I recently spoke with Marc Jadoul, Marketing Director at Alcatel-Lucent and advocate for the company’s social intranet called ‘Engage’, about the benefits of a social platform – and how to reap them.

Knowledge workers in a high-tech company

Social intranets are especially relevant for organisations that rely heavily on knowledge workers, such as consulting firms and high-tech companies. In a previous blog post, I wrote about how a social intranet can unlock the tacit knowledge that sits in the brains of the employees. Alcatel-Lucent is a typical example of an organisation that is experiencing the benefits from going social:

• A workforce consisting mainly of highly skilled engineers and technical sales people
• A complex, multi-national organisation
• Active in a highly competitive market where innovation and speed of execution are key

According to Laurie Buczek of Intel, knowledge workers spend up to 30% of their working day looking for people and information. A waste of precious time and human resources that may be dramatically reduced by providing employees with appropriate communication tools, putting collaboration and knowledge sharing on the foreplan. This is exactly what Engage aims to do.

Knowledge is power, but community is strength

Alcatel-Lucent’s Jive-based platform is providing a user-friendly environment that empowers over 70,000 employees worldwide to connect and collaborate with each other, and to contribute to over 4,000 work and non-work related communities.

The screenshot below shows the home page of Engage (that can be further customised and personalised by each individual user). It illustrates the approach taken: a rich combination of various types of content, ranging from traditional news stories to blogs, group discussions, unanswered questions and tag clouds to help users find topics and communities of interest to them.

Alcatel-Lucent’s implementation focuses strongly on internal communities and the value that they bring. “It’s all about growing cross-organisational knowledge that we can apply in our day-to-day business” says Marc. “Communities will help to break down organisational silos, put people in touch with like-minded colleagues and provide the opportunity to learn and innovate.”

A light governance model, based on a code of conduct and the principle of self-regulation, has proven its value – only on very rare occasions does the community manager need to step in. It must be noted however that – although a light governance has proven to be the right path towards rapid and smooth adoption – a new collaboration model like the one empowered by Engage can only succeed in an open-minded organisation, in which people, teams and leadership are willing and motivated to transform.

Measuring real value

The hardest part of any social intranet project is to demonstrate the ROI. Earlier this year I wrote about the case of Omron and how their intranet delivers value to the business.

To understand the ROI of platforms such as Engage, it's important to understand the costs of conducting business without these tools, including the missed opportunities of not using them. At Alcatel-Lucent the approach has been to demonstrate success by collecting both quantitative and qualitative feedback from employees and business stakeholders. Some examples:

• “We saved 450 minutes/week in project status conference calls”
• “We got better answers to questions in 30 minutes instead of hours”
• “I have been working 11 years with this company now and because of Engage, I feel more connected with my colleagues now”

Sometimes even non-business related communities on Engage led to unexpected cost-savings. As an example, pictures taken by employees and shared in the community of interest on photography were reused in marketing materials, instead of paying for professional stock photos.

“Another KPI to take into account is the positive effect on company culture, corporate image and employee retention,” says Marc Jadoul. “Recent research by Alcatel-Lucent has shown that in highly successful companies management, IT and HR work together to equip workers with productivity tools that enable a ‘New Way of Working.’”

Intranet is a journey, not a destination

What’s the next challenge for the intranet of Alcatel-Lucent? More integration comes to mind: currently Engage co-exists with a traditional, managed intranet for official communication and with a SharePoint platform for team collaboration. This is a typical phase in the evolution of many organisations’ intranets and matches with Jane McConnell’s model for intranet maturity.

“Today there is only basic cross-linking between the 3 environments,” says Marc. “The next step on our journey is to create a more integrated digital workplace, where employees are presented with a single user experience.”

Want to learn more?

Would you like to see more examples of social intranets and hear the stories behind them – including often some tough ‘lessons learned’? Check out these opportunities:

• Learn from the best: Our next international conference for web and intranet professionals takes place in Philadelphia from 7 to 9 May 2013. Secure your ticket today!
• Share with the best: Join one of our many J. Boye intranet groups across Europe and North America, and share your intranet experience with your peers in other organizations.
• How does your intranet measure up? How strong are your social, collaboration and mobile intranet features? We'll tell you as part of our intranet benchmarking!

“Why can’t our intranet be more like Facebook?”
“Our intranet needs to be more social”
“We need to collaborate much more!”

If you are an intranet manager, you have probably heard these or similar questions and statements before – from either colleagues or management.

