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Articles by Lisa Welchman
2011 has been an interesting year for intranets and websites. From the stories I hear at conferences and from our clients, organizations seem to be hitting a development wall. Unable to implement needed technologies and content strategies to take intranets to the next level, some organizations are starting from scratch. But others are left scratching their heads about (still) locked internal debates over whether or not the intranet team has the authority to dictate the types of changes that are required to improve user experience and quality.
The first intranet development project that I managed was in 1996. It was for a networking hardware company in Silicon Valley that has long since been acquired. The project was to put the entire ISO 9001 approval process online. The company was small, slightly more than 20 people, and the project was driven by one of the executives. At the time, I didn't realize how unusual it was for executives to have a vision and drive the porting of various business processes to the intranet channel.
One of the first questions we ask organizations when we start an engagement is: "Do you have any idea how much your organization spends on its website and/or intranet?" The intranet is frequently riding fiscally on the coattails of another program. This does not always allow for strategic planning for intranet development. So it's important that intranet managers begin to develop a comprehensive intranet budget.
Many organizations limit their "social networking" policy work to the public-facing web-and do not specifically outline policies for social networking on the intranet. It is essential to re-examine all organizational policies with a view toward noting how things have changed in the management and in communications with employees.
For better or worse, intranets are—when compared to public-facing sites—bastions of publishing freedom. And with all the Web 2.0 technologies spawning new applications on what feels like a daily basis, the power to create intranet content is greater than ever before. Yet when we talk with folks about their intranets, we are often met with nervous looks and giggles or dismissive hand waves because the idea of truly fixing the intranet seems to be some unattainable ideal. There is the sense that if the public can't see the painfully low quality of the intranet, then it's OK for now. Everyone knows that intranets are broken, but fixing them is a lower priority than fixing public websites. I disagree.
The more websites I’ve observed in the past 12 years, the more I’ve noticed that there is a strong relationship between website characteristics and the dynamics of the affiliated organization. In fact, I think I’ve discovered some direct correlations. I refer to the study of these relationships as “web phrenology.”
With the continuing buzz around Web 2.0—and Web 3.0 discussions starting up—let’s consider the impact that this has on the operational aspect of intranet management. While the sophistication, complexity, and size of webites has increased, many companies continue to manage their web teams in the same archaic way they did in 1995—potentially increasing the risk and liability for their organizations.
Workflows are supposed to flow, like a river. Whether your CMS workflow will run along smoothly or leave users to navigate as if they were white-water rafting has a lot to do with how you think about your workflow in the first place. Usually, when organizations are implementing a web content management system, the workflow is an afterthought. It is something the implementation team thinks about after they already purchased the software and sometimes after they have designed the system.
In 2004, James Surowiecki released an interesting book, The Wisdom of Crowds. In it, Surowiecki explains that wise crowds are good at guessing the correct answer to things. Wanting to write something about folksonomies and intranets brought this book to my mind. For the uninitiated, a folksonomy is user-created classification system for tagging web content.
Web governance addresses the management structures, policies, and standards that are put in place by an organization in order to manage a web presence. For most organizations, intranet web governance is ad hoc or, at best, informal. While, in general, web governance is not effectively carried out on internet sites either, most organizations at least make some pretense at trying to establish web policies and standards for their websites (particularly if the organization operates in a capacity that requires rigorous compliance to standards related to information dissemination). Intranets, not being public-facing, lag even further behind for establishing effective governance. The ideal state for any organization would be to establish a formal web-governance model.
Intranet teams should proactively participate during the acquisition of content management technologies in their organizations. Public Web initiatives may get the spotlight, but if a CMS is to serve as a pivotal organizational asset, intranet teams need to step up and get involved. Typically, during the initial discovery phase for CMS selection, we find that the requirements for the intranet are much more sophisticated than are those for Internet-based sites. When we point this out to the CMS stakeholders, they get a glazed look in their eyes and a faint Mona Lisa smile on their lips.
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