1153 end users

• The intranet was developed from May 2012 (beta) and finally launched in September 2012. An external makeover is planned for 2014.

• The 3 most visited areas are:

• Home page: news and information people need can be found here immediately.

• Directory and profiles

• The communications section and provisions (containing detailed information to colleagues)

• In a year and a half over 700 items were created for the “fixed part” of the homepage and more than 300 other content items were generated by editors of the various internal sections.

• The average duration of a visit is about 6 and a half minutes,

• On average 40,000 pages per month are displayed with clear peaks in the most intense periods of work (up to 43,000 in May 2013-37000 in July 2013)

 

Screenshots

Below is the Milan Chamber of Commerce home page (the full background image can be changed according to the season, event or simply for aesthetic purposes.)

Widget page

Each user can create their own widget page. Below is an example page showing possible widgets that staff can choose. From this page it’s possible to move, open or close widgets as required.

HR Page

This page is an example of complex internal section containing links to content and documents.

 

See also

• The WIC's most valuable intranets of 2013
• The WIC's most valuable intranets of 2012

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