The State of the Intranet Today

Transcription

1 survey The State of the Intranet Today SPONSORED BY

2 Executive Summary In this survey, we wanted to find out if intranets are proving their worth or if they are declining as a corporate must have technology. The survey indicates that intranets are considered important, current deployments are typically reflective of the lower end of maturity. If intranets are to be seen as more valuable, then better support for business processes would be a more direct path to delivering business value, but we believe that these survey results suggest that many are failing to fully leverage intranets as a tool for employee engagement a significant missed opportunity. And even where the good technical foundations are in place or are being upgraded, we are concerned about the lack of maturity around sponsorship and vision, governance, and measurement. For this reason, we recommend pursuing practical intranet strategies that allow businesses to focus on the things that matter and help improve their maturity. 2

3 State of the intranet today This survey considers the question: Are intranets proving their worth or are they declining as a corporate must have technology? Clearly the underlying goal of an intranet is to provide business value, but what does this mean? CMSWire columnist Sam Marshall 1 proposes that an effective intranet is conceptually defined as one that helps bring systems together: Saying that intranet value is about how employees feel may seem counterintuitive -- surely it is about sales, profits and customers. Although intranets that quantifiably support strategic goals are great, in reality most intranets play a low-key but essential day-to-day role in making employees more productive, and it is here that the real value lies. Indeed, things that are core to a business tend to have systems that are more precisely adapted to need (CRM, ERP and SCM). The role of the intranet is to bind everything else together and fill the gaps

4 But when participants in another CMSWire survey 2 in June 2015 were asked to define intranet success, they told us that success was measured in tangible metrics. For example, they said that an intranet is successful if 60% or more users view content at least once a day or 24% contribute content of any kind once a day. We recognize that intranets are complex business tools and this question has many facets, so we have looked at the survey results through the lens of an intranet maturity framework. Our framework considers the following components of a business improvement initiative: Vision and objectives Sponsorship and ownership Intranet capabilities deployed, which include: Functions and content offered Platforms used Management and support Improvement planning Taken together, these components give us the ability to check the maturity of an intranet and how well it has been adopted in a business. The survey responses provide insights into each of these aspects, allowing an assessment of the current maturity of company intranets. Let s now look at the topics raised in the survey to check on the current state

5 The intranet s relative priority In our survey, the importance ranks highly, with 79% of respondents considering the intranet to be important, very important, or extremely important. Forty-two percent considered it to be very or extremely important. How does the intranet rank in terms of your organization s priorities? Extremely Important Very Important Important Slightly Important Not Important 4.7% 15.8% 25.7% 16.4% 37.4% Intranets continue to be considered as important business tools and if we consider them as a solution within the broader digital workplace architecture, these results also compare well with CMSWire s 2017 State of the Digital Workplace Report 3, where over 48% of respondents rank the digital workplace as very or extremely important. However, how well are we managing and implementing them so that they deliver value?

6 Intranet ownership and maintenance 4 Over two-thirds of companies have a single department owning the intranet, with IT owning 37% and Internal Communications 27%. No other departments shows any significant ownership across our survey base. Which department is primarily responsible for managing your organization s intranet? Information Technology Employee/Internal Communications No single function has ownership Marketing Other Human Resources Operations 15.2% 8.6% 5.7% 4.3% 3.3% 36.2% 26.7% It is interesting to note that some companies entrust the intranet ownership to Knowledge Management or Digital Strategy. But it appears that central functions control the intranet in most companies. We also noticed that only two respondents indicated that ownership was Percentage of companies that have no single department owning the organization s Intranet. (Broken down by company size) Small companies ( employees) Mid-sized companies ( employees) Large companies (5001+ employees) 8% Large Companies 13% Mid-sized Companies 25% Small Companies 6

