The International Intranet Day run by J. Boye in Denmark (March 25), includes presentations from three award winners:

• Environment Agency UK, speaking about a new approach to their online services (2007 Gold winner)
• Swiss Post, showcasing their “speaking intranet news” (2008 Gold winner).
• Syngenta, sharing details on their Location Finder (2008 Gold winner).

There are many other great presentations at this event, so definitely worth attending in you’re located in Europe.

(This kind of external recognition is also tremendously valuable at building internal support. So don’t forget to register your interest on the awards page, as this year’s awards open for entries in early March.)

Uniquely, the Intranet Innovation Awards recognise individual intranet improvements, and not intranets as a whole. The awards are about improving all intranets, by sharing great ideas and increasing the pace of innovation across the whole of the global intranet community.

Submissions

For this year, submissions will open from March 1st. If you have a a new intranet application, tool, service or feature and you want to submit to the awards you can register your interest and we’ll send you a reminder nearer the time.

You can also get ahead of the curve by checking out some previous winners and commended entries over at the Step Two blog and also in the 2008 and 2007 Awards reports (just US$189 each). Plus, we’ve a range of articles, video interviews and blog posts on some of the winners, which are listed and linked below.

2007 Awards

In 2007, the first year of the Awards, Fiat topped the entries with their “Avanti e Veloci” portal, which played a key role in the manufacturer’s leadership and culture change program (check out YouTube for a great video interview with the winner).

Fellow winners in 2007 included Perkins Eastman (USA – video), Nycomed (Switzerland/Denmark – video), the Environment Agency (UK – video), SunGard AvantGard (USA/New Zealand), and the City of Casey (Australia).

2008 Awards

In 2008, with collaboration tools and Enterprise 2.0 high on the agenda, we saw the superb work from Transfield and their Microsoft SharePoint-based “Teamsites in a box” intranet tool and Scottrade presented a Competitor Wiki called “CIA” (video) that transformed the company’s competitor intelligence gathering. Both companies earned a Gold Award.

In spite of these amazing collaboration examples, however, the Platinum Award for 2008 went to Canadian accounting firm, Fuller Landau, for a range of services delivered to employees that focused on core business activities including a “Partner Dashboard” to improve the internal time and billing system, a “Conflict Checker” and a personal, dashboard-incorporated workflow tool.

Further winners for 2008 included Syngenta (Switzerland), Janssen-Cilag (Australia – video), Urbis (Australia – video coming soon), the Youth Hostel Association (Australia), Swiss Post (Switzerland) and British Airways (UK – video).

What will 2009 bring?

So, what kind of intranet innovations will we see featured in this year’s awards?

We can expect collaboration and social tools to feature prominently again but, undoubtedly, the focus of many intranets remains in simply providing assistance to employees – be that social tools or more core service applications (as we saw with Fuller Landau in 2008).

If we look at some of the key trends from Jane McConnell’s recently published Global Intranet Trends 2009 report, perhaps this year will feature some examples of well-executed search (which, quoting from the report, “remains a pain point for most organisations”) and some more advanced staff directories and effective content strategies and guidelines.

From my previous post: personalisation, task-based processes, enterprise 2.0, RSS and mobile content were high on my list of potential innovation areas for 2009.

In light of the deteriorating economic situation, might we also see an increase in the typical intranet manager’s ability to construct incisive business cases for their systems and align strategically with their organisation’s outlook? Perhaps we’ll even have some examples of innovative metrics on just how valuable the intranet is.

Whatever we might see, there’s no question in my mind that in 2009 the developing role and utility of the intranet will be as diverse as the range of companies that deploy them. If you’re working on something that’s revolutionised the way your colleagues work, saved some money in process or simply made working life a little (or a lot) easier, then consider submitting it to the awards come March.

Don’t forget, you can register your interest and I’d love to hear in the comments below what you think will make the grade for intranets in 2009.

We’ve now organised a Intranet Innovation Award Roadshow event for Brisbane, providing a free afternoon session sharing insights and ideas from this year’s winners. Discover approaches that can be reused in your organisation, and connect up with other teams.

Where: Brisbane

When: Tuesday, 2 December 2008, 2:30-4:30pm

Cost: Free

Sign up: Full event details and online registration

(Note: you must register in advance to attend.)

