Design an intranet home page and win a Kindle!
November 10, 2011 at 11:48 am | Posted in homepage, intranet | 1 CommentTags: homepage, intranet
You have the chance to design what you believe is a useful hompage with the added incentive of winning a Kindle. Surely this is one of the easier decisions for intranet professionals to make!
When I look back at the BT Intranet homepage versions over the years I was there and the many other homepages I have seen that other organisations use, I wish I could have done this when I started to think about improvements.
While it is functionality that brings people back to a homepage again and again a design that is pleasing to the eye and helps bring to bring branding, content and layout together is the best combination for a useful homepage.
So, don’t delay, design it today!
Intellact: BT’s customer insight and information site
October 19, 2010 at 10:49 am | Posted in best practice, intranet, news, research, search, value | 4 CommentsTags: best practice, bt intranet, BT today, directory, homepage, killer content, research, value
There are a few ‘killer applications and content’ which have driven the usage of BT’s intranet. As well as the BT Homepage – our corporate portal, BT Today – our new sites and Directory – our people finder, Intellact, BT’s customer insight and market portal has been key to achieveing this.
Intellact provides a wealth of insight on the communications industry. Thousands of people in all parts of BT use these services to:
- Help understand customer needs and satisfaction.
- Monitor the global press – daily updates on business trends.
- Support business propositions.
Comprehensive, up-to-date, high quality research helps people make their decisions with:
- Business news
- IT research and advice
- BT commissioned market research
- Broker research
- Industry sector research
- Internet audience measurement
Business news is updated several times per day on Intellact. You can sign up to receive an email that reviews the days top news from UK and international newspapers, journals and newswires.
Intellact offers an unrivalled collection of published research covering ICT and other industry sectors with the option to contact analysts for further details.
Intellact can be searched in various ways and you can set up alerts so when a new research is available you are informed so you don’t miss anything.
Intellact helps BT give people what they need for their business needs and a competitive edge to BT.
Have a look at these Intellact examples.
An A-Z of BT’s Intranet
August 4, 2010 at 9:33 am | Posted in best practice, help, homepage, intranet, search, standards, usability | 5 CommentsTags: best practice, bt intranet, help, homepage, search, standards, usability, users
In my last post ‘Great intranets help make efficient people’ I talked briefly about the BT A-Z. BT Intranet users find this a very useful service helping them to quickly find a site.
Research of people in BT finds they navigate to what they need from the BT Homepage by using the search engine, deep linking from the many headings grouped functionally or use the BT A-Z.
People who use the BT A-Z have a reasonable idea they know the site exists and what its name could be. Cross-referencing of sites helps people to find it under more than one letter.
I’ve shown what the BT A-Z is in these examples.
The BT Homepage sets out the BT A-Z in one horizontal line with plenty of space between each letter to save users one click if there was just a BT A-Z heading and be able to easily get the letter they need (slide 1).
For each link in the BT A-Z, there is a heading followed by a simple explanation of what it points to so people know before they click on it if it is likely to be what they are looking for (slide 2).
On the left hand side of every page of the BT A-Z are icons which help to show to users what to expect when they click on the link (slides 2-4).
As well as giving people a full list of sites, if you know it is just information or a service you need for that letter you can choose that option from right hand menu to reduce what you need to check (slides 3 and 4).
If you have mobile/PDA access, you can still use the BT A-Z and see a list of sites to click on with (most important!) a mobile icon against those which will support that type of access (slide 5).
Getting the best value from managing BT’s intranet and portal
June 8, 2010 at 8:12 am | Posted in benchmark, best practice, governance, homepage, intranet, publishing, research, standards, usability, value | Leave a commentTags: benefit, best practice, bt intranet, homepage, measure, money, research, usability, users, value
I have been invited to speak at a pan-European Conference on Intranet and Portal Management. It will cover portal and intranet evolution, enhanced internal communication and collaboration, and steps towards an Enterprise 2.0 platform.
I have been asked to talk about ‘Getting the best value from managing your intranet and portal’.
- Making the most of the space available on your portal
- Measuring user satisfaction
- Improving productivity
- Valuing exploited and unexploited less tangible benefits
- Making money from your intranet
For those who are interested but are unable to make the conference you can find my slides here.
Please spare a thought for me. I will need to wake up at 04:30 to catch a train, plane and taxi to the venue in Berlin for my presentation at 11:15 local time. I hope I stay awake during my presentation…………………and the audience do too! 
Try a self-managed intranet
March 1, 2010 at 5:58 pm | Posted in benefit, best practice, governance, intranet, publishing, standards, training | 7 CommentsTags: bt intranet, content, governance, homepage, plan, standards, value
In BT I lead a small central team. I’m responsible for the strategy, governance and standards and how they are applied to content published on BT’s intranet using a menu of templates that I manage.
So who is responsible for publishing, reviewing, updating and removing content?
“You!” is the answer to any publisher in BT. There is NO central publishing team to do this on behalf of anyone.
Publishers are responsible for any content they own meeting our standards based on business, legal, regulatory and users’ needs.
They are trained on awareness of publishing standards and how they apply before they publish choosing from a menu of templates that already meet standards.
Automated tools will check content weekly and remind the publishers who own it if it doesn’t meet our standards what needs to be done. If no action is taken it is escalated to the publisher’s line manager and if action is still not taken, it will be removed from use and deleted. This avoids users making decisions on out of date content or because it is too difficult to use.
So, the content is owned and managed by every publisher with templates, training and automated tools to make it as easy as possible to meet the standards all users expect so they have a great overall experience.
My team can concentrate on what we can add most value to for BT and our intranet.
BT Homepage: agreed by users
December 21, 2009 at 12:16 pm | Posted in beta testing, homepage, user testing | 4 CommentsTags: 2012 Challenge, beta testing, bt intranet, homepage, user testing
After testing with users on the changes to BT Homepage I have been able to launch it with the changes to some sections of the top page and site.
While some users when asked for their views wondered what all the fuss was about for the small changes proposed, most appreciated being given the chance to give their views and liked the changes.
I have greater confidence that I’ve made changes which users want and need to give them an even easier way to find what they need for their work.
A lesson I have learned is to try to make changes small rather than keep them back until a major change is needed. It avoids users being disorientated with all the changes. Of course keeping the number of times changes are needed to a minimum helps too.
Testing with users involves them more and suggestions made will help me make further small changes in 2010.
Here is the final version in normal colours and in Team BT/2012 Challenge colours when quarterly updates publicising progress and how people get involved are made.
Blog at WordPress.com. | Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
Entries and comments feeds.
