Why SharePoint 2010 needs to have a good mobile user experience
May 21, 2012 at 8:46 am | Posted in benefit, communication, digital workplace, governance, intranet, mobile, news, SharePoint 2010, standards, strategy, value | 1 CommentTags: intranet, benefit, value, standards, governance, sharepoint 2010, strategy, digital workplace, communication
Why is SharePoint 2010 so widely used? I believe it is because it offers for the first time one technical solution that meets many business needs rather than just one.
If you want to improve knowledge sharing you will have many tools to consider. Again if you need to manage your documents you will have a wide choice of vendors. But if your business has more than one need or can see how solving one will create other requirements then a solution like SharePoint 2010 comes become more attractive to consider.
What if your organisation needs employees to use your intranet while away from their place of work? There are huge savings in office costs and increases in productivity if employees can use the intranet to help them with their work while they are mobile.
Before we can consider if SharePoint 2010 can help meet these needs and provide these benefits there are other important steps to take first.
Mobile strategy
Why is your organisation considering mobile access to your intranet? You need to develop a strategy aligned to your overall business strategy that sets out how providing this need will help to improve the performance. Without a clear, agreed, mobile strategy in place there is little chance of creating a successful business case for a solution that can help employees. You need to research which content and tools are most needed while employees are mobile.
Mobile champion
Who should be responsible for sponsoring the implementation of your mobile strategy? You need to find a senior representative who will champion this or, better still, a board or steering group of senior representatives from business functions across your organisation. Make sure the role is clear, and you have the authority to make the decisions needed, supported by funding.
Mobile audience
Who needs to use a mobile device for their work? You need to be clear which employees will benefit from having a mobile device. It probably will not be everyone. Even if it is, you will have to prioritise who has the greatest need. Factors like the number of employees involved, time spent away from their place of work, what contribution they can make, will help decide the greatest need.
Mobile governance
As well as having a champion for the use of mobile devices your governance framework needs to include the standards for owners of content and tools to follow so mobile devices can be used by employees. Roles and responsibilities need to include meeting the needs of mobile users for content and tool owners. The content and tools must not be a complete duplication of what exists already.
Mobile devices
Will you let employees bring their own devices to work or will you provide your own? That decision is critical and will depend on your organisation’s corporate values, type of employees, security (more below on this), funding and speed of adoption. Once that decision is made you can then focus on what devices your organisation provides or you recommend employees have that offer the best experience for what they need to do while mobile.
Mobile security
How can you be sure the right people only are using your intranet? It is vital you have a representative from your Legal team involved as well as from IT. You need to find the right balance of secure but easy access. It is no good if it takes ages to authenticate who you are before employee can access your intranet. But you do need some intelligent software working in the background to ensure you know who is accessing content with a mobile device.
Mobile platform
As I said at the beginning most organisations are either considering using SharePoint 2010 or are in various stages of rolling out to meet their needs. One of these is increasingly the need to provide content and tools that is needed by employees while mobile.
The problem with SharePoint 2010 is the ‘out of the box’ experience can be a bit underwhelming. It is a text only version which most mobile users of internet sites will feel is like going back in time. It may be improved by the next release of SharePoint but can your organisation afford to wait that long?
Digital Workplace: work anywhere, anytime, with anything
February 27, 2012 at 9:44 am | Posted in benefit, best practice, collaboration, digital workplace, engagement, governance, intranet, standards, strategy, usability, value | 2 CommentsTags: benefit, best practice, collaboration, digital workplace, engagement, governance, intranet, Mark Morrell, standards, strategy, usability, value
I will be at the IntraTeam 2012 conference in Copenhagen this week presenting on 5 ‘Must Have’ Principles for a Great Digital Workplace and running a workshop on How to Build the Right Governance Model for the Digital Workplace. For Twitter users follow #IEC12.