7 shared between different functions, and again in both these cases it was between the two dominant functions IT and internal communications. Smaller organizations were also more likely to indicate that no single function has ownership of the intranet, suggesting this was not a strategic choice. Intranet adoption and usage 9 Intranet adoption is critical but difficult to assess. Companies often set their intranet home page as the default web browser start page, but is just starting the browser with the intranet considered valuable usage? Our respondents stated that their intranet achieved over 50% usage daily, with an additional 29% stating usage weekly. This gives 80% usage weekly or more. How frequently do most employees use your intranet on average? Unsure / Don t Know 11.7% Rarely 3.5% Monthly 3.5% Daily 52.6% Weekly 28.7% Based on past surveys, 50% daily usage is barely considered successful. 12% of respondents also said they didn t know how frequently their intranet was being used this raises questions about how those companies measure success. 7

8 Integrations with other business applications Integrating the intranet with other business apps is a key measure of maturity. A large portion of the respondents have already linked content-focused applications. There is more limited integration with other lines of business apps and CRM systems. How does your intranet integrate with other employee applications? Document Management Box, Google Drive, Microsoft Office Enterprise Search Legacy Knowledge Management Tools SharePoint, Wikis Identity & Access Management Okta, OneLogin Social, Chat & Collaboration Tools Slack, HipChat, Yammer, Workplace by Facebook HRMS & Human Capital Workday, SuccessFactors Unified Communication & Conferencing Zoom, Skype for Business Learning Management Systems Cornerstone Expense Management Concur CRM Salesforce Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or line of business transaction systems SAP ALREADY INTEGRATED PLANNING TO INTEGRATE NOT INTEGRATED NOT APPLICABLE UNSURE / DON T KNOW 46.4% 13.6% 35.0% 2.7% 2.1% 46.8% 13.0% 28.8% 7.2% 4.3% 43.6% 14.3% 27.9% 12.1% 14.0% 48.6% 8.0% 23.9% 12.3% 7.3% 34.3% 16.4% 34.3% 13.6% 1.4% 33.1% 10.3% 42.7% 8.1% 5.9% 27.5% 17.4% 42.0% 10.9% 2.2% 23.7% 6.5% 46.0% 16.6% 7.2% 17.7% 7.4% 53.7% 15.4% 5.9% 12.9% 11.4% 54.3% 17.1% 4.3% 10.0% 5.7% 55.0% 18.6% 10.7% Overall, we see bias toward content rather than business process with less appetite for integrating systems such as Learning Management, Expense Management, CRM, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and other line of business transaction systems. 8

9 Intranet technology adoption Q5 The survey considered platform selection. The results showed a clear distinction between those using SharePoint (45%) and those using another platform (44%) (with the remainder using hybrid deployments or have no defined intranet). Which intranet platform(s) are you currently using? SharePoint 45% Some other platform A hybrid deployment / no defined intranet 44% 11 % As a single solution, the dominance of SharePoint is clear, although respondents are using a wide range of versions from SharePoint Online within Office 365, to SharePoint 2013 and Some respondents were also using additional third-party add-ons to create their intranet in SharePoint, while others augmented SharePoint with other non-microsoft solutions. While there were no other platforms that registered more than 5% of the current installed market, we can see there is an active parallel install base of organizations that do not use Microsoft as the platform for their intranet. There was also more diversity of platforms at the smaller and 9

10 larger organizations, while nearly 60% of mid-sized organizations (between 1,001 and 5,000 employees) use SharePoint or Office 365. The evolving value of intranets When considering what benefits an intranet brings to an organization, only 57% thought that the intranet helped worker productivity by providing content and training. This means that 43% of respondents felt there was no contribution to productivity with content delivery. Even less (50%), felt that the intranet helped foster a sense of engagement to the organization. There was very slight benefit for on-boarding or connecting coworkers, although delivering company communications showed some benefits. Which of the following do you consider the two most important benefits of an intranet? 53 % 45 % 50 % Sharepoint / Office 365 Other 40 % 13 % 23 % 17 % 8 % Improving productivity by managing and sourcing critical content and training Engaging employees and fostering a sense of connection with the organization Efficiently administering mandatory company communications Helping employees find the appropriate coworkers to connect with 10