• Enterprise 2.0 functionality seamlessly part of the intranet. There are so many new ideas in this space, and I’d love to see these put into practice and used widely by staff, showing how they can change the way staff work.
• Great examples of personalisation. This is something that the industry has been talking about for some time, but it’s hard to find examples that work for staff, are used widely, and demonstrate business benefits.
• Delivery to mobile devices. We are now all carrying our Blackberries and iPhones, so it’s time to extend the reach of the intranet into the field and out on the road.
• RSS as an enterprise news channel. The news box on the intranet homepage quickly runs out of puff when we increase the volume of news. Delivering multiple news channels via RSS provides an extremely interesting way of reaching staff.
• Completing tasks on the intranet. This year’s Platinum winner, Fuller Landau, demonstrated the benefits of automating key business tasks on the intranet, but I’d like to see intranets go even further.
• Integration of collaboration and the intranet. Instead of having the collaboration tools “over there”, I’m looking forward to seeing them integrated into the overall intranet user experience, with flows of content from local collaboration spaces to the global publishing platform.

Of course, these are just the personal interests of one of the five judges, and no guarantees of winning! There are also a hundred other ideas worthy of entering.

To make sure you don’t forget to enter next year, register your interest, and we’ll remind you when the awards open for entries. We’ll also prompt you two weeks before they close.

What innovations would you like to see win in 2009?

This year we held the awards ceremony for the Intranet Innovation Awards at the KMWorld & Intranets conference in San Jose. That gave me an opportunity to hand over more of the trophies in person, which is always great.

It also allowed me to interview Tracie Gildehaus, from Scottrade, one of the Gold winners this year. She talked about their Competitor Wiki, which gives them a very effective way of capturing competitor information as well as feeding back insight from customers.

This 5 minute video covers:

• What was the business problem?
• How does the wiki work?
• How was it started?
• What have been the benefits?

The Scottrade entry can also be found in full in the Executive Summary (PDF), giving you all the screenshots and details for free. The rest of the winners can be found in the Intranet Innovations 2008 report.

At the beginning of my recent round-the-world trip, I went straight from touching down at Heathrow to the British Airways head offices nearby. Ignoring 24+ hours of jetlag, it gave me an opportunity to hand over the trophy for BA’s Gold Intranet Innovation Award in person, as well as recording an interview with Allen Huish.

British Airways’ winning entry was on their Crew Community Forums, established for their 17,000 flight crew. These have been hugely successful, and remarkably effective at improving customer service and resolving day-to-day process issues.

This 8 minute video covers:

• Who are the forums for?
• Why where they established?
• What topics are being discussed?
• What were the challenges?
• What have made them successful?
• Tips for other organisations?

This video talks through the questions and issues that arise for every organisation thinking about collaboration tools, and will be of great interest for senior managers and other stakeholders.

(Obtain a copy of the Intranet Innovations 2008 report for full details on the British Airways entry, including screenshots.)

Uniquely, the awards recognise individual intranet improvements, and not intranets as a whole. The awards are about improving all intranets, by sharing great ideas and increasing the pace of innovation across the whole of the intranet community.

With an international judging panel, this year’s awards have raised the bar, demonstrating very clearly the benefits that intranets can deliver.

Platinum award winner

• “Partner Dashboard and more”
  Fuller Landau (Canada)

Gold awards winners

• “Location Finder”
  Syngenta (Switzerland)
• “Speaking Intranet News”
  Swiss Post (Switzerland)
• “Team Sites in a Box”
  Transfield Services (Australia)
• “Crew Community Forums”
  British Airways (UK)
• “Competitor Wiki”
  Scottrade (USA)
• “Project Finder”
  Urbis (Australia)
• “Juice”
  Janssen-Cilag (Australia)
• “Meter Reading Application”
  YHA (UK)

Learn more

Full details on all the winners can be found in the 148-page Intranet Innovations 2008 report. This includes screenshots and detailed information on how the innovations were designed and delivered, along with judges’ commentaries and more.

Download the Executive Summary (2.6mb PDF) for an overview of the awards, as well as full details on two of the winners (Scottrade and Janssen-Cilag).