Pre-survey Quick Poll results: Is the intranet becoming a workplace?

May 21, 2009 | Comments (1), | Categories: Future & trends |

The 5-minute Quick Poll for 2009 gave intranet managers the opportunity to vote on the topics they would most like to see explored in the 2009 Global Intranet Strategies Survey. Managers from 165 different organizations around the world indicated which subjects on a list of 20 were “highly relevant”, “moderately relevant” or “less relevant at this time”.

The top 5 priorities all lean towards work and business this year…

  1. “Collaboration, communities, virtual teams: tools & technologies, governance” is the topic that leads by far this year. It came in at 71 percent of the organizations rating it as “highly relevant”, a 10 point lead over the other topics.
  2. “Positioning and role of the intranet in the online workplace” is a strategic issue, and not at all obvious for most organizations. It’s not surprising this came number 2 on the top priorities.
  3. “Senior management awareness, participation & support” is still an on-going issue, and is in position 3 on the list of “highly relevant” topics.
  4. “Obstacles holding back the intranet from achieving its potential” is in 4th position. This topic has been part of the survey for the last 3 years and analysis based comparing obstacles faced by organizations with intranets in Stages 1, 2 and 3 has provided a number of leads as to what to deal with and when as the intranet advances through the different stages.
  5. “Measurement & evaluation: ROI (hard & soft), techniques, indicators” is in position 5 on the list. Interestingly, it did not even make the top 10 topics.

The two charts below show the topics ranked in decreasing order of relevance.(I’ve listed the full topic description as it appeared on the Quick Poll at the end of this post.)

Intranet-topics-1-JMC









Intranet-topics-2-JMC



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Flashback to one year ago…

Last June, 114 organizations participated in the 2008 Quick Poll which preceded the 2008 Global Intranet Strategies Survey.

The two main different items in the top 5 topics a year ago are items 1 and 4 below:

  1. Search & findability: user features, resources, satisfaction
  2. Roles of the intranet/portal as perceived by employees & management
  3. Obstacles holding back the intranet from achieving its potential.
  4. Web 2.0 tools & features: usages, issues
  5. Single point of entry: integration of applications, other enterprise information resources.
  6. (same rating as point 5) Finding people: directories, expertise locators

What’s next?

Many thanks to all of you who participated in the Quick Poll. The survey itself will open in June.

I also thank the 50 organizations (out of the total 165)  who responded to the open question where we asked for other ideas, comments and suggestions for topics. I’ll share this feedback in a separate post. Stay tuned.

This year’s survey results are going to be full of surprises, in my opinion!

As always, I’d love to hear from you if you have comments about the charts and data in this post.

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P.S.  Full description of topics as they appeared on the Quick Poll

Remember, these are topics, not the questions themselves!

  • Collaboration, communities, virtual teams: tools & technologies, governance
  • Positioning & role of the intranet/portal in the online workspace: entry point, separate system, purpose
  • Senior management awareness, participation, support
  • Obstacles holding back the intranet from achieving its potential
  • Measurement & evaluation: ROI (hard & soft), techniques, indicators
  • Home or entry page: type of content, customization
  • Integration of applications: core business, secondary process support, enterprise systems
  • Strategic steering group: role, members
  • Information sources for employee data: which ones, how used, how kept up to date
  • Social media: types, usages, benefits, concerns, governance
  • Place of the intranet/portal team in the organization (function/department, level 49 %)
  • Availability of the intranet to all employees: when, where, how (smartphone, home access, solutions for non office-based workforce)
  • Customisation & personalisation: how much, criteria, individual control
  • User-generated information: integration with information from traditional editorial process
  • Moderation and management of content in collaborative and social media spaces
  • Social networks, personal pages, social tagging
  • Solutions/tools for virtual teams made up of employees and external partners
  • Relation/impact of external social networking tools (e.g. Facebook) on the internal online workplace
  • Current economic crisis: impact on intranet, focus areas in 2009 and 2010
  • Sustainable development (“Green program”): impact or relation with intranet/portal

One Response to “Pre-survey Quick Poll results: Is the intranet becoming a workplace?”

  1. Dorje McKinnon Says:
    May 22nd, 2009 at 12:53 am

    Jane ,
    Many thanks for publishing the results and for making the comparison with last year. “What is human endevour without history ?”
    Key to my impression is that Intranet managers are still focused on the fundamentals
    - Intranet as workplace, last year defined by focus on tools, this year by ensuring those who do the work can be more effective
    - Education of key decision makers, management, and users about the potential intranets provide. Last year this was embodied in the perceived role of the intranet, and this year that items continued number 2 position.
    The really interesting change to my mind is the rise of measurement and evaluation. Indicating Intranets are beginning to join the rest of the organisation returning quantified value.
    DorjeM

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