11 Some respondents called out additional benefits, such as knowledge management and collaboration, although these were not frequently reported. We also found some curious differences in opinion between organizations using SharePoint and those using other solutions: Those using SharePoint were more likely to indicate they value employee engagement, productivity, and connecting people; non-microsoft based intranets were more like to value the management of mandatory communication than their Microsoft-based peers. Measuring success The results show that usage, survey scores, and the number of pages visited are the most popular measures. There is limited focus on time to locate pages and support calls, which may reflect the difficulties of collecting or analyzing this information. More critically, 30% had no success measures in place, although only 11% of large enterprises reported this versus 34% of small and mid-sized organizations. Percentage of companies that don t measure their intranet success. 32% of small companies 39% of mid-sized companies 11% of large companies Small companies ( employees) Mid-sized companies ( employees) Large companies (5001+ employees) 11

12 Top intranet challenges A range of challenges were offered in the survey, and the top two reported by 50% of respondents were: Complexity of use driven by multiple siloed systems of record The inability to find content To a lesser degree, the limited ability to integrate solutions and provide integrated collaboration was also seen as an issue. Indications of limited management interest were reflected in the responses for stale content and low engagement by 30% of respondents. Which of the following are your organization s top three intranet challenges? Small companies ( employees) Mid-sized companies ( employees) Large companies (5001+ employees) 34% 30% 36% 35% 33% 31% 33% 26% 23% 16%. 23% 17% 18% 22% 18% 17% 16% 16% 24% 14% 9% 7% 13% 16% 12% 13% 7% Multiple siloed systems of record (databases, CRM, ERP, Records Management) Stale and outdated content Low engagement & adoption Difficult to search & locate content Heavy dependency on IT resources to maintain Integration among various digital workplace solutions Cumbersome content publishing process & tools Functional limitations in current platforms / technology Other 12

13 We also noticed that large enterprises were more likely to report problems with integration among various digital workplace solutions, while mid-sized organizations were more constrained by functional limitations and difficulties with search. Current State Commentary Although the survey indicates that intranets are considered important, current deployments are typically reflective of the lower end of maturity. Size is a factor, the average company is delivering content and training, but not neccesarily using it as an engagement tool. While we think that supporting business processes would be a more direct path to delivering business value, we also believe that failing to fully leverage intranets as a tool for employee engagement may be a missed opportunity in many cases. It may be that the higher maturity objectives like employee engagement - are well down on the list because of the fundamental difficulties many are still experiencing with content focused capabilities and because they lack sophisticated measures to demonstrate the real impact their intranet is having. Considering this, it is not a surprise that we saw less interest in integrating business systems, like CRM and ERP. Respondents were more evenly split for HCM and Unified Communications integration. This is probably because HR is usually a shared service and collaboration is a businesswide use case, making them a natural fit for intranet integration. However, the fact that almost half of the respondents told us that they had selected a new intranet in the past year or were expecting to replace their intranet within the coming year could be taken to express two possible 13

14 scenarios on the positive, intranet managers are able to secure funding for platform renewal, but on the negative this high level of churn may reflect a broad dissatisfaction with the technologies being used. This dissatisfaction with technology outcomes may be a challenge for mid-sized organizations, who reported a much higher use of SharePoint but also were more likely to nominate functional limitations and difficulties with search as one of their top three challenges. What does the future look like? Do the following statements reflect workplace trends impacting your organization? We posed several questions to capture trends affecting the intranet. Our respondents noted the biggest challenges were: Too much searching Engagement Looking more closely at these results, we found that small and mid-sized organizations were generally more concerned about search, whereas larger enterprises were equally concerned about search and employee engagement. These were closely followed by the growing remote workforce and the complexity of the application environment. It was felt that working with multiple generations in the workforce was significant but that the move to contingent workforces is less significant. 14

15 Do these statements reflect workplace trends impacting your organization? (Percentage of yes replies) Small companies ( employees) Mid-sized companies ( employees) 72% 69% 67% 69% 67% Large companies (5001+ employees) 59% 61% 59% 61% 59% 56% 59% 48% 43% 46%. 38% 37% 33% Employees spend too much time searching for necessary content Employee engagement is a challenge The abundance of workplace software applications is becoming counterproductive A growing number of remote employees is affecting internal communication & connection Multigenerational workplace makes employee communications challenging Increasing use of freelance and contingent workers make collaboration more difficult Similar themes were seen in CMSWire s 2017 State of the Digital Workplace Report, which also ranked culture and change and search and information findability in the top 5 digital workplace priorities. Our insights The employee engagement environment is getting more complex, and it is unclear if many intranet solutions are ready for the changes that are happening now. Even where the good technical foundations are 15

