By now, the fact that an intranet has the power to offer tremendous competitive advantage to your organization is probably crystal clear. Employees who have access to the information they need, when they need it-along with the ability to interact with other employees-find their productivity enhanced, their ability to innovate improved, and their morale boosted. But so far, we have looked mostly at applications of an intranet that relate to specific functions. We have seen, for instance, how employees from across the organization can enroll in their benefit program online. Another example is that sales
sales staff can count on one another to generate information to help finalize a sale. Again, the focus is on one function: sales. An intranet, however, also enables employees to engage in cross-functional activities, which engage many employees in efforts that serve multiple purposes.
The fact that an intranet offers easy retrieval, use, and management of complex information, along with the use of a multitude of software applications, makes it possible to configure an internal Web and its connections to databases and helper applications in order to manage the specific work efforts. An intranet is particularly well-suited to managing the efforts of project teams-which often cross functional boundaries-and the flow of work within a team and among different teams.
A project team is usually a team that exists within a single department: The engineering department, for instance, develops a new process for manufacturing a particular product. But a project is not limited to intra-departmental activities. Consider a product launch, which involves the product development team, Marketing Communications, Sales, and Retail Merchandising, among others that may be introduced to the process on an as-needed basis.
Larger projects involve a number of teams that need to work in concert in order for the project to come to fruition. Some businesses, for example, practice something called "concurrent engineering," in which various teams work together to avoid the "toss-it-over-the-wall" syndrome. That's the syndrome in which one department does its work, tosses it over the wall to the next department which views the work of the previous department, discovers a problem, then tosses it back. This process contributes to the long lead-times in many project schedules. I have seen this syndrome at work in many organizations. The designers develop a product, for which the engineers then develop a process for manufacturing. The cost engineers, though, recognize that the price for the product based on that manufacturing process will be too high, and toss it back to the manufacturing engineers to lower the cost of production. The manufacturing engineers toss it back to the designers, and so forth. Concurrent engineering ensures that these groups are aware of one another's work, their requirements, and their processes, so the work goes on concurrently, rather than back and forth between teams in a linear fashion.
Through your intranet, you can take advantage of the various applications and databases associated with the system to control and coordinate the primary business procedures associated with any project or process. This advantage crosses many organizational boundaries: geographic, departmental, and functional. Organizations that have been hamstrung for years by the inability to maintain control over collaborative efforts can resolve that issue with an intranet.
A number of vendors are releasing suites designed to plug into intranets and give them the components required for collaboration. These suites allow a company simply to pay for the capability. Other organizations choose to invent the collaborative capabilities in-house. Still others integrate proprietary tools, such as Lotus Notes, in order to add collaborative functionality to an intranet. However you go about it, the idea remains the same: Provide employees with tools they can access through the common intranet interface that enables them to work together. That's a powerful ability that incorporates-but is separate from-the simple ability to communicate or to access information.
The best way to explore the intranet's workflow and process management advantage is to track a workflow effort through an intranet. We'll invent an employee-let's call her Peggy-who works in Cost Engineering. This department is responsible for reviewing the work done by designers and engineers to determine how much it will cost to produce an item and for how much the company can sell it. Peggy is part of a cross-functional team that is working to develop and launch a new product, which we'll call the SuperWidget. In the following sections, we'll follow some of the ways Peggy uses the intranet to collaborate with her colleagues on the SuperWidget team.
Peggy logs into the intranet's project section, using a login ID and password, since those not working on the project should not be able to manipulate documents or change the status on various project steps.
(I can hear what you're thinking. "Wait a minute. This is an intranet. It's an open system-information sharing, making information accessible, not knowing which employees might need what information when. What's with the restrictive stuff all of a sudden?" The answer is simple: You're using the intranet to facilitate an activity that, based on its nature, requires some degree of limited access. Project-team collaboration makes sense on the intranet because of the intranet's capabilities and because it allows project team members to use the same interface for their collaborative efforts that they use for other information, but it is a feature that is apart from the at-large communication/information element of the intranet.)
Logging in, she can review the tasks that she needs to complete, because they are displayed chronologically on an HTML table. For each task, she can review the status, the due date, and the specific process or project involved in the task.