The perception of the existing intranet is rarely positive if you ask around most organisations. They are typically information heavy, difficult to navigate, not up-to-date and have failed to evolve much; they simply don’t live up to users’ expectations. So how do we move from the much maligned intranet 1.0 towards solutions that meet current user demands?

Not 5 minute changes

Many members in the J. Boye intranet manager groups feel they are trapped in a dark triangle of rising user expectations, cuts on internal communications budgets and demands from management around “getting more out of the intranet by way of among others knowledge sharing, collaboration and supporting business change”.

Some organisations have, however, chosen to face those challenges and made strides in terms of changing their intranets from the static, top-down intranet to a more social and collaborative environment for employees. One example is Scandinavian dairy giant Arla Foods who made their intranet social.

But these are not 5 minute changes. They are complex and often torturous journeys – not just in terms of adapting the technology, but in terms of getting the users onboard and understanding the functionalities and potential value of this new way of working.

Many intranet managers are holding (or being held!) back. Embarking on a process like this is daunting. Where do you start? Digital agencies and self proclaimed experts are busy telling everyone that social is the new black, but many intranet managers have also heard from peers that it is not simply a case of “build and they will come”; that simply adding a bunch of new social tools to the technology stack will do little but confuse users. So what should you do?

Is there a real business benefit?

We strongly advise our members to start by assessing whether any of this would be of any real business benefit to your particular organisation. Angela Ashenden, principal analyst at UK based MWD Advisors has conducted extensive work and research in this area and has compiled a number of useful considerations on how to assess, get started and dos & don’ts backed up by the firm’s ongoing research.

In the 4-stage free webinar “Empower your employees: 6 top tips for Social Intranet success”, she explores the emergence of social intranets, trends and tendencies, technology options, the vendor landscape and highlights a number of current best practices around aligning strategies, change management, adjusting ambitions, integration with existing platforms and other important considerations before you embark on “the social journey”. A good place to start if you are still trying to decide what to do – or if you are evaluating what you have already done. The webinar is accessible directly from the website - no need to register. MWD have also published a more in-depth report for those who want more.

More about the potential of more collaborative intranet solutions and potential pitfalls of going social:

Angela Ashenden will present on collaboration trends at the J. Boye conference in November on the collaboration track.

Recent blog post from J. Boye’s Guy van Leemput on social intranets.

For a sound reality check, I did a Q & A session with Martin Risgaard Rasmussen, a member of our community for web and intranet professionals. Martin works as intranet webmaster at Swedish-Danish dairy giant Arla. He has used Foursquare for a while and below he shares his interesting perspective on the application, which includes some fresh thinking on how it might impact on intranets.

Why are you using Foursquare at all?

Martin: I started using Foursquare out of curiosity and because I believe that there is a great potential in geo-social networks. I also really enjoy getting in at ground level when it comes to new technology. Of course there's the "big brother" issue, but I think that as long as you keep your wits about you, you should be OK.

Today, I mostly use Foursquare for venue tips. There is also an element of collecting badges, which makes it a bit more game-like, but certainly not as much as GoWalla or SCVNGR which have a much stronger game dimension. Connecting is not something I use Foursquare for. I could imagine that I would "hunt" for Foursquare special venue offers, but since they are not that common in Denmark, at least not yet, I haven't used it for that.

What is the primary value in using Foursquare for you professionally?

Martin: For businesses there is a tremendous potential for creating loyal customers. Obviously there's a WIIFM (What's in it for me) from the users, but if you e.g. own a coffee bar and offer free coffee to the mayor, you can get a race going. Even without a special I have seen several "Mayor-races" happen already.

Secondly, it allows you to work with tips - just remember that you need to have an extreme sense of authenticity and honesty. I like to find good tips, and I can even accept that these come from companies/venues on Foursquare - as long as they make sure that they add value and don't use it solely for traditional marketing messages.

As an employee what do you see as the value for the organization in using Foursquare?

Martin: I guess you can argue that Foursquare would allow companies to make it visible when e.g. sales people who spend time on the road, are in the office. Other than that I only see limited potential for organisations when it comes to "internal" Foursquare usage.

That said, I have a strong belief that location based services will become increasingly important to organsations. Today many already have personalised intranets based on your location. This is done through Active Directory groups or similar, but in a world where GPS is sneaking in everywhere it's not science fiction to think that one day you will have personalised access based on your GPS coordinates rather than which location AD group the IT Department thinks you belong to. Obviously that's not just around the corner, but we are getting there.

What do you see as the main challenges for Foursquare to become more useful for you?