The digital workplace is a phrase that I have written about before and is becoming more frequently used for intranets that are developing beyond being a traditional communications tool. For me a digital workplace can include:
- employees working from any location (or mobile) as their place of work
- IT infrastructure providing the same or similar experience wherever someone uses the digital workplace
- employees collaborating, searching, and completing tasks as well as reading the latest news
- employees choosing how to do ‘things’ – RSS, mobile, etc. – that help them
- organisations measuring the benefits and encouraging employees to use the digital workplace
I define a digital workplace as ‘work is what you do, not where you go to’. To have a successful digital workplace it is vital organisations have the right strategy, culture, environment and infrastructure to exploit the benefits fully. It needs to become the natural way of working so employees are more effective and productive and your organisation is more efficient and successful.
Find out how five principles can help you to work in a digital workplace, how to use my experience to help you and how to contact me for further help.
Will your SharePoint 2010 strategy deliver the full benefits?
January 31, 2012 at 9:04 am | Posted in benefit, intranet, SharePoint 2010, strategy | 1 CommentTags: benefit, sharepoint 2010, strategy
In 2012 many organisations are planning to implement SharePoint 2010 or have already started to use it. Very few organisations have completed their implementations and even fewer feel it has been a complete success and the benefits have met their expectations.
Now, let me be clear here:
- SharePoint 2010 is not the only technology solution for intranets.
- SharePoint 2010 needs to be tested with your business needs.
- It is how it is implemented and managed that is key to its success.
Which leads me to my main point. To gain the full benefits from using SharePoint 2010 you need to have a strategy which has to fit with your business’ overall strategy. This is no different in principle to creating an intranet or digital workplace strategy.
You need to be clear, very clear, on your business’ direction now and for at least the next 12 months. This gives you time to create a strategy from which you can plan in more detail how your short term goals will be achieved and gain the full benefits.
Find out how to develop a SharePoint 2010 strategy and how to use my experience to help you.
5 tips to succeed with an intranet business case
December 14, 2011 at 10:05 am | Posted in benefit, beta testing, intranet, plan, strategy, value | 1 CommentTags: benefit, beta testing, intranet, money, strategy, user testing, value
I recently discussed this subject with some intranet practitioners in Copenhagen at an IntraTeam community of practice meeting. Several people there had yet to experience the excitement of knowing a business case had been approved or the disappointment of one being rejected.
I know how both of these experiences feel from first-hand experience when I was the BT intranet manager! It was the frustration rather than the disappointment with the rejection of a business case that has stayed with me longer. Frustration because I couldn’t get the people deciding to ‘get it’ and realise how much it would improve the intranet, the experience of people using it, and the business overall that I felt so passionately about.
How to succeed
You need to ask yourself if a business case is needed at all. Maybe by using open source technology there will be no costs that need you to ask for funding? Maybe you do need to later when you have something more convincing, more persuasive even more tangible, in the benefits you can demonstrate have been achieved by what you are doing.
Tip 1: Pick your timing to give yourself the best chance.
You need sponsors, preferably senior sponsors, better still the CEO as your sponsor. The more strategic and senior the level of support gained by you in your organisation, the better your chances of success and your efforts and time to achieve it will be rewarded.
Tip 2: Build up your relationship with your stakeholders.
You need to be complete in your business case. That means include all the costs – technology, licences, support, training, and implementation. But don’t forget all the savings – paper, accommodation, time, benefits – productivity, better decision making, risks avoided to brand, and reputation. There could also be revenue generated from extra sales because what you offer could mean more time and ability to compete than before for new business.
Tip 3: Don’t leave off something which could come back to bite you and affect your credibility with future business cases.
You need to consider the wider context for your business case. Is your organisation looking to expand or is it just trying to survive? What is your organisation’s strategy? Is your intranet strategy in line with it? Is your business case connected to your strategy (make sure it is!)? You need to align what you will achieve with the organisation’s values – teamwork, openness = collaboration tools.
Tip 4: Choose your agenda and use the language your audience will recognise.
You need to make your business case as compelling as possible. That means showing as many savings – money not leaving the organisation – and income – extra money coming in – that can justify. While there will be many benefits from productivity and reduced risks, it is the bottom line that will be the main focus and the hardest to achieve.
Tip 5: Focus on the savings and benefits which are most important to your organisation.
Lastly don’t forget to use every weapon in your artillery to help convince your sponsors of what your proposal will achieve. In addition to the five tips you can highlight how it fits with the organisations’ values, the downside of not approving the business case and risks being taken by that decision.
