There are now less than two weeks to go to get your submissions into the Intranet Innovation Awards, with our closing date on June 6th.  If you’re still wondering about whether to enter then you still have time to prepare your entry.

Many organsations have told us they have found the process of submitting an entry into the competition a highly valuable experience.

Why Coca-Cola Enterprises entered the Intranet Innovation Awards

To show you what to expect, we interviewed Jonathan Philips, Senior Manager in Digital Communications, at Coca-Cola Enterprises. Jonathan is well-known in the global intranet community, not only as a founder of  intranetizen.com, but also in sharing Coca-Cola Enterprises’ experiences in launching its iConnect intranet.

Coca-Cola Enterprises has entered the awards a few times, twice being highly commended by the judges.  Last year the company finally won a Gold Award in the “Enterprise Mobility” category for the mobile iteration of iConnect.

Why have you entered the awards three of four times?

“In the first instance, the driver for us entering is curiosity as we try to understand how we stack up against other organisations. As an intranet community we are somewhat insular, almost by definition, because we work on entirely internal tools. It’s very difficult for us to get a true flavour of how good our work is. Entering awards is one way we can get that benchmark”

Have you found the processes of entering itself valuable?

“Yes, it’s informative and cathartic! It’s great to be challenged on our thinking, our processes and our successes. The IIA has a very detailed entry form which takes us through all the steps of the build to effectively create an A to Z of our work. It’s a tremendously useful process to reflect on the work we did and how we did it.  Keeping the entry forms is a useful reminder of a year’s work!”

Some organisations worry about getting sign-off for the entry. Has this been a problem?

“I guess it probably varies from company to company but here at Coca-Cola Enterprises, we are very proud of the work we do and very happy to share our experiences.  Naturally, we do come up against requests for some confidential information, such as costs . So our approach has always been to share what we feel comfortable in sharing and to leave it at that. Overall it’s been relatively easy to get that sign-off.”

The value of recognition and feedback

What benefits have you found from actually winning an Award?

“Kudos is the first thing.  It’s fantastic to get the recognition. It’s brilliant for everyone involved in creating the intranet to get such an award such as the IIA gold award for Enterprise Mobility last year. It really confirmed for everybody on the project that what we had done some great work.

Getting the feedback from the juries has also always been tremendously useful. When you win, it follows that most comments are positive, but there has also been good healthy criticism showing us how we can improve things in the future.”

Has it changed how internal stakeholders view you? Does it give you more recognition from those inside the company?

“Yes, it does.  It’s sometimes very hard for people to understand how good your intranet or your digital workplace is because many employees only experience the one site. Winning an Award helps confirm your status and that’s  very useful.   Having that external recognition of your site is a very strong way of demonstrating that actually what we’ve done is good work and we can be rightly proud of what we’ve delivered. We should always remember though that this is an employee tool and their positive feedback is always welcomed.

Are you going to enter this year?

“We’re not entering the year. 2014 is an important redevelopment year in the iConnect lifecycle. In fact, the day we learnt we had won the IIA was the day we started to rebuild our iConnect desktop and mobile experience.  So we’re right now in the middle of a refresh project that we hope to launch this Summer.  If that goes well and feedback from our employees is strong we’ll be entering the Awards again in 2015.”

Our thanks go to Jonathan Philips and Coca-Cola Enterprises for agreeing to be interviewed.

Not long to go to get your entries in!

It’s still not too late to enter the Awards as we accept submissions until June 6.

Visit the Awards entry area to download the entry form, get information on what to enter, view the different categories, and read other guidance.