Peggy notes that a task for which she is responsible is past due. She needs to confirm the price point for the SuperWidget that was established by the Marketing Department-the highest price at which the SuperWidget can be sold given current market conditions. Under "Process," she sees an exclamation point indicating that this step has not been completed because she has determined that the manufacturing process required to build the SuperWidget as designed will cost so much that to charge the Marketing Department's price will result in a loss for the company. This process has been stalled because Peggy has not been able to get information from the Engineering Department about a process that can accommodate the SuperWidget's design but save considerable costs on the manufacturing side.
Peggy wants to get a more detailed look at the step in the process that is stalled, so she clicks on the hyperlinked task. Here she gets a greater level of detail, including information about the individual who initiated the process, when the process began, its due date, and a description of the problem. A flowchart appears here as well-another part of the Livelink software suite-showing the various steps required to complete the task and highlighting exactly where in the process the task has run into trouble.
The process chart here includes an icon that shows a reconciliation between Cost Engineering and Marketing; it has a red circle around it, generated by the software on the server based on the fact that nobody has marked the task as complete yet the date for completion has passed-once it is so marked, the red circle will vanish. That's the hangup. The icon preceding it shows input from a variety of sources, including Engineering, Peggy's own cost analysis, and other data.
Peggy can see additional details, such as individuals responsible for various steps, steps that are waiting for other processes to be complete before they can be acted on, and so forth. The critical path and the various steps along the path were developed by members of the project team as part of the planning process, and loaded into the system.
Unsatisfied with the explanation Engineering has provided about how the manufacturing process can be handled less expensively, Peggy decides to search the company's archives. Using the intranet's search engine, customized to accommodate workflow management, she enters a key-word query based on the phase on which the project is hung up- documents that address the manufacturing process in question. The results include a document about the manufacturing process and how it was applied to a project several years earlier.
Linking to Documents and People Peggy clicks on the document link, which provides her with the document that was produced as a report to a manufacturing executive on the partial success of the manufacturing process. The author of the document, a process engineer in another part of the organization, includes a hyperlink that allows Peggy to send e-mail to him. Since he works in Italy, and Peggy is on the North American West Coast, e-mail makes more sense than a phone call. She poses a few questions to him, and logs off.
The next day, answers are waiting in Peggy's e-mail in-box. The engineer's e-mail indicates that many of the successful elements of the Italian effort can be applied to the SuperWidget, but a key element of the plan to reduce manufacturing costs simply won't work. Using that information, Peggy is able to revise her cost estimate. It's still higher than the Marketing Department's price point, though.
Knowing what she knows, Peggy logs into the project home page, where she has access to a list of members and their responsibilities, a master task list, documents produced for the project, and a Web-based discussion group. Peggy jumps into the discussion group and opens a topic on the pricing issue. She conveys the information she obtained from her Italian colleague and notes the new cost based on her latest round of number-crunching.
Over the next two days, the engineers are able to review the documents Peggy found and ask additional questions of the Italian engineer. They ultimately agree that Peggy's numbers seem correct. The Marketing representative reiterates his research about the highest price the market will support, so the design engineers give in and eliminate a feature from the SuperWidget, conceding that the remaining features still make it a product that is far superior to anything the competition has developed.
Peggy's new analysis indicates the actual amount the company can charge will accommodate the Marketing Department's price point. She visits her list of tasks and launches the task form, and updates the form to indicate that the analysis is done and the price point has been met. (Earlier notations highlight the disparity between the cost analysis and the target price point.) This particular task appears as completed on the master task list, and the flow chart is automatically updated. The task, however, vanishes from Peggy's personal list of tasks, since this is one task she no longer has to accomplish.
The spreadsheet that Peggy has been using to crunch her numbers is among the documents that are available via hyperlink from the project team's home page. Any member of the team can view the spreadsheet. They are in Microsoft Excel format, so clicking on the hyperlink launches Excel within the Web browser. Another team member had an idea and entered some numbers on the spreadsheet. Peggy knows the document has been checked out and revised, because a revision number is attached to the spreadsheet. She is able to access the document directly from the Web, launching a version of Excel on her desktop that appears within her Web browser, and add her new numbers to the latest version; however, she would rather update her original spreadsheet. She launches it based on its version number (or other information the company can decide to attach to it). While Peggy has the document "checked out," nobody else can access it. When she finishes, she can note that this is a final document, lock the information in place, and make it accessible for viewing only; she is able to do this by setting the level of permission required to revise the document.
