Is mobile the natural channel for intranet news?
Categorised under: Intranets, Mobile
Let’s face it, as much as internal comms likes to publish corporate news, most staff aren’t that interested in reading it. While part of the problem is the lack of relevant stories, one of the big issues is lack of time. In today’s busy working life, there simply isn’t much time to catch up on what’s happening between all the emails and meetings.
When staff come to the intranet, they do so at the point of need. They’re looking for a piece of information, or to complete a task. Anything that gets in the way of that (including news) is ignored.
Perhaps enterprise mobility offers a solution. Look around on the train in most cities in the world, and you’ll see commuters head down, reading their mobiles. They’re checking their emails, reading the local newspaper, or playing Angry Birds.
In all cases, these are “interstitial activities”. That is, they’re activities that fill up the gaps, the 5mins of time between stations, or in the lift between floors.
In a few organisations now, we’re starting to hear staff comment that they really like receiving corporate news on their mobiles, as it allows them to keep on top of what’s happening during these little pieces of downtime.
So perhaps — when done well — corporate (and operational) news can prosper when delivered to mobile devices.
There is the same opportunity for organisations who provide research updates, industry information and other KM services to staff. Delivering these to mobiles give staff an opportunity to keep up with what’s happening
If nothing else, it gives something people to look at when they’d otherwise be bored sitting on the bus, on the way to work.
Where to start
- Create a simple mobile front-end for the intranet, along the lines of that done by UK Parliament and QUT (as described in our report Award winning mobile intranets).
- Create an HTML5 version of the intranet (or KM) news feed, and deliver this to mobiles.
- Ensure that if staff click through from a headline on their mobile, they can actually access the intranet when away from the office.
- Establish usage tracking for the mobile interface, and then spread the word!
What do you think? Is this a new (and viable) channel for corporate news?
Tags: communication, Intranets, mobile, news
James Robertson is the Managing Director of
3 Comments:
James,
Brilliant!
I’ve just completed Part 1 of a post about ‘Dis/integrating your intranet for a better user experience) where I write about doing away with the homepage altogether. In a comment someone said that the homepage was needed for urgent news/content. Something I absolutely disagree with as, with many intranets, if many or even most of your potential users do not access the intranet regularly (or ever!) then the intranet is probably the last place you’d want to put such content.
You can be sure I will be mentioning mobile for intranet news in Part 2 of the post.
With the limited amount of experience providing Intranet services via mobile I have not encountered one group of mobile users who have requested Intranet News on the go. The ability to look up contacts, check calendars and use online accommodation booking functions have been defined as requirements but not one mention of Intranet News. I would therefore sat No the the question posed by James.
This is an interesting one!
Would I expect users (or content owners for that matter) to express a desire to read internal news on a mobile? No.
If it was provided, would users take up the feature over time? Perhaps yes.
This would certainly require a culture change, but that doesn’t mean it should be tried, particularly via an agile development process paired with excellent monitoring of use.
After all, innovation is about trying new things, informed by the available possibilities …
2 Trackbacks
[...] as it happened when I looked at James Robertson’s blog that day he had published a post that answered that question. James suggested that mobile might be natural [...]
[...] Is mobile the natural channel for intranet news?: James Robertson suggests corporate news can prosper when delivered to mobile devices, as employees can access them in downtime. [...]