Monthly Archives: May 2011

Intranet: Growing Your Company’s Digital Internal Pea Patch

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Pea Patch

Photo by Andrea Black

Growing companies that enter the cloud have found that to control the flow of information and filing of digital documents that they usually need some sort of intranet, private places within an organization geared to connect employees to shared information, processes and people. These companies often either use it as a strictly monitored resource or give employees the ability to collectively grow it into something that they enjoy using and engage with beyond merely document searches. Many companies have found that if they allow their intranet to be like a community pea patch, ideas sprout that they may have not had access to in a more restricted atmosphere. Here are a few things to consider when planning your intranet, especially in the areas of knowledge sharing, usability and user feedback.

Knowledge Sharing

Knowledge sharing is the main reason why we even bother with creating an intranet. Connecting employees and making it easy to find information is how we attempt to make employees more efficient. But putting documents up in a publically accessible folder seems to lack scalability and consistent employee contributions. So how can you increase engagement on your intranet?

Add branding. Employees are often overlooked as brand ambassadors. However, the people you hire are incredible influencers in their community. Providing a platform for employees to organically absorb brand attributes, values and personality will encourage your employees to repeat these key terms in public.

Distribute different types of content. Great intranets are full of content employees have a good time creating. Encourage employees to create a variety of content types like video, text, blogs, wikis and images. The employees who are passionate about a topic will find pride in creating top-notch content that can be safely distributed internally.

Identify content curators. Content can run wild without someone who is passionate about finding, grouping and sharing the most relevant information on a specific issue. Content curators are typically identified by their demonstrated advocacy for information sharing – meaning they will typically send emails with links to relevant articles, etc.

Usability

Usability is simply the idea of ease of use. You may have great content, identified processes, curators and a spectacular brand presence, but what’s the point if no one is going to use it.

Optimize for mobile. Focus on the features that will help when employees are out of the office and keep in mind the touch-based scenarios typically today on smartphones and tablet devices.

Design a task-centered user interface. Designing your intranet around specific tasks is the way to successfully delivering content to multiple facets of the organization. Take some time to figure out who is using the intranet and to what end. Start with the common tasks and build from there.

Search. Search is the mysterious white box in the top right-hand corner of the page that either gets it right or it doesn’t. Focusing on the quality of search will help employees use the intranet as a primary source for information. Some companies are even going so far as to display the search queries from other employees to help others access needed information faster.

Use a CMS. Make it easy for employees to update content and take the burden off your technical folks. SharePoint Online is a popular CMS system, which allows users to build profiles, team sites and corporate communications.

User Feedback

Enhance the effectiveness of information sharing with simple rewards for participation. A successful intranet is dependent on employee contribution, so it only makes sense to build a reward system for those who are making other people’s lives easier.

Encourage comments and ratings. Allow employees to rate content and provide comments. You can always sort information that is most accessed, but encourage employees to rate and comment on documents that they find useful. Don’t forget to make this easy to do via a mobile device.

Add badges and rewards. If you have the ability to add employee profiles, it can be simple to recognize employees for their contributions through badges and participation statistics. Most people feel a sense of pride in their work, so giving them a little recognition will go a long way in supporting your intranet goals.

Provide training. Everyone has difficult technical abilities, so it’s important to make sure everyone has a buddy to show them how to access the intranet and the basics around content participation. Having a CMS here will greatly reduce the ramp-up time needed to get everyone on board and sharing.

As you can see, by giving your employees the ability to understand and contribute to the company through a centralized workspace, you can increase efficiency, communication, and perhaps even boost morale. Your company’s transition into the cloud can not-only help the operations, but also create internal resources that add value on multiple levels.

Office 365 Presentation @Cloud Intelligence Conference

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Vorsite attended the Cloud Intelligence Conference in Bellevue on Friday, May 13, 2011. Our CEO, Aaron Nettles presented on Office 365 in room to approximately 90 people.

We combined the recording (apologies about the quality) and the slides from our Office 365 Overview presentation to form a simple webcast. We definitely had a lot of hard questions from the group, so there are more slides than there is conversation.  Enjoy the presentation and please feel free to contact Aaron Nettles directly if you have any questions about Office 365, Windows Intune or Windows Azure.

The webcast is approximately 45 minutes long.

Aaron Nettles, CEO Vorsite CorporationCall or email me if you have questions,
Aaron Nettles
anettles@vorsite.com
(206) 781-1797

Interoperability: Microsoft’s Standardization Is the Key to Cloud Integration

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So there you are at your business. Walk past the storage closet, past the lunchroom and toward the room with the whirring noises. Most likely in that sound is not being emitted because the company hot tub is housed in there — no, most likely those sounds originate from the fans blowing on servers. Not as much fun.

Those servers house all the data you need to operate your business. And if you are anything like other businesses, you have an overlying OS and some accompanying software, most likely made or distributed by Microsoft. The rest of the stuff on there is a mishmash of cool stuff made by small time developers that has served its purpose over the years, but has since been bought out…again, most likely by Microsoft.

This is not a bad thing. Having everything somewhat standardized is good and when it comes to transferring all of your data and operating your business in the cloud, it suddenly becomes great. How effective is software innovation by small time start-ups and R&D by multi-billion dollar behemoths if you can’t use it?

Microsoft cloud products such as Office 365, Azure and Intuit have a baseline of standardized exchange formats that all developers know — and that’s what “interoperability” is all about.

Operating in the Cloud

Interoperability – The ability to run different systems developed by other companies outside of your cloud provider through a similar exchange format. It’s probably happening right now on your servers wrapped in a nice big JAVA bow and you don’t even know it; but your IT guy does.

Infrastructure as a Service – Interoperability is incredibly important for businesses that require IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). If you’re thinking of moving to a new cloud service, check your current infrastructure and make note of any compatibility issues before you sign on the dotted line. It could be that other companies may not fully accommodate your infrastructure because they have a proprietary platform or exchange format.

Standardization – By staying with a Microsoft provider of cloud services, you make the transfer of data, code compatibility and IaaS easy and seamless. The crux of interoperability is having a shared language and is a sticking point for so many companies trying to carve a niche for themselves in the cloud.

Proprietary – One of the biggest obstacles businesses are going to run into in their transfer from static servers to the cloud is the burning need for giant corporations being stingy about what applications they “allow” their subscribers to use. That’s right, we said it, “allow.” Microsoft has been a big believer in more open data and a standardized code system so that the data exchange is simple and something everyone can use. This concept not only allows your business to seek 3rd party sources that best fit your company’s needs, but also allows your customers to interact with your systems even though they may use different OS.

Collaboration – Standardization as a community can move the entire industry forward. Craig Shank, General Manager of Interoperability & Standards at Microsoft, breaks collaboration down into three stages:

  1. Effective, transparent information sharing amongst companies, developers and customers.
  2. Collaborative focus in the standards body on solving practical, real-world problems.
  3. Vigorous competition that results as vendors seek to use innovation over and above the standard to win customers and gain market share.

Trust and Loyalty - Multiple standards generally broaden consumer choice, particularly when overlapping standards address different customer needs. Consumers play a critical role in deciding which standards survive and succeed based on the products they choose to buy. Staying up on technology and having access to innovation across standards is the key to thriving in any industry. In order to keep up with competition it is important to have access to everything available in the marketplace. Microsoft has a wide influence over the technological world and is working to open access to their platforms and services.

So, as you carry your 180th bucket of water to the soon-to-be-christened hot tub room, consider the advantages of interoperability and how Microsoft and its cloud services are the best equipped on the market to accommodate your business needs.