Not too long ago, the notion of developing systems on a Web-based intranet that can accomplish the preceding scenario would have seemed impossible; one of the arguments in favor of more established groupware products was that they could accomplish these tasks while intranets could not.
One of the truths about an intranet, though, is that it is spanking brand-new, and the vast majority of the developments that will drive the intranet are yet to come. This particular scenario became possible only recently; the first suite to achieve this kind of collaboration is the OpenText Livelink Intranet, a demonstration of which is available at http://www.opentext.com/livelink.
That does not mean, however, that groupware solutions should be ignored for collaboration purposes, particularly if the organization already has invested in a groupware infrastructure. As we will discuss in Chapter 13, intranets and proprietary groupware programs are not mutually exclusive.
Throughout this book, there has been considerable discussion about discussion groups, whether Web-based or using a USENET server system. These discussion areas by themselves are valuable tools for the organization, but can be enhanced to become cross-functional tools that can be used by all employees, rather than just those who have a specific interest in the topic at hand.
National Semiconductor, Xerox, and other companies have established such access to archived discussion group information in areas called "Communities of Practice." These open-access sections of the intranet allow individuals to find information related to issues or topics pertinent to their needs based on previous contributions to the regular discussion areas.
To get a sense of how Communities of Practice work, we'll walk through the process of using the feature of National Semiconductor's intranet. (Currently, you can see this demonstration on the intranet section of Netscape's home page at http://home.netscape.com).
At National Semiconductor, the Communities of Practice were inaugurated for the company's engineers-of which there are many different types. Using the Communities of Practice, the engineers are able to work through the walls that normally divide the engineering groups. The communities themselves-which are actual groups that simply use technological tools as a means to accomplish much of their work-are composed of small groups of engineers who have particular expertise in a core technology. The CoP members share information in order to overcome obstacles and solve problems. The value of these communities, though is the access other engineers have to their work. Of course, the members of the PLL CoP (or any other such community) do not necessarily represent a single department. They could come from completely different divisions. What they have in common is their particular area of expertise, regardless of the type of product or stage of the process to which it is applied.
An engineer's journey into the CoPs (as they're called at National Semiconductor) begins at the Technology and Engineering Support Center, where one of the choices is Communities of Practice. (Other options include Patent Watch, Product Champion, Manufacturing Information, Technology Milestones, Design Tools, and Product Catalogs.)
As described on Netscape's demo, an engineer charged with designing a new product knows that he will need to incorporate "phased-locked loop" design expertise into the product. In order to determine what expertise exists-or to solve a particular problem-the engineer checks into the Phased-Locked Loop (PLL) CoP from among the options available to him on the CoP home page.
Clicking on that hyperlink takes the engineer to the PLL home page. Here, the engineer can review the calendar of events for the members of the CoP, the archives of a library in which the team's presentations and papers are stored, links to related resources, member profiles, and the PLL newsgroup.
In the newsgroup, the engineer can scan through newsgroup postings to see how various problems and issues have been addressed. In the Netscape demo, the engineer is interested in something called "DC isolated VCOs" (don't ask me; I have no idea what it means). Based on a post to the newsgroup by a member of the PLL CoP, the engineer decides to contact the engineer who wrote the post.
The National Semiconductor model does not need to be the one you adopt (although it is an excellent model, and credit goes to the Palo Alto-based consulting firm Congruity for working with National Semiconductor to develop the company's Communities of Practice). To begin with, you do not need to limit your CoPs to any specific field (as National Semiconductor does with engineering). You can expand your CoPs to different kinds of disciplines, embracing any kind of expertise that other employees can take advantage of. The specific communities you develop will depend on your organization's business, business processes, specific needs, and areas of expertise.
Outside of the engineering and technical arenas, some possibilities for communities of practice might include the following:
In a company that requires aesthetic industrial design-such as a toy company, a consumer products company, or a packaging company-specific areas of expertise used in the design process can be offered in Communities of Practice. These might include the use of computers for design functions and artisan design capabilities (such as hand-carving).
Many organizations engage in a variety of forms of research, and the professionals who engage in research are often dispersed throughout the organization. Online research-ranging from the use of the Internet to an expertise with Lexis-Nexis-can reside anywhere from the Corporate Library to the Corporate Communications Department. Marketing research exists in the obvious place-the Marketing Research Department-but also in Marketing Communications (often known as MarCom in many organizations). Other employees can handle audits, others know how to conduct a content analysis. CoPs can be built around specific research expertise upon which others can call when they need to obtain information through the many research resources available to them.
