Intranets, SharePoint, and NewsGator: A Q &A Session with Rich Blank

NewsGator Social inSites (NG): There are varying definitions of what an intranet is and should be used for – can you give us your take?

Rich: Most people think of an intranet as a collection of websites all within the firewalls of an organization. And we often hear the word portal or dashboard, or some other corporate branded name. That thinking comes from the early web of 10+ years ago. We should be defining the intranet as a central place that is reflective of the organizational culture itself. It’s a place independent of time, borders, or geography where people can securely engage in conversations, manage activities, develop relationships, communicate a message, collaborate with each other, and find people and information that are relevant to them or their role in the organization. This “central place” should be thought of as a collection of communities (not websites). By definition, the word community is more engaging than just a website or portal.  

NG: Do you believe companies are effectively using intranets today? If not, why not?

Rich: In some cases yes and other cases no. Some organizations create pockets of goodness with intranets that reflect timely communications and relevant content. These same organizations tend to be ahead of the technology curve and investing in enterprise 2.0 capabilities. That doesn’t mean their organization is ready for change. Technology seems to be advancing faster than organizations can adapt.  While most organizations are fine with publishing content to an intranet and emailing each other, they generally fall short when it comes to using the intranet for collaboration beyond simple document sharing. As a result, many intranets have become unorganized places, overloaded with information that may or may not be relevant. This is largely because business leaders don’t necessarily view the intranet as a strategic asset that needs effective governance, change management, and IT focus on the evolving needs of the business.  

NG: Why are so many companies porting their intranets to SharePoint 2010?

Rich: It’s simple economics. Many organizations have home grown or legacy third party portals, enterprise content management (ECM), and collaboration systems that have incrementally progressed since the late 1990s. The cost of ownership is high and CIOs seem to be recognizing their organizations have too many separate repositories of information that don’t talk to each other. It’s also painful for end users who can’t find what they need or have to wait too long for IT to respond to their needs. Beyond costly management and maintenance, it’s hard to get qualified IT resources to troubleshoot, administer, or develop solutions.

SharePoint offers a broad set of capabilities with a tremendous partner eco-system that can provide resources and solutions at reasonable costs. Most organizations recognize they can save money, consolidate disparate ECM and collaboration platforms, leverage their scale and resource more efficiently, and improve the time to market and responsiveness of the capabilities and solutions they provide to the business.  I also think CIOs are seeing the benefits of investing in a technology eco-system, as SharePoint brings with it Exchange, Lynx (OCS), Office, etc.  It just makes economic sense.

NG: What should companies consider as they plan their migration to SharePoint?

Rich: Beyond the technical considerations of deploying SharePoint 2010 as a stable platform, organizations need to consider governance, adoption, and internal marketing around change - the need to view the intranet as a strategic asset. As knowledge workers, our day-to-day seems reactive at times and more like managed chaos…email overload, too many meetings, and a series of endless conference calls. The fact is we spend most of our days outside of structured business processes engaging in numerous business activities. You have to wonder why companies looking to increase productivity, efficiency, revenue, and/or innovation don’t view their intranets more strategically. Part of that is investing in better technology capabilities that a platform like SharePoint provides. However, it’s also about investing in change management of the organization to make the intranet a central place where communities of knowledge workers get their day-to-day work done.  

NG: How does NewsGator fit into a company’s social strategy for their intranet?

Rich: Anyone can create a strategy identifying the current and future state and it’s easy to say “we need to be more efficient, reduce time to market, be more social, and collaborate more easily.” And it all starts with a good social strategy and viewing the intranet as a strategic asset where day-to-day work gets done. However, execution, change, and project management are key, and having the right capabilities in place is vital. Those capabilities come in the form of SharePoint as the platform – the foundation on which solutions can be built to enable the entire organization. NewsGator enhances SharePoint’s collaborative capabilities and offers social features that make it a truly engaging experience for the user. In my experience, the more engaging a company’s intranet is the more engaging the organization is. And just imagine the efficiencies, analytics, and insights that can be gained as people, information, conversations, collaborative activities, and structured processes coming together in a single unified technology platform leveraging both NewsGator and SharePoint.

NG: What are some rules of thumb for re-imagining your intranet in effective way?

Rich: Think “community” and not “portal” or “website.”  

Make it social and reflective of the organizational culture: think how you can combine people, relationships, conversations, collaborative activities, and information all in one centralized place.  

And when it comes to actually building the intranet and related communities, focus on three core things:

• Information – What information to include, how to categorize it, what metadata/taxonomy, how much, what filtered views, how do you want to find the information later, where will the information live physically, what’s the visual structure of the intranet, etc.
• Security – Who owns the information, who should have access to it, who can edit it, who can read it, how can you use groups to define specific roles, etc.?
• UI/Navigation – Simple is better, use icons, create people-focused communities, make it interactive and social – not just informational and definitely not just a place to store documents. 

NG: Describe the best intranet you’ve ever seen, and the lesson you took away from it.

Rich: One of the better intranets I’ve seen is at Kraft Foods. Their entire intranet reflects their marketing approach around colors representing specific tastes. Likewise it is nicely and cleanly branded and even includes an aggregated view of blogs and discussions called “The Mix” which is prominently showcased throughout the intranet and demonstrates how the intranet can be used as a social platform. It very much reflects Kraft’s culture, marketing, products, and people and is all built on SharePoint and NewsGator of course.