16 in place or are being upgraded, we remain concerned about the lack of maturity around sponsorship and vision, governance, and a lack of success measurements. Based on the results of this survey, we recommend pursuing practical intranet strategies that as much as possible allow businesses to focus on the things that matter and will help to improve their maturity. This includes: Placing a greater emphasis on employee engagement For small and mid-sized organizations not already thinking about this issue, it may require shifting from an emphasis on broadcast and static information sharing, to a more social or rich-content approach (such as video). Focusing content management efforts on findability As well as providing the right places to store content, it is just as important to make sure this information can be found by the right people, at the right time. Demand access to resources and tools to support better analytics and insight Business stakeholders will never be convinced by basic intranet statistics, but you will need access to the right tools, data and possibly skills to paint a compelling picture if you are replacing your intranet and can argue to spend money on an upgrade, make you sure include all the supporting capabilities. Targeting simple business process integration Taking baby steps in the short-to-medium term and looking for quick wins or easy integrations that add value without much pain or complexity. For more mature intranets already actively focused on the employee experience, we believe ownership of the intranet should be a consideration moving forward, if the goal is to provide a truly integrated employee experience. 16

17 APPENDIX About our Respondents Respondents were invited to respond to an online survey between September 18 and October 13, responses were collected, including organizations ranging in size from small businesses to large enterprise employing over 100,000 people. What is your organization's size? (In employee numbers) 100, % 50, , % 10,000-50, % % 5,001-10, % 1,001-5, % 101-1, % 17

18 APPENDIX A variety of industries were represented in the result, with a particularly strong response from Information Technology followed by Consumer Products and Health Care, Financial Services / Insurance, and Government. Which of the following best describes your industry? Information Technology Banking / Financial Service / Insurance Government Consumer Products / Health Care Telecommunication Services / Utilities Logistics / Advertising / Education / Real Estate Architecture / Construction Energy Primary Materials / Agriculture / Industrial Other 23.3% 15.7% 10.9% 10.5% 4.3% 3.8% 2.9% 2.9% % 18

19 ABOUT THE AUTHORS James Dellow Passionate about changing the way the world gets work done, James specializes in human-centered technologies that help people connect, communicate and collaborate with each other. He brings more than a decade of experience working in intranet and knowledge management roles and as a consultant with a wide range of government, professional and blue chip companies. James has helped clients with digital workplace strategy, intranet vendor selection, and has worked with a variety of platforms as a consultant advising on information architecture, governance, user experience, and content management. James was awarded a Master of Business & Technology in 2005 and is the author of numerous published articles, including on CMSWire. Robin Wall Robin Wall is an accomplished consulting professional, skilled in strategic consulting, program management, information management and business transformation. He specialises in digital transformation, taking his clients on the journey to high levels of digital maturity. Robin successfully gains benefits from transformation projects, by effectively blending improvements in digital technology, data structures, business improvement and people upskilling. Robin regularly runs public workshops on Information Management and Information Governance. 19

20 ABOUT US CMSWire, published by Simpler Media Group, Inc., provides news, advice and analysis for professionals driving digital content strategy, management, and marketing for leading organizations. More than 400 industry professionals and editors produce our authoritative and innovative analysis for a community of over 750,000 market influencers each quarter. Coverage areas include digital and customer experience, digital marketing, social business and information management. Learn more at ABOUT THE SPONSOR Simpplr is a modern employee intranet that drives employee productivity and engagement by creating an intelligent, engaging and integrated digital workplace. We take the abstract out of day-to-day communication, better enabling distributed teams to connect, share, and distribute ideas and information. Simpplr is trusted by leading brands including Box, Workday, DocuSign, Eurostar, and Columbia University to connect, engage and empower their employees. Simpplr is headquartered in Redwood City, CA with offices in the UK and India, and is backed by Norwest Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures. Learn more at 20