The CMS Myth asks about professional services: do you know what you are really buying? To quote: Professional services are the other half of any CMS implementation, but could the services company you selected pass the same scrutiny your CMS endured during its selection process? From some of the ...
Monthly Archives: February 2009
February 27, 2009
Professional services: do you know what you are really buying?
Categorised under: Content management
February 27, 2009
User-generated content for employee directories
Jane McConnell has written a post on user-generated content for employee directories. To quote: Many of their wish-list features centered around the concept of user-generated content for enterprise directories. This is a definitely a serious gap in most intranets today. Few organizations have optimized employee directories and made them a ...
Categorised under: Intranets
February 26, 2009
Reversing the enterprise 2.0 pricing model
ReadWriteWeb has written about enterprise 2.0 pricing models. To quote: Volume-discount pricing structures are simple, tried, and true. So, why aren't they efficient? The reason is because of where returns on investment (ROIs) are located. Enterprise social computing offerings provide increasing marginal productivity as they scale, at both the individual ...
Categorised under: Enterprise 2.0
Tags: Enterprise 2.0
February 26, 2009
What would you put in corporate Twitter usage guidelines?
Martin Belam asks: what would you put in corporate Twitter usage guidelines? To quote: When blogging became a popular activity for both employees and employers, it wasn't long before companies were formulating corporate blogging policies. As Twitter grows and grows, and can't seem to keep out of the UK media ...
Categorised under: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0
Tags: Enterprise 2.0, twitter
February 25, 2009
Video interview: Urbis on their Project Finder
Just before Christmas I recorded an interview with Andrew Mitchell from Urbis. This discusses their Project Finder solution, a gold winner in the 2008 Intranet Innovation Awards. This directly addresses the age-old challenge for all ...
Categorised under: Uncategorized
Tags: innovation, intranet innovation awards, Intranets, projects
February 25, 2009
Intranet mantra: connect, communicate, collaborate
Sara Redin has written about Nycomed's intranet strategy of connect, communicate, collaborate. To quote: If questions such as “Why do you need an intranet” stops you cold, maybe you should find a good mantra that simply describes the purpose of the tool so that any stakeholder can understand it. A ...
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: Collaboration, communication, Intranets, strategy
February 25, 2009
Improving your first page of search results
Gerry McGovern has written about improving your first page of search results. To quote: "Search is now normal behavior. What do we do about that?" is the to-the-point title of an excellent study of search behavior on the UK Open University website. Among the many practical recommendations it gives is ...
Categorised under: Search tools
February 24, 2009
Battling ECM and E2.0
Alan Pelz-Sharpe has written a post about the conflict between ECM and Enterprise 2.0. To quote: For the past year or so there seems to have been a battlefield of sorts emerging between proponents of social networking and all things E2.0 and the more "traditional" proponents of ECM. The difference ...
Categorised under: Enterprise 2.0, Information management
Tags: ecm, Enterprise 2.0
February 24, 2009
Intranet professionals on Twitter
Christy Season has very kindly posted a list of intranet professionals on Twitter. To quote: These are individuals I've networked with on twitter or individuals who have an interest in and tweet about intranets. A lot of these individuals keep regularly updated blogs on intranet topics and enterprise 2.0. And ...
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: Intranets
February 23, 2009
Two-day intranet masterclass in Denmark (27-28 April)
I've just organised to run another two-day intranet masterclass in Copenhagen, Denmark on 27-28 April 2009. Presented by IntraTeam, this was a packed event late last year, with a tremendous group of intranet teams freely sharing their successes and challenges. An overview of the workshop: Intranets must succeed. While they ...
Categorised under: Conferences & presentations
Tags: Intranets
February 23, 2009
Intranet purpose: 3 angles
Jane McConnell has published an interesting piece on looking at intranet purpose from 3 angles. To quote: When you define the purpose of an intranet, there are several angles to examine. Each angle requires making a choice. However, they are not mutually exclusive choices. They are choices about what you ...
Categorised under: Intranets
February 13, 2009
Just over a week until Sydney awards roadshow
A quick reminder that it's just over a week until the free afternoon session in Sydney on the Intranet Innovation Awards (Monday 23 February). We've had 70+ people register, but have ...
Categorised under: Conferences & presentations
February 13, 2009
Starting from zero: winning strategies for no search results pages
Greg Nudelman discusses designing search results pages when there are zero results. To quote: The typical product team has no coherent strategy for cases when there are no search results. Most teams spend the bulk of their design phase working on the search results pages for a successful search. Then, ...
Categorised under: Search tools, Usability & user-centered design
February 13, 2009
Three steps to a successful web content management (CMS) implementation
Raymond Schauer provides three steps for successful CMS implementation. To quote: More often than not, it comes down to process. How was the CMS implemented? How was it introduced to your users? How was their feedback received and incorporated into subsequent updates? Contrary to popular belief, a website with a CMS ...
Categorised under: Content management
February 12, 2009
17 usability tips to make your CMS rock
Patrick Kennedy has posted a superb article containing 17 usability tips to make your CMS rock. To quote: More than likely your content management system (CMS) will have many usability problems if you just use it “out of the box”. Having been involved in a number of projects tasked with ...
Categorised under: Content management, Usability & user-centered design
February 12, 2009
Discovering new uses for corporate membership of the Intranet Leadership Forum
We're conducting our yearly review of the Intranet Leadership Forum at present. A big part is to look back at lessons learnt over the last year. When we first set up the forum, there was only individual membership, at $3,750/year (inc GST). Last year, we introduced corporate membership, allowing three ...
Categorised under: Intranet Leadership Forum, Intranets
February 11, 2009
Tools for remote teams to keep in touch
As working lives get busier and more flexible work options open up, a way to keep in touch with remote colleagues is needed. Colleagues might be working from home, in a different state or 'on the road'. Feeling part of a team It is difficult to replicate 'water-cooler' chat with remote staff ...
Categorised under: Collaboration, Knowledge management
Tags: blogs, Collaboration, remote teams, twitter, wikis
February 11, 2009
Needs analysis from a distance
How do you address the needs of staff that work in a different city, state or country? Visiting each of these offices may not always be practical. Therefore different techniques need to be employed to conduct research and gather information about their needs. Principles The same principles apply as for face-to-face interviews: involve a ...
Categorised under: Intranets, Usability & user-centered design
Tags: diaries, interviews, Intranets, needs analysis, research
February 11, 2009
Custom code, CMS and portals
In the early days, intranets and websites consisted of pages and pages of static content. Originally published by hand, many of these sites migrated to a content management system (CMS) in due course. Over time, more sites started to include a range of rich interactive functionality. This included publishing content from ...
Categorised under: Content management, Information management, James' articles
February 6, 2009
Untangling collaboration spaces
An all-too-common scenario: Collaboration spaces, such as wikis or SharePoint team areas, have multiplied across the organisation. Now numbering in the thousands, some are hugely successful but many are not. Confusion and pain has oustripped the value offered by the collaboration spaces, and things may be getting worse not better. How to ...
Categorised under: Collaboration
Tags: Collaboration
February 4, 2009
Tackling the global-local challenge?
In recent projects, we've been doing a lot of work relating to what Jane McConnell calls the global-local challenge of intranets. In any large organisations, there will be many different business units, with different needs. Individual staff across the organisation will also need specific tools and information. The challenge is ...
Categorised under: Intranets
February 4, 2009
Intranet Innovation Award winners spread their wings
One of benefits of being a winner of the global Intranet Innovation Awards is that you get invites to great places in the world to share what you've been doing. One such example: The International Intranet Day run by J. Boye in Denmark (March 25), includes presentations from three ...
Categorised under: Conferences & presentations
Tags: awards, innovation, Intranets
February 3, 2009
The lean intranet: from intranet zero to intranet 2.0 and beyond
Patrick Walsh has written more on the idea of the lean intranet. To quote: There is an elephant in the intranet living room. In all that has been written about intranets, very few commentators ever mention the fact that intranets don't work. In my opinion, the current paradigm for intranets ...
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: Intranets
February 3, 2009
Content migration: making it successful
Kassia Krozser has written about practical approaches to content migration. To quote: I’d like to talk for a moment about what I call the Content Migration Fantasy. In this fantasy, an experienced team lead by a tough-yet-wise project manager ports legacy content to a new system. This being a fantasy, ...
Categorised under: Content management, Intranets
Tags: content migration
February 2, 2009
Getting content on the corporate intranet
Simon Goh has written a post on getting content on the corporate intranet. To quote: When we have an intranet that is dominated by the intranet team, content just don't seem to come in. The central team then seemed to live in a deep well, having minimum insights on the ...
Categorised under: Intranets
February 2, 2009
Five simple ways to have good intranet publishers
Mark Morrell has written about five approaches to have good intranet publishers. To quote: BT has just relaunched its support site to help all our intranet publishers new and existing ones. It breaks down into 5 simple ways which my slides show examples of. All good stuff! I like to ...
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: Intranets