Law firms were, interestingly, among the early adopters of intranet-like technology. For example, a California law firm established a proprietary Bulletin Board System (BBS) long before the Internet became a standard, acceptable means of network communication. Lawyers throughout California in the firm's various offices shared briefs and expertise. In some larger firms-along with other companies that rely heavily on the contributions of attorneys (including those who are subject to heavy regulation) can incorporate legal Communities of Practice. When I worked for Allergan, the ophthalmic pharmaceutical company, each of the four key divisions (optical, surgical, pharmaceutical, and skin care) had specialists who dealt with regulatory issues. A regulatory Community of Practice could offer its expertise throughout such an organization, just as a contract CoP, a litigation CoP, and other areas of legal expertise- drawn from throughout the organization-can serve as central repositories of knowledge and expertise available for the benefit of the entire organization.
Companies that are able to soundly beat the competition these days do it with speed. They respond more quickly to customer needs. They develop new products faster than their competition. They come up with answers and solutions before anybody else. It wasn't that long ago that people were talking about "quality" as the primary element in competitiveness, but the marketplace has moved beyond that. Quality is now just the price of admission; without quality, companies cannot even play the game. To win, they need to be fast. An intranet can give global companies looking to boost their response times a distinct advantage by providing for 24-hour development.
This concept brings to bear most of the elements of a total intranet- not just the Corporate Web. Included in the process are e-mail, FTP (file transfer), and newsgroups. (In case you're wondering, 24-hour development can, most definitely, be a part of the collaborative workflow system described above. That system, however, is far more robust than 24-hour development, which requires no special configuration, no special software, no special programming or suite purchases.)
Verifone, the company that makes credit card verification readers, has earned a reputation based on its 24-hour development capabilities, and other companies are beginning to follow suit. Let's look at a fictitious scenario to see how it might work:
A public relations specialist at corporate headquarters on the West Coast of the U.S. is preparing the text and other contents of a press kit to accompany a product launch. Wrapping up work at the end of the day, he realizes he still has two items that need to be completed. He transfers the work he has done so far to a public relations FTP directory, then e-mails his British counterpart on the team. The British public relations writer gets the message in the morning, as the American is settling into dinner. She reads the message to get up to speed on the key elements of the release on which her colleague was working, and transfers the work to date from the FTP directory to her own computer in order to get a sense of the tone and to make sure she does not repeat anything he has already said. While she is reading the work already completed, she makes a few edits and changes based on specific product knowledge she has, then hammers out the final two documents.
With the press kit's first draft completed by 5 p.m., the British employee is able to forward it for technical review. She transfers the file to a common FTP directory and e-mails a product engineer in Japan; could he review the documents for accuracy? Upon arriving at work, the Japanese engineer gets the message and downloads the file to his system. He is able to make modifications and recommendations, but he is stymied by one issue. He posts his question about the issue to the appropriate newsgroup, then forwards the package to the Legal Department in New York for legal review, noting that one issue remains outstanding.
The Legal Department reviews the documents by 3 p.m.-1 p.m. on the West Coast. As the U.S. public relations specialist returns from lunch, he finds the reviewed package waiting for him. A quick review of the attached documentation allows him to see:
The public relations representative checks into the newsgroup, where a half-dozen messages have been posted in response to the Japanese product engineer's query. Among the messages is the right answer, which he is able to incorporate into the press kit. Now, he forwards the package to the top marketing manager in each region responsible for the product launch for final comment. At the same time, he sends it to the British writer and the Japanese engineer so they can see the changes that have been made since they worked on it. Additionally, he asks that all comments be forwarded to the British writer, so she can incorporate them and forward them to New York for final legal approval.
Because the process was configured to take advantage of the time zones in which people are working, the work on the press kit never stopped. As a result, the kit was ready for distribution in far less time than if it had gone through a more traditional review process. Twenty-four-hour development works equally well with product development and any other process in which multiple players are involved. Verifone has gone so far as to set up its various operations in different time zones specifically to facilitate the 24-hour development process, noting that the speed with which the company is able to develop products is what has made it successful. It is not as important to Verifone that everybody work at a common headquarters as it is that they work in the most appropriate time zone for getting work done fast.
