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Features
By launching a portal independent of its corporate site, Dermik has chosen to educate consumers and healthcare providers through supplying content rather than by force-feeding sales messages compressed into 30-second TV spots. Interestingly, Dermik did not build its Skin Health Solutions portal with original content. Rather, the site is comprised of links to more than 300 other sites (including competitors’) to offer the very best of skincare content, all reviewed by an independent, professional advisory board. Dermik wants Skin Health Solutions to be the first place both doctors and patients go for information on dermatological conditions.
Experience has shown that the challenge in realizing the best return from any system that derives value from human input—sales automation, customer relationship management, collaborative workspace, knowledge management best practice sharing systems, or an intranet that combines several of these components—is to maximize usage. In the past decade, numerous collaborative systems have been implemented at enormous expense within companies and then used rarely. As a result, there is also a general skepticism about new software solutions. In the highly competitive global business environment, many workers feel pressured by an increasing focus on productivity and little time to engage in activities with other than immediate benefits. How can these barriers to system usage be overcome?
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So, you’ve got to the point of running your intranet when the feedback from statistics and readers begins to show a reduction in usage. This is when intranet managers should begin to rethink things like navigation, content, and overall look and feel. Consider taking a look at the purpose: Is this intranet a tool to disseminate news from the communications team? Is it a mechanism to allow teams to share information between themselves rather than using the network? Is it a tool to enable front line staff to gather knowledge about competitors and products.
Trusting the intranet means you go to it when you need information, you know where to find it, and you know it is reliable and up-to-date. It’s hard for any organization to achieve this level of collective trust, but the diversity and vastness of an international organization makes it a real challenge. Trust usually grows from knowing people, but in an international organization, you’ll never know everyone you work with. You need to trust the intranet itself, not the individual content providers: this collective trust can be built through an Information Architecture (IA) strategy based on user logic and double ownership.
Read_Me_File
Reviewed this issue: The Google Legacy: How Google’s Internet Search is Transforming Application Software; The Gilbane Report; Knowledge Mapping: The Essentials for Success
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