Good luck, be passionate about your business case. GO FOR IT AND WIN!
Intranets are still very much alive!
November 24, 2011 at 9:28 am | Posted in benefit, best practice, career, digital workplace, homepage, intranet, value | 4 CommentsTags: benefit, best practice, bt intranet, career path, digital workplace, intranet, Mark Morrell, value
I read with interest the blog posts by Tony Byrne ‘Death of the Intranet‘ and by Martin White ‘Death of the Intranet: ‘The Times They are a-changin’‘. They are both interesting posts with provocative titles to catch the attention. It has caused some great discussions about intranets which is great. The biggest and most negative reaction I found has been from intranet practitioners who feel it is an over reaction and not how they see things.
Having recently been an intranet practitioner as the BT Intranet manager before becoming a consultant, I can see the subject from both points of view. I believe intranets are still live and kicking To adapt the famous quotation by Mark Twain after hearing that his obituary had been published in the New York Journal “The reports of the death of the intranet are greatly exaggerated” in my opinion.
Continually evolving
I believe intranets are naturally evolving and maturing. Over the past 15 years intranets have been called many different names. Intranets have needed to adapt to changes in technology, different business requirements and climates. But they are still here and thriving. The digital workplace is a wider environment that intranets will be a vital component of. Yet another evolution for intranets to absorb and adapt to.
Wikipedia says ‘Increasingly, intranets are being used to deliver tools and applications, e.g., collaboration (to facilitate working in groups and teleconferencing) or sophisticated corporate directories, sales and customer relationship management tools, project management etc., to advance productivity. Intranets are also being used as corporate culture-change platforms. For example, large numbers of employees discussing key issues in an intranet forum application could lead to new ideas in management, productivity, quality, and other corporate issues.’ I agree with that from my experience of how intranets generally are being used.
Different tools to access intranets like mobiles won’t end the intranet. It’s just another opportunity to show how adaptable intranet can be in providing the information people need while on the move from their smartphones. Intranets are still the bloodstream for information and applications, properly managed and accessible any time, any place, any where and more and more using any device, that employees need to do their work each day.
Passionate practitioners
I am writing a report about how the passion showed by intranet practitioners about their organisation’s intranet that they manage can help accelerate improvements. I believe it is the personality as well as the abilities of an intranet manager that can help achieve more. Intranet practitioners know better now than ever before how to feel the pulse of their intranet and organisation it supports.
I recall in my previous role how I would champion again and again something I believed passionately about would improve BT by its adoption sometimes against sceptical line management as well as partners like IT and some stakeholders. Of course, judgement is critical as your reputation will suffer if you keep getting it wrong. My point is that passionate intranet role models are being created which other intranet practitioners can benefit from and will continue to help intranets improve in the years ahead, not die.
The development of the digital workplace will be seen not as a threat but more as an opportunity for two reasons:
- The intranet will fit well within the digital workplace and grow in influence on the back of it as more senior stakeholders see how the organisation will benefit from adoption.
- The digital workplace role will be another step an intranet practitioner can consider when looking for their next career move (more on this in a later post).
Increasing relevance
Intranet managers don’t feel intranets are dying – quite the opposite in fact. They believe intranets are moving into a more critical role for the organisations they support. More and more they are seen as providing a business critical role. This is a long way from just being another communications channels. While I see intranets that are struggling to show value and be taken seriously by their senior stakeholders, there are many intranets growing in value and championed by practitioners who have learnt how to seek support and sponsorship and can talk the language of the business not just the technology.
I believe senior stakeholders, as with intranets, have matured in the last few years. They understand better how intranets have added value, shown benefits in the wider sense and don’t think in straitjacket terms of just ‘return on investment’ so loved by Finance for business case submissions.
For me intranets are a living organism at the heart of organisations, managed by passionate people and increasingly championed by senior stakeholders who ‘get it’ about intranets and can see how they will continue in the wider digital workplace that is unfolding now.
Make a newbie welcome and more engaged
September 14, 2011 at 8:23 am | Posted in benefit, collaboration, digital workplace, engagement, intranet, mobile | 8 CommentsTags: benefit, best practice, collaboration, digital workplace, engagement, value
This is the first of my tips to answer the question “How do I engage employees and improve collaboration?“. I wanted to start at the beginning, when a newbie is joining a new business, because if you can get off on the right footing the rest can be easy. If you get off on the wrong footing then it will take more time and effort to overcome poor first impressions and may not ever recover with the newbie leaving after a little while.
When someone is thinking of applying for a job with your business you want to give them as much information about your business as you can to help them make an informed decision. Applying online for a job for example shows you have a digital workplace.
When the successful applicant is informed of your decision, you also want to start building up their knowledge of their new role so they can hit the ground running from their first day. So here are a few tips that can help boost their engagement and value to a business from day 1.
A nice surprise
The newbie joining is pleasantly surprised by the secure access given to HR policies, information about their role, team and part of the business they will be working in. The newbie is also pleased they can continue using the internet tools they have grown up with and which a lot of their personal life revolves around like Twitter, Facebook, etc.
They are amazed they can use a forum with other newbies and HR to ask and share experiences and pick up tips on how to do things, who are the key people on any topic, etc. This helps them gain a warm feeling for their new employer and appreciate the effort made to make them feel welcome before they join.
Time to prepare
The newbie’s manager is also aware of who the person is joining. They use the digital workplace to make sure all the equipment is ordered ready for use on day 1 including a laptop, smartphone, email account, access to collaborative tools, applications, remote access to the digital workplace and a desk and chair or booking a place for the first few days because they can work flexibly anywhere.
Communications are sent to the other team members, handover arranged if it is an existing job by the person moving on, and key business partners are also made aware of the changes so they can accept a different voice, face and email sign-off for the work they continue to do with whoever does this role.
Everything in place
On day 1 the newbie arrives. Everyone is aware who is joining and are able to welcome them, knowing why they are joining and how they fit with the work the team does. An induction programme involves a lot of self-help because a lot of online training, guidance and help in on the digital workplace. All the tools the newbie needs are available and working with passwords set up – even a welcome message on their personal portal and email!
The newbie’s manager and team members won’t be bombarded all the time by questions because the newbie has access to discussion forums, FAQs and micro blogging tools to ask the simple. repetitive questions and find the answers on the digital workplace.
That leave the more complex and questions related to the newbie’s role and expectations to be answered with the newbie’s manager, team members or HR.
Accelerated productivity
The newbie has all the tools to start adding value from day 1. More importantly, because of the way the business has prepared things for the newbie, they are very keen to show these efforts are appreciated and want to make that extra effort to show that.
The business sees accelerated productivity from a newbie who is engaged and committed from the first day.
More on the newbie’s first few weeks in my next post.
HR policies to encourage a digital workplace
August 4, 2011 at 10:15 am | Posted in benefit, collaboration, digital workplace, engagement, intranet | 4 CommentsTags: benefit, digital workplace, engagement, intranet, value
In my previous posts on the digital workplace I have covered ‘Must have digital workplace principles’, ‘5 steps to a great digital workplace strategy’, 7 ways to engage people in a digital workplace and 4 factors critical to good governance in a digital workplace.
To have a successful digital workplace (my definition is ‘work is what you do, not where you go to’) organisations must have the right strategy, culture, environment and infrastructure to exploit the benefits fully. It becomes the natural way of working so everyone is more productive and your organisation more efficient with:
- people work from any location as well as their office workstation
- IT infrastructure for the same or similar experience
- everyone can read news, collaborate, search and complete tasks
- individuals choosing tools – RSS, mobile, etc. – that help them
- organisations measure benefits and encourages digital workplace
Follow these ‘must have’ principles including strategy, engagement, governance, HR policies and IT infrastructure and you will have a great digital workplace.
HR policies
It is vital that Human Resources policies encourage digital working. It needs to create the culture where the behaviours typically found with digital working are in place. This can be achieved in a variety of ways.
Engage
Your business needs engaged people working to achieve their own, team and overall business goals. HR policies must help engage everyone more to the business. This can be achieved by:
- allowing access to social network tools like Facebook and Twitter. Policies balance risk with rewards of engaging and sharing knowledge.
- having a new ideas scheme to encourage suggestions for improvements to the business and rewarding successful ideas.
- building a more informal, less hierarchical structure and management style so any individual feels they can approach any person to ask for help or offer helpful advice.
- encouraging feedback. Individuals should feel confident they can raise contentious but relevant issues and get a helpful response that takes their views seriously. People should not need anonymity, neither should the ‘career limiting question’ apply.
- treating everyone as responsible adults and trusting they will behave online accordingly
Incentivise
What’s in it for me? That’s a typical response to any policy decision made especially when it is an HR policy affecting many people. Employees need to see digital working as beneficial to them. This can be achieved by:
- recognising positively their move to a digital workplace
- rewarding them for moving to a digital workplace
- incentivising (by recognition and/or reward) knowledge sharing using digital workplace tools
- performance framework rewards outputs not time spent in an office
- having a simple set of guidelines saying what can be said (nothing slanderous, etc) and encouraging this behaviour by applying a common sense approach
Working styles
People need to be encouraged to work in a digital workplace. This can be done in a variety of ways:
- paying for their furniture and phone/internet connection at home
- making sure they have a laptop/ipad/smartphone so they can be in connected to their digital workplace and when travelling on business
- training managers to manage employees remotely. Just because they are out of sight doesn’t mean they are not working effectively! A facilitating rather than directing management style will help.
- flexible working hours to fit a sustainable work/life balance
- having confidence their personal information is secure while being accessible from any locations with correct permissions
My next post will cover the IT infrastructure needed for a digital working.
4 factors critical to good governance in a digital workplace
July 27, 2011 at 8:52 am | Posted in application, benefit, best practice, collaboration, digital workplace, governance, intranet, mark morrell ltd, news, plan, standards, strategy, value, web accessibility | 2 CommentsTags: benefit, best practice, digital workplace, governance, intranet, Mark Morrell, publishing, standards, strategy, usability, users, value
In my last four posts on the digital workplace I have covered ‘Must have digital workplace principles’, ‘5 steps to a great digital workplace strategy’, 7 ways to engage people in a digital workplace and lastly ‘Create a brilliant digital workplace with me’.
To have a successful digital workplace (my definition is ‘work is what you do, not where you go to’) organisations must have the right strategy, culture, environment and infrastructure to exploit the benefits fully. It becomes the natural way of working so everyone is more productive and your organisation more efficient with:
- people work from any location as well as their office workstation
- IT infrastructure for the same or similar experience
- everyone can read news, collaborate, search and complete tasks
- individuals choosing tools – RSS, mobile, etc. – that help them
- organisations measure benefits and encourages digital workplace
Follow these ‘must have’ principles including strategy, engagement, governance, HR policies and IT infrastructure and you will have a great digital workplace.
Governance
It is important the whole of the digital workplace is managed so that it brings benefits to the organisation, individuals and collectively, everyone. It should mean the feeling that ‘things are better’ permeates through to everyone and encourages even greater use of the digital workplace.
It means the level of governance balances the rewards to be gained while avoiding any risks. That doesn’t come naturally but through good governance of the digital workplace including:
Ownership
Who is responsible for developing the strategy, implementing the digital workplace and ongoing management of it? It is difficult for one person to have overall responsibility for so many key roles and activities. Neither is it best for it to be one person.
The best solution is to have a steering group made up of stakeholders from key parts of the business most affected by the digital workplace. These stakeholders should be senior people with decision making authority not someone who has to refer back to his/her line manager and delay matters.
There may be dedicated roles for people responsible for collaboration, ways of working, etc, but they should ultimately report in to the steering group.
The worse solution is to have competing groups of people each implementing conflicting standards, designs and ways to use the digital workplace. That will be a disaster and must be avoided!
Consistency
You really need a consistent level of governance across your digital workplace. By consistent I don’t mean the same. I mean it is what everyone using the digital workplace would expect or need.
For publishers/site owners who are publishing in the digital workplace accredited types of content (policies, factual stuff) the expectation is for a more rigorous approach than for collaborative content where opinions and views require a lighter touch.
For people using the digital workplace to view information and news, use workflow applications or collaborate with each other, they expect the look and feel of the digital workplace to be similar. Tools needs to be branded in line with the business’ colours and designs. Features need to encourages everyone to use them more such as help links, contact points, easily laid out and functional designs.
