Interesting Elsewhere: intranet launches, RFP process, content & BYOD

on September 7, 2012 at 12:00 pm

The four Intranetizens like to read articles, books and blog posts on a variety of topics. This week was no exception as the first week of September saw a flurry of great content.

We find this stuff so you don’t have to.

Here’s what caught our attention this week:

Handling a corporate crisis: Harvard Law School published a very clear and succinct post detailing the steps an organisation should take when handling a corporate crisis. Even if you are not involved in developing a corporate crisis plan for your company, it is important to build a relationship with your corporate comms team and encourage them to use the intranet. Together your teams could identify opportunities that would normally go unnoticed.
Airways NZ launches new intranet: In this refreshing post, we read about Airways NZ struggles to launch an intranet on SharePoint 2010. Not only did this project take three years, with one of those years spent doing the planning and scoping of the project, but when they received budget approval the Christchurch earthquake struck and affected not only their clients but colleagues as well. The experiences from the earthquake helped shape the remainder of the project, it is an honest and detailed account of the project’s success.
Journal from an intranet voyage: assembling the crew: Stephen Fishman shares how his organisation ‘assembled the crew’. From the title you may assume this meant the project team, but Stephen is actually talking about the RFP process for selecting a vendor. Many companies have to go through this long and complicated process and it is one that many people need insight on. (You can always read our post on the RFP process.)
Improving intranet content: Rebecca Rodgers of Step Two provides a very detailed post on how intranet managers can improve intranet content. Along with useful hints on how organisations can tackle this, Rebecca reminds us, ‘The challenge with intranet content is trying to fix everything at once, and therefore spreading the intranet team too thinly across the large and diverse intranet. Instead, focus effort on the highest value content, and ensure that this meets staff needs.’ Oh, how true!
The IC crowd launches: Over a year in the making, this week we saw the launch of The IC crowd, created by Rachel Miller, Jenni Wheller and our own Dana Leeson. There are lots of brilliant people around, specialising in and with experience of a variety of areas including change, social media, intranets, stakeholder relationships, branding, events, employee engagement, strategy, union relations; the list truly is never-ending. The IC crowd pulls this network together for the primary purpose to share knowledge.
Part two – A mental model for BYOD: Chris Tubb brings the BYOD debate back into the limelight with his recent post.
How-to guide for intranet content audits: Ephraim Freed of Thoughtfarmer posted a step-by-step guide, including examples of content inventory spreadsheets, on how to tackle those exhausting (or exhilarating depending on your view) content audits. If you are undertaking a content audit or know you should be but have avoided it thus far, take some time to read this post.
Why intranet managers should be ‘workplace anthropologists’: The role of the intranet manager is changing. As Linda Grover of Quintiles said, “It begins and it ends with the user experience.” This article highlights two organisation’s approach to using tools that have a purpose; tools to help employees do their work.
That big sliding banner? It’s rubbish: Carousels are a popular way of squeezing content into a homepage and pleasing your stakeholders. But James Royal-Lawson argues they’re a waste of time as they slow your site down and are almost totally ignored by users. A useful insight into a popular design feature, and one which is equally applicable to intranets as customer-facing websites.