The entire intranet, of course, is about knowledge sharing. A specific section of an intranet dedicated to focused knowledge sharing, however, can be among the most powerful and advantageous elements of the intranet.
How is the knowledge-sharing segment of the intranet different than the kind of knowledge sharing that goes on as a matter of rote on the intranet at large? There are several features of knowledge sharing that are unique, but the most significant difference is in the level of contribution. On the intranet, information is posted by those who feel they have something to contribute. On the intranet's knowledge-sharing site, all employees are encouraged, cajoled, even forced to contribute. This makes such an endeavor a risky one, one which organizations should consider undertaking only if they are committed to significant culture change. If they are, though, a dedicated knowledge-sharing area can reap tremendous benefits.
The idea of the knowledge-sharing area is simple. The section- which also can be referred to as a forum-is divided into key areas based on the specific areas of the company that ultimately affect the customer. The individuals in the departments with expertise in those areas check in routinely looking for information requests from those who deal directly with the customer in order to assist them. Here's a scenario about how it might work:
The director of a global corporation's European operations puts out a call in the appropriate section of the knowledge forum. In two days, his team will be pitching its proposal to provide technical support to a major company; the contract could be worth millions. The director knows the competitors he is up against, and in a preliminary meeting with the prospect's lead representative, he learns that one of the key competitors-a much larger company-has claimed that the organization cannot accommodate real-time online updates to new technologies.
His message on the knowledge forum asks about the capability, since it has never arisen in his district before. In the four hours before he leaves his office at the end of the workday, he receives three replies. A product engineer in Eastern Europe explains how precisely this capability was implemented-with support from the U.S. headquarters, for one of that region's clients. Another message-this one from a district manager in the Middle East-offers a case history of how real-time updates were provided to meet a specific client's needs. The third, from a sales manager in France, offers his experience with the competitor, which seems to have exaggerated its own capabilities.
Most of the replies, though, come in while the district manager is sleeping. While his day is over, the day has begun for employees in other regions. Checking the knowledge forum, they find they, too, have experiences and ideas to offer. One Canadian customer service representative points the European manager to an online document, stored in the organization's Gopher system; it is the real-time update procedures guide for a major Canadian customer.
When he gets back to work, the European manager assembles his facts and is well-armed with information he needs to make a strong case to his customer. Additionally, the customer will no doubt be impressed at the global resources he was able to bring to bear on the issue.
As noted above, the Knowledge-Sharing Forum is vastly different from the rest of the intranet because it requires participation. The value of the Knowledge-Sharing Forum diminishes with every employee who does not take part. An organization never knows which employee is going to have the information another employee needs at any given time.
In many organizations, however, there are a large number of employees who continue to believe that the power of information comes from holding it closely. The intranet itself can break much of this cultural barrier down, but still does not mandate that every employee share what he or she knows; it's more of a voluntary system that slowly changes the culture to one of information pull instead of information push. The Knowledge-Sharing Forum, on the other hand, requires each employee's active effort to check the topics about which he or she has information and quickly respond to appeals for help.
There are a number of ways to drive this cultural change, and you should consider working with Organization Development (OD) specialists to help make these changes occur. OD professionals are trained in issues related to cultural change. If your organization does not employ its own OD experts (most larger organizations do), there are plenty of consultants who provide the service. Some of the tactics to use include:
These tactics pale, however, beside the most important method of all: Senior management visibility. If management believes the Knowledge-Sharing Forum is a vital tool, they will be active participants on it themselves. They will (if I can use a very tired business cliché) "walk the talk." Clearly, if the message from the top of the organization is that the Knowledge-Sharing Forum is important to them, it's a short step to the next conclusion: It had better be important to employees, as well.
Consider launching a Knowledge-Sharing Forum as its own entity, one that (like the collaborative work-team tools) is on the intranet but not necessarily of the intranet. It uses the intranet because it makes sense for employees to use a single common tool for all such communication and information sharing. But because it requires active participation and a regular routine, attitudes and perceptions about using it will be different.
