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Features
Consolidation continues to impact many industries as competitors jockey for market position, an inside track to a more desirable product offering, and other business imperatives. Whenever organizations evaluate significant operational consolidation—be it the merger of two multinational conglomerates or the relatively simple combination of departments within the same business—careful human resource planning must be a priority. Sstudies of businesses that have gone through a merger and acquisition (M&A) experience reveal that the extent of human resources integration planning involved can be among the most pivotal factors influencing the long-term success of a consolidation effort.
Over the last several years, many large organizations have developed intranets and portals to serve the role of a centralized information access point, often backed-up by a searchable content repository. More recently, accompanying the development of business process management and collaboration software, intranets and portals have found other ways to meet employee’s needs. Yet for all of these technological solutions, sometimes the answer to a given problem lies not in a database, but inside the head of a human being. The question is, how do you find that person, especially inside a large organization, where employees may be spread out over a large campus or even across the world? The answer may come from a growing niche market known as Expert Locator software. These software packages and, to a lesser degree, people-finder technologies, help employees in large companies find one another, often saving time, effort, and employee hours and even cutting the cost of getting a product to market.
Columns
Anyone who has checked out the field of interactive design has seen the incredible results that user-centric design brings to products today. Alan Cooper really brought something important to the fore: It is users who will decide if something is useful or not. It was a novel concept in 1999. Since then, the principles have been successfully applied to the Web, portals, Web-based products like online movie systems, and a variety of devices. Today, the consensus is that customers rule.
Question: Over the years, our engineering company’s intranet has expanded enormously, but it is actually a collection of about 20 individual intranets and a corporate homepage. We’re getting comments about difficulty finding information and think we ought to set some standards. However, the intranet team manager says that standards inhibit creativity and is not willing to support us. Do you have any suggestions?
Answer: I ran a workshop on standards and good practice at Intranets 2004 and was somewhat surprised that companies in the engineering and manufacturing sectors seemed to have the most problems with getting standards established. It was almost as though employees were so fed up with having to work to very high standards in everything else they did, that not conforming to an intranet standard was a relief. However, knowing that a tool we use at work or at home conforms to standards creates a feeling of confidence in it and usually speeds the time it takes to learn how to use it as well. An intranet is no different...
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Read_Me_File...Print and Digital Reviews
Reviewed this issue: Enterprise Content Management What you need to know , Web Accessibility Survey Site, and Intranet Roadmap
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