Quick and cost-effective ways to overhaul your intranet

Upgrading your intranet using SharePoint technology should work wonders for boosting your intranet's popularity – as it did for BSI Group.

goetz boue by Goetz Boue, Concentra

Many communication professionals are responsible for maintaining their company's intranet. While some intranets use standard HTML or web content management systems from a variety of vendors, a growing majority of company websites are run using Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) – often referred to simply as SharePoint.

There's been a lot of interest from communications practitioners about how to address employee demand for the incorporation of web 2.0.

Indeed, at Melcrum's Strategic Communication Management Summit in Chicago in 2007, the workshop session on developing corporate intranets to incorporate new technology led by one of the Hub's editorial board members, Michael Rudnick of Watson Wyatt, reached maximum capacity.

So, to address this interest in intranet development methods, I'll explain how the updgraded version of MOSS can help you bring your organization's intranet up to speed with what employees want, and how MOSS' new functionality can enable more collaboration-based ways of working.How BSI improved its intranet's efficiency using SharePoint software
The British Standards Institution (BSI) is a growing organization. Our representatives work from home, at clients’ sites or in large offices or small teams based all over the world. Thus, the need for a unified communication medium for the company, a portal to key business applications and company resources, became increasingly evident.

But what BSI had was far from this benchmark. We had an entirely UK-centric bespoke intranet in the UK but it was rarely used. Our Americas Entities had their own system, with a similar story in Asia, leading to a fragmented approach to communication and knowledge management. The only centralized way of accessing BSI Group news was via a bi-monthly newsletter. It was far from an ideal method of communication, especially for an organization with BSI’s global reach.

The vision: replace this miscellany of communication modes with a consistent global intranet where employees could get news and information on the company including relevant company materials such as forms, images and other rich media, with the added benefit of promoting and sharing best practices across all disciplines.

IT solutions provider, Concentra, was chosen by BSI Group to help implement Microsoft SharePoint to our intranet – “Connect” – at the organization. Now staff go to one place for all their needs. The MOSS system is customizable to the BSI business divisional level, down to individual departments within those divisions and then further adaptable still for individual teams, groups and individuals.

BSI is already seeing other benefits, such as less administration by IT in terms of setting and resetting passwords, for instance, and less network load and storage in terms of sending internal attachments via e-mail to multiple recipients. The global newsletter has been replaced with a single news area on the homepage. Global marketing functions now have the power to upload images to one central repository so they’re available to marketing functions across the world.

Connect’s success has taken hard work: combining different languages and internal business approaches. We’re essentially consolidating hundreds of information sources into one much more user-friendly system. The site’s now globally accessible, so the message to employees says it’s one global BSI rather than the previously perceived notion that we were very much a UK company with international operations. Now that everyone has access to the same system and information, we really are a global family.

Going forward, Connect is a way to provide rapid access to key business data for all the BSI Group. We’ve given people the infrastructure, shown them how to use it, and said, “Crack on – it’s your intranet”. As a result, employees are finding new and creative ways of using the software.

by Steve Corney, BSI Group web manager.

It doesn't have to be a massive expense
Web 2.0 is a catch-all term for ways of making websites much more dynamic and socially interactive using tools like social networking sites, blogs and podcasts as part of a company's communication processes.

Firstly, calm your worries about the cost implications of overhauling or upgrading your intranet. It's a pity that all the jargon about social media might suggest that opening up your online presence in this way will require lots of investment in expensive new technology.

Far from it. Your existing intranet already has 90% of what you need. What's missing is the ability to collaboratively work and communicate using tools such as wikis, blogs and message boards. But as MOSS was designed with existing desktop tools like Microsoft Office in mind, it's easy to use without having to learn to master yet another new technology.

Turn your intranet around
Not all intranets have lived up to their initial expectations. You may be in the position of a lot of organizations and have the intranet owned by the IT department or Marketing, with little opportunity for involvement or buy-in from other parts of the business.

As a result, your intranet might be very static, only getting updated as little as once a month, and not necessarily with compelling content.
Probably all the good information you have there is not always easy to retrieve.

All too often, intranets that started out with a real mission to help staff better communicate end up as glorified company news sites with a telephone directory attached.

Social networking
Whether you like it or not, employees are now using social networking sites such as YouTube and Facebook every day – and they may also have experienced how easy it is to manage and produce their own content, such as blogs, wikis and podcasts. Any company's online site that doesn't keep pace with the demands of its users will fail.

Using MOSS' improved functionality (it's not possible to use an older version of MOSS in combination with a new version) you can transform your existing intranet into a more dynamic intranet by including things like blogs and wikis to really excite your employees.

And, to truly engage them, your intranet needs to be much more fluid than your existing site might provide or allow for – you need to create a real community bulletin board and meeting place.

How the intranet can make a difference
If you aren't using your intranet to engage with the people who make up and care about your business, from supplier to staffer, then you're wasting your site's potential. Be warned, though, that the intranet is not the place for safe, slick corporate communications. People do want to hear what the managing director thinks, but not the PR version.

Only the messages that sound like they're from the heart will engage people. It may not be as slick as the existing CEO communication method you might be using, but it's real – and anything else will push people away, not invite them in.

A CEO blog or an online employee discussion forum, for example, when used appropriately, can build the equivalent of the town hall meeting online – a place where people can meet and participate.

Due to their "instant" nature, these types of employee discussions can strengthen partner relationships and improve communication, and a wiki can quickly become a tool for storing documentation, retaining knowledge in a secure place, not just in people's heads.