Some of the elements of a Knowledge-Sharing Forum introduction can include:
A dedicated knowledge area also can lead to a re-definition of discussion groups that are maintained in other areas of the intranet. Your intranet may, for example, host a number of newsgroups designed as forums for an exchange of information similar to that for which the Knowledge-Sharing Forum was designed. These newsgroups may have emerged because some employees saw a need prior to the development of the forum, and created their own newsgroups to fulfill the need. However, newsgroups-like much of the rest of the intranet-are voluntary, enticing participation only from those who are interested in participating.
As the Knowledge-Sharing Forum takes root, these newsgroups become redundant. Worse, some employees may continue sharing their knowledge there, because it's what they have grown accustomed to. It could, then, be worthwhile to shift the emphasis of newsgroups to specific discussion topics and away from general give-and-take for more urgent information needs, suggesting that type of dialogue transition to the new forum.
Well, now; this seems like a multiple contradiction in terms. First off, the intranet is groupware; it's just not proprietary groupware because it uses open standards of the Internet and the TCP/IP family of protocols. And then there's the fact that the intranet has been touted as a means of replacing proprietary groupware. So where in the world does this idea of intranet-based groupware come in?
Okay; you got me. What I'm talking about isn't, in its purest sense, groupware. But e-mail me at shel@holtz.com with a better term and I'll make sure it's used in the next edition-and I'll even give you credit.
Intranet-based groupware, as I'm defining it, is applications developed to run on the intranet that duplicate what used to be unique to much of the proprietary, closed-system groupware products on the market today (notably Lotus Notes). As with the workgroup collaboration suites, some software developers have been quick to introduce these intranet-based groupware applications. Early out of the gate was a Scotts Valley, California-based company called Thuridion that introduced a product called CREW (which, incidentally, it calls "Groupware for the Internet"). You can find complete details on CREW at http://www.thuridion.com.
While Livelink Intranet and its competition focus on the management of tasks and projects, CREW and its ilk provide access to up-to-date information such as calendars, phone lists, and other data employees need on a day-to-day basis. Such products also could incorporate contact-management functionality.
Such groupware incorporates a variety of elements, specifically:
Several years ago, when I worked as director of Corporate Communications for Allergan, one of my regular duties was handling the company's global media relations efforts. To the uninitiated, media relations sounds a lot like crisis communications. It sounds like day-in and day-out handling of calls from reporters who are about to break unpleasant news about the company and trying to minimize the impact. In fact, the vast majority of calls I dealt with were requests for mundane information. How many employees do you have in your plant in Añasco, Puerto Rico? What are the approved indications for this or that product? Do you have any operations in Iraq?
Of course, it's good to get those calls; they serve as early warnings that the reporter is working on some sort of story that has something to do with the company's operations in Puerto Rico, the use of a particular product, or its presence in a controversial location. The problem was that it often took hours to get the right information. I first had to figure out whom to call. More often than not, I wound up leaving a voice-mail message, then waited to get the answer. The reporter, in the meantime, is almost always pushing a deadline, and it is my job as a media relations professional to help, not hinder the reporter's efforts to do his or her job.
An intranet could have solved my problem. What a tremendous advantage it would have been to tell the reporter, "Hang on a sec," log into the intranet, click to a section that contains company facts, and before the reporter can say, "Citizen Kane," provide him with an accurate answer. From there, I could casually query, "So, doing a story about U.S. business in nations that sponsor terrorism, are you? Let me explain our rationale for maintaining a brokered sales office there." (The rationale, in case you're interested, is that the people of the country shouldn't suffer from unavailability of medications; healthcare is not a political issue. But that's neither here nor there.)
Many employees have a need for such routine information that exists somewhere-it might as well be archived on the intranet so that it is accessible. The Minnesota Mining and Minerals organization-better known as 3M-has taken this concept to new heights, providing data generated as a matter of the routine course of business to whoever needs it. That ends up shaking out like this:
The company's economist prepares a report each quarter on world economic conditions as they relate to 3M's business; it covers each major geographic part of the world, along with reports on specific countries. Once the report is complete, it is converted into HTML and reduced to small chunks of information, then cross-referenced in a variety of ways.