Martin: Critical mass. With multiple competing platforms (Facebook Places, SCVNGR, GoWalla, Path, etc.) appearing, I think the big question is which one will gain the most traction. Foursquare is off to a good start, but it is a social service and without critical mass it will struggle.

A second challenge is the quality of data which again has an impact on the first challenge. People create everything on Foursquare which sometimes makes it hard to find the right place to check in. I don't care if someone thinks it's great to be mayor of the second lamp post on Elm street - I only want to check in to proper places and at the moment Foursquare does not seem to follow up on duplicates or outright spam.

How has your usage pattern changed over time?

Martin: At first I checked in everywhere - created venues everywhere - found friends - collected mayorships - collected badges. Now I have reached a level where all this is tapering off and now I use it for 3 main purposes

1) Getting nearby venue tips from others when visiting other cities
2) Defending/chasing selected mayorships
3) Checking if there are any friends nearby

...and much to my own surprise I have started chasing badges. In the beginning I thought of them as useless, but now the hunt is on

Do you expect to still use Foursquare in 12 months time or do you think you will be using another location-based service, eg. Facebook Places?

Martin: I am confident that I will be using Foursquare. After playing with Facebook Places on a recent trip to Berlin, I think that they are lacking a lot of the features that I know from Foursquare. That said, if Facebook makes a serious move and beefs up Places, it is likely that I make the move, since that's where my friends are, but that's hard to say at the moment.

Learn more

Visit About Foursquare, which is a very helpful site to learn more about Foursquare or browse relevant Wikipedia pages:

• Foursquare
• Social networking

Join our groups for web and intranet professionals and benefit from the insights of experienced online professionals whilst cutting out the time consuming digging and the awkward small-talk.

Good news: According to Google, Social Media as a search term has peaked in 2010

As with most other industry buzzwords, social media as a term covers numerous things. To some extent social media took over from "web 2.0" and is used to cover initiatives both inside and outside the organisation. Today, many popular brand sites have been closely integrated with social features, e.g. Facebook functionality. As an example, Coca Cola, the top brand in the world, has a staggering 12 million fans on Facebook.

Social media tools and vendors seem omnipresent and the marketplace is utterly confusing. This has led to a high social media project failure rate. There is still too much emphasis on tools in the industry and too many buyers buy social software solutions without thinking about how they are going to implement it and what it will take to make the organization mature enough to handle it sensibly. Really, whether you buy tool A from vendor B or tool B from vendor C, is in itself not going to give the enterprise a competitive advantage. In order to avoid failure, you need to prepare the project properly and spend time on increasing digital literacy among your colleagues.

Analysts and consultants have been following in the tailwind of the vendors, eager to analyse social media trends and create dedicated social media strategies. In my experience, even organisations with several employees dedicated to work on social media have ended up simply integrating social media into their overall digital strategy.

Even if the initial social media hype has peaked, it will leave a lasting impact on the working lives of online professionals. On October 7th, I've been invited to Utrecht, Netherlands to the MobileMojo event by Dutch web pioneer Erik Hartman to share a collection of social media best practices from our community. Hope to see you there!

• The changing role of the corporate website
• The impact of social media in the enterprise and how the attitude is maturing

Stephane Aknin, head of group e-communications at AXA, opened with a quote by Simon Mainwaring, which seemed to sum up a lot of what was discussed over the 2 days:

The online presence of a brand will increasingly become the sum of its social exchanges across the web and not the website that many currently call home.

The changing role of the corporate website and the impact of social media on the web more widely are in many ways linked. It is naturally not a simplistic case of social media taking over the roles and functions of the website; rather, corporations are gradually realizing that the way they have to act, comply and behave online is changing fundamentally because of social media. –At least the web professionals inside the organisations are! Jerome Colombe, head of Web governance at Alcatel-Lucent concluded that The 2.0 (r)evolution has “cracked the Web architecture lines we knew”. The godfather of Web analytics, Jim Sterne, who talked about how to actually measure the impact of social media, bluntly claimed that the impression of your company no longer derives from the corporate website.

After years of social media hype with rushed-through policy making and childish excitement in equal measures, it was great to listen to a discussion that finally appears to be maturing. Sensible questions were being asked and people were openly sharing their hard-learnt lessons. Some of the key points I scribbled down throughout the many presentations that brought up social media related issues were:

• Listen listen listen! It takes time to follow the many conversations that go on, but it is vitally important to dedicate that time.
• Respond to criticism if appropriate – and don't mