Like every year at the same period of the year, lots of practitioners are waiting for Jane McConnell’s “Global Intranet Trend” to be issued. The 2011 edition is out. Here’s what we can learn from it in a few lines :
• 5 main trends :
– the intranet is the front door of a “workplace web”. It’s not only a communication tool that serves the enterprise but a set of work tools for employees.
– It’s becoming more collaborative (even if the road is still long…)
– It’s becoming “real time” because of social networking or microblogging tools (used by more than 20% organizations either on a global scale on in pilot phase).
– It’s becoming mobile : more and more employees can access it from outside of the office and on mobile devices.
• Growing impact of social networks
Only 20% organizations that use social media try to measure the generated value and 50% plan to do so in the future. Those that measure see improvements in information sharing, faster decisions and problem solving, a decrease in the volume of emails, and the emergence of previously unrecognized experts.
But the road is long : 4 years are needed for a full adoption. Moreover (but is it surprising ?) senior managers are not setting an example.
• 2 challenges for 2011
– establish an appropriate governance that will deal with bot collaboration, the intranet and the “social” dimension while involving all stakeholders at the highest level since it’s a cross organization global project.
– facilitate the “social” dimension that raises new questions on communication and collaboration strategies and turn all the mobilized energies into a clear business value.
Reading the report suggest that we’ve reached a tipping point. But the gap between leaders and the others shows that there’s still a lot of work to be done.
It’s clear that the intranet is still (too much ?) seen as a communication tool and even if the vision of a workplace place is getting stronger, there’s too little maturity in value measurement. Because strategies and governance models are still unclear ?
Anyways, this survey says a lot about the state of the art and the main tends, relying on many focuses on tools, usages, change practices with a systematic comparison between leaders and followers. 90 very rich pages that sum up a research that’s been conducted with 440 organizations.
I’ll focus on some key learnings in future posts.
Meanwhile, you can download an “executive snapshot’ or buy it here.
Enjoy your reading !