Why MOSS?
MOSS delivers both intranet and extranet functionality "out-of-the-box", speeding up the time to implementation by using user-friendly, flexible technology. For example, it tightly integrates with the ubiquitous Microsoft Office desktop business suite, providing document, meeting, contact and
e-mail management via a web browser.

Using this system for info transfer can also help minimize travel costs and costs of disseminating information (including less e-mail duplication).

One particularly useful feature of MOSS' latest version is the ability to store management information and documentation securely on the intranet, which can then be downloaded onto individual user desktops – and is compatible with familiar Microsoft Office tools such as Word and Excel.

As customers already own and understand these tools and software programs, probably from using them throughout their working lives or on the previous version of the intranet, they've already got the skills to start exploiting them, which radically brings down your integration and deployment overheads.

The ability to work together better, and to make effective business decisions and produce results, particularly when multiple employees and/or multiple locations are involved, is a huge bonus. Using this system for information transfer can also help minimize travel costs and costs of finding and disseminating information (including less e-mail duplication).

Using MOSS can boost your ROI
The updated version of MOSS can also enable you to better leverage one of your company's most valuable assets – data of all types, which may currently be spread throughout disjointed applications in a range of formats, on a variety of operating systems.

This is great for your anticipated return on investment before you even get real improvement in business processes. And when you look at business efficiency as a whole, it makes sense to invest in a standard platform, as you're investing in tools that you'll be able to apply easily to whatever other business challenges you may have.

Too much time is spent by employees searching for the right information – be it on their internal servers, or from an external source. Using MOSS, efficiencies can be achieved by having the right information to hand, whether to work on a specific task or to support decision making.

We've been able to help our customers in this way by integrating MOSS' powerful search engine to search information from both within and outside the organization. Pulling data from other systems into a single location such as sales information or financial data should help drive performance.

Intranet "migration" issues
Let's spend a short time reviewing the most professional and effective means of upgrading to the updated MOSS way of doing things and achieving the results you want. It's important to approach upgrading your intranet functionality by looking at site "migration" (integrating the new tools and functions, and deciding which existing intranet pages and sections you want to retain, and why) as the bigger issue.

Efficiencies can be achieved by having the right information to hand, whether to work on a specific task or to support decision making.

Without working on migrating your original site content correctly, your updated SharePoint solution will not bring you the results you expect. But migration doesn't necessarily need to be viewed as a chore.

Reviewing your existing content in terms of what's valuable and which are the most commonly accessed pages will help you build a better intranet.

Keeping the users in mind is critical
Start by planning your structure and content carefully with your key stakeholders. Build the new intranet while maintaining the old one and migrate the most important content first. Once the content has been migrated and you have a stable platform, then begin to introduce the new functionality.

There's a real opportunity with MOSS to dramatically change and improve your intranet's appearance as the design restrictions of the previous version no longer apply.

Enterprise Search and Form Server add-ons
Enterprise Search is another recent MOSS "add on" (an extra function, in addition to MOSS' standard features) that lets you access data and understand what's going on within the business.

It not only indexes portal/intranet content, it can also be configured to pull data from a variety of internal sources, such as line of business applications, file shares and external websites, making it a very powerful business tool.
Access user data, such as how your staff are using the intranet, to discover which pages and areas are the most popular, for example.

This allows stakeholders to make decisions about which content is useful and which pages should perhaps be given more prominence. It will also allow you to cut out content that's no longer used or required.

Faster form-filling
The combination of MOSS' "Workflow" engine and "Forms Server" functions can be used to faster collate and conduct previously time-consuming process information. An example of the type of process that might typically be deployed might be a holiday request form that the member of staff fills in.

It's then automatically routed to the line manager for approval and finally ends up with HR who can check whether the holiday allocation hasn't yet been exceeded and then log online the holidays requested.

Using the 'Alert' option, document 'owners' can receive alerts when content is altered.

Receive instant alerts
The latest version of MOSS includes easy-to-create templates for you to create and support the creation of user blogs and wikis, along with a lot of options to customize them how you like.

Using the "Alert" option, document "owners" can receive alerts when content is altered and can access the workspace using their normal web browser.

Webpages can be created using the online intranet itself, allowing non-technical users to affect the content of the pages. News items, reviews, meeting notes, calendars, discussion forums, surveys and company data from sales to payroll details can be made available – based on a rigorous, secure user access system.

"Intelligent" components let even non-programmers gather information they care about and customize the appearance of webpages, as well as personalize them to suit the needs of the organization, team or even individual.

Easier further upgrade options
Similarly, information that may be relevant to users outside your organization can be produced, managed and made available by non-technical users – password protection for your peace of mind, again all maintained centrally.

If the standard MOSS features aren't enough, IT Services companies can easily add software components that extend the already rich baseline MOSS functionality to further upgrade your site. With millions of users all over the world and MOSS fast becoming the intranet solution of choice, a large number of add-ons are being developed all the time.

What are you waiting for?
The message is clear: the ideal delivery platform for the benefits of web 2.0 is a reinvigorated company intranet, jazzed up with new thinking based on the latest in what MOSS technology can deliver.

First published by Melcrum in 2008.

SharePoint event
BSI’s Steve Corney will be speaking at a free SharePoint seminar run by Concentra at Microsoft's London Customer Centre on 8 February 2008.

Attendees will be able to:

Gain a better understanding of the capabilities of SharePoint.
Hear from industry leaders how SharePoint is relevant to their business.
Speak with experts to discuss your needs.

NOT A MEMBER?

Other recommendations:
Executive audio blogging at Hewlett-Packard

Topics

Strategic Partners

events

Poll of the week

Jobs of the week

Top 3 rated articles

Vendor Listing

NOT A MEMBER?