All the different parts of the digital workplace need to be integrated so they are seen as one whole entity not a different set of silos, resources with some electronic sticking plaster added to make them look as if they are connected when they don’t give that impression to anyone using them.
Standards
One approach is to have a set of standards based on the needs of the organisation (information retention), regulation (who has permission to see what), legal (web accessibility) and technical (DNS policy). These can be applied appropriately across the digital workplace for each activity. So for formal type content (policies and procedures) it’s most likely all the standards will apply. For applications (HR processes) it’s probable that most will apply too. But for collaboration you will apply a lighter touch.
Alternatively you can create standards that only apply to certain information and applications to meet the purpose people need to use it for.
It is about getting the balance right again. You don’t need to be too restrictive and stifle innovation and collaboration. But you don’t want it to be too loose so that the business and individuals risk non-compliance with a legal or regulatory requirements. It’s not easy but getting it right is critical and benefits everyone and the business.
Integrity
This is the real litmus test, the crunch point for me. Do people have confidence in the information and tools they are using in the digital workplace? Does everyone feel encouraged to use the digital workplace more after each time?
The answer has to be ‘YES!’ to these questions. That is the outcome your strategy and plans should aim for.
However you do this it must balance the needs of the business with those of people working well in a digital workplace.
My next post will cover the HR policies which enable digital working.
5 steps to a great digital workplace strategy
July 14, 2011 at 8:25 am | Posted in benefit, digital workplace, engagement, intranet, mark morrell ltd, plan, strategy, value | 6 CommentsTags: benefit, digital workplace, engagement, strategy, value
In my last post ‘Must have digital workplace principles’ I highlighted the framework your organisation needs to adopt to gain the maximum benefit.
To have a successful digital workplace (which I now define as ‘work is what you do, not where you go to’) organisations must have the right strategy, culture, environment and infrastructure to exploit the benefits fully. It needs to become the natural way of working so everyone is more effective and productive and your organisation more efficient and successful.
- people working from any location (or mobile) rather than their office workstation
- IT infrastructure providing the same or similar experience wherever someone uses the digital workplace
- everyone being able to collaborate, search, complete tasks as well as read the latest news
- individuals choosing tools – RSS, mobile, etc. – that help them
- the organisation measuring the benefits and encouraging you to use the digital workplace
Follow these ‘must have’ principles and you will have a great digital workplace include strategy, engagement, governance, HR policies and IT infrastructure.
Let’s first cover the five steps you need to take for a digital workplace strategy that will work.
Step 1: Alignment
It is vital that your digital workplace strategy is aligned with your organisation’s overall strategy. There is no point planning to invest time and resources to move in one direction if your organisation is going in the opposite way. You need to be clear what your organisations’ future plans are and make sure your strategy shows how it will help to achieve them.
Step 2: Scope
A digital workplace strategy is wider than most intranet strategies. It’s more than the traditional role for information published online. It needs to also cover:
- where people will be working – mobile, home, cafes
- how everyone will be working – laptops, smartphones, public PCs
- what individuals will need for their work – processes, collaboration, email
Step 3: Priorities
You need to have plans for the:
- short term (0 – 3 months)
- medium term (3 – 12 months)
- and long term (over 1 year)
You also need to prioritise the actions you plan to take based on what will benefit your organisation based on:
- Most people will benefit from
- Most savings for your organisation
- Quickest to implement
Step 4: Stakeholders
You need to identify who will have the biggest influence on your strategy and who will be affected the most. They may be the same people!
These are your stakeholders who you need to maintain good relationships with for your strategy to a) be implemented and b) have the greatest chance of succeeding.
They may be representing finance, your CEO (as well as your CEO), IT, HR and operational units.
Step 5: Resources
Who apart from you is going to create, support and implement your digital workplace strategy? You will need a team of people, maybe a virtual team practicing digital workplace ways of working.
It is important you focus on the top priorities so you can achieve the maximum change with the resources you have.
As well as people you hopefully will have some budget which needs to be spent wisely so you can show the biggest gain from the money invested.
If you need my help, please get in touch.
In my next post I will cover how engagement is your next ’must have’ principle for a successful digital workplace.
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