The manager responsible for developing the budget for the company's Japanese operations is able to tap into the economist's report, which includes categories such as:
among others. The manager selects "Current Forecast," and examines the various topics available. These include the highlights of the economist's report to the executive committee. On one given quarter, these highlights might include such items as:
The Japanese manager is looking to support his particular budget requests, and an item titled "Hottest growth areas in the world" catches his eye. He clicks on it and finds the text of the economist's report, which covers GDP (Gross Domestic Product) of key parts of the world. The name of each geographic region is highlighted, so the manager selects "Asia-Pacific." This provides the manager with tables, charts, and other information about the economic conditions in Asia-Pacific in general and Japan in particular. Under "Japan," he finds data on consumer prices, industrial production, real fixed investment, merchandise exports, and a number of other items; they are categorized for easy access to the type of information for which he is looking. Under "Average percentage of change," he selects "Real GDP." The detailed chart on Japan's real Gross Domestic Product and the forecast into the future support the budget request, and the manager can copy information-including charts and graphs-directly into the budget report.
Not every company has global operations-or even an economist! But every organization has an inventory of information that can be of value to any employee at any time, for reasons that nobody can predict until the need for the information actually arises. In addition to economic forecasts (if your organization has them), some of the more common categories of information that can be stored and regularly updated on the intranet include the following:
No doubt, you and the rest of the intranet team will identify other categories of information that do not necessarily fit in a specific department's home page, yet could be of value to employees from any department. Based on my own experience, it would be worthwhile to involve the Media Relations staff in developing a preliminary list. As the need for more information becomes apparent-and as new information sources evolve-they can be added to the existing list.
Organizations are, among many other things, microcosms of society. As such, they tend to foster a variety of activities that are not directly related to the core businesses of the organization, but rather are designed to sustain the social fabric of the company. Some companies offer clubs to their employees built around sports; The Walt Disney Company, for example, has a backpacking club. At Levi Strauss, clubs exist to offer support to various categories of employees, such as ethnic minorities, and gays and lesbians. Many organizations have volunteer task forces to plan company events, such as holiday parties, Fourth of July picnics, Halloween parades, and activities for the children of employees. Other organizations encourage employee committees to form to recommend and implement sound environmental practices such as recycling programs. The common denominator for all of these group activities-and many others like them-is that they are volunteer tasks in which employees engage in addition to the jobs for which they were hired.
As a result, these groups tend to cross many organizational boundaries. Employees interested in ecological activities can come from any department and any geographic location. A support group for Asian employees, or women, or a Bible study group, has no restriction to any particular function, organizational effort, or specialty. Volunteer groups represent one of the most truly cross-functional activities in an organization.
The intranet can easily serve these groups, and broaden participation. Many committees are located in a central place-headquarters, usually-because they need to be able to meet but have no budgets to support travel. Budget limitations also restrict these groups from engaging in effective publicity. By establishing their own sites on the intranet, these organizations can pull employees to their sites by using the same kind of appeal that will bring employees to any other page, and prospective volunteers can participate through such means as a newsgroup, audio or video conference, or e-mail (or a combination of any resource that facilitates communication).
In addition to segments of the intranet dedicated to function- and department-specific information, organizations operate across boundaries. In fact, as we continue the move from an industrial economy to an information-based economy, companies that structure themselves based on a network configuration rather than a traditional hierarchical organization chart will find they can move faster, respond quicker, and be more nimble and flexible in the marketplace.
An intranet-a networked system-is the perfect complement to a network of people, enabling them to work together regardless of their geographic location or the differences in time zones. Much of what provides the intranet with this functionality will need to be created; that is, it is more complex than simple HTML programming. But the investment is worthwhile. The value may be difficult to quantify at first, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the economic advantage of completing a project in six weeks instead of six months, or responding to a customer request in three hours instead of three days.
Still, it would be imprudent to attempt to build all of the systems noted above-and even less economically sound to buy all of the suites available. This chapter was written to provide an overview of the capabilities, and to offer a glimpse at some of the development that has been undertaken to add power to an intranet.
Your strategic planning will help you determine what components you need to consider adding to your intranet. You may not require all the functionality of either a total collaboration process or a complete intranet groupware setup. You may find what your organization needs is a combination of the two. The rush among developers to create new intranet suites and applications will make those responsible for building intranets feel like the proverbial kid in the candy store. Resist the temptation to buy (or create), and develop instead only those elements of the intranet that will truly provide an advantage to your organization by solving existing problems, improving processes, or enabling the organization to undertake efforts that were never possible before.
Speaking of the temptation to apply nifty new technology, in Chapter 12 we will review the practical applications of some of the whiz-bang technology that is bringing the Web to life.