Part 1
Determining business value has always been a difficult aspect of any Intranet management strategy, and many Intranet strategies fall short in this area. IBF’s Business Value quadrant evaluates members for how well they track ROI and any intangible benefits of Intranet programs and services. In addition, the importance of this area has prompted IBF to launch a project to develop a financial value tool to assess the total value of a company Intranet.
Meanwhile, the rumblings of a possible recession in the US and Europe are causing businesses in all sectors to tighten their belts. Now is a good time to make sure your Intranet’s value proposition is well thought-out. Even without a fully-baked business value model in place, there are some quick things you can do to protect your team and your mission:
1. Take a quick poll for value: It won’t be a truly scientific measure, but if you have any means of quickly polling any number of employees about their sense of value derived from using any aspect of your company Intranet, now’s the time to do it. Questions should be around ROI, efficiency and productivity. An example might be: “Does the Intranet save you time in doing your work.”
2. Go to the sales team: Since productivity is directly related to revenue in this part of the business, testaments to the value of a key application may be noticed more if they come from the sales team. If the sales team is reporting that use of the Intranet directly helps them close deals, that’s a powerful statement for value and should be captured.
3. Solicit positive feedback: Feedback is notoriously only about when things go wrong. To get some good testimony from users, consider posting teasers on key application home pages, portal pages and even in an email (but no spamming, please), to build a show of support for your Intranet.
4. Focus on search: Search, and poor search, is the Achille’s heel of many Intranets. Most companies fail to realize the high cost of looking for information online. Use your immediate team members to create simple search tasks to demonstrate any Search problems you are facing.
5. Track important events: Company buying out a big competitor? Time for quarterly earnings? Make sure to focus in on traffic statistics at these key moments. Spikes in traffic at these key moments will show senior managers how employees turn to the Intranet for important company information.
Once you’ve gathered some information about your Intranet’s value, don’t forget to use this information to pitch upcoming projects with an emphasis on cost savings and efficiency gains.
Of course, in some cases, there may be nothing you can do to avoid getting a budget slashed or key projects cancelled. Next week I’ll post about how to run a leaner Intranet team. In the meanwhile, I’d love to hear how your Intranet team and strategy is surviving if your organization is facing some belt-tightening measures.
