Global Intranet Trends 2010 – Q&A
December 18, 2009Samuel Driessen, author of the blog infoarch, reviewed this year’s survey report “Global Intranet Trends for 2010” on his blog. He raised some questions which I will respond to here.
Origami and intranets
Why did I choose to illustrate this year’s report with origami figures?
As I said in the preface, …”The art of origami is based on the concept of taking a single sheet of paper and folding it in different ways to create a representation of an animal, a bird or a figure. Some origami creations are simple, others complex. Each one is unique, just as each intranet is unique with its own life and personality.”
I understand that traditionally, the sheet of paper used to make the origami figure must not be cut, only folded. That’s the way I feel about intranets. They are instruments for connecting people and not disconnecting people. They should be unified within their own landscape, whatever that may be!
One of my favorite ones from the Global Intranet Trends for 2010 report this year is the one above from the chapter “Workplace Web – the people angle”, subtitled “Connecting people and energizing the organization”.
The real-time intranet
As Samuel points out, I have defined real-time a bit too broadly and I did it deliberately. I included blogging and micro-blogging (Twitter, Yammer for example) in my examples. This is because they are part of what I call “one-click publishing”. You write your message, click and it’s available for everyone to see.
This is nearly real-time, especially when you think how long it takes most content to get on to intranets!
The place-independent intranet
“Place independent” has two dimensions: the physical place and the device.
One question on the survey asked where and how people can access the intranet from outside the physical workplace. They were offered the following options, and asked to indicate what proportion of their employees had this possibility:
- Can access the intranet from home from their own home computers (with appropriate security mechanisms).
- Can access the intranet from other computers (e.g. cyber- cafes, hotel business centers, with appropriate security mechanisms).
- Have company laptops from which they can access the intranet wherever they are.
This first chart shows the responses for the full survey population of 283 organizations.
A second question asked: What proportion of your employees can access the intranet from a mobile device such as a smartphone.
Stages of maturity
Samuel wondered what the proportions were in each of the 3 stages this year. The figures have evolved a little since last year, but not much.
It is important to remember that these are approximations, and that there are different degrees of maturity within the same enterprise intranet landscape. I’ve seen cases more than once where Stage 1 and Stage 3 exist side by side in the same organization. (descriptions of the 3 stages from 2009 report)
Stage 1 – 38% this year, 35% last year
Stage 2 – 35% this year, 43 % last year
Stage 3 – 28% this year, 22% last year
Remember these figures are based on the organizations who participated in the survey each year and are not necessarily representative of the entire global intranet population. However, they are not far off the opinion of intranet managers in different groups I have polled informally in conferences and workshops.
Prediction markets inside the enterprise
Samuel summarizes from my study that “prediction markets are still a hidden gem. Used by almost none of the participants.” I agree, and am always surprised. My personal conclusion is that prediction markets are foreign to most intranet managers. I will talk about this in a later post.
Thanks, Samuel, for these questions. Let’s continue the dialogue. I invite any of you readers to join us either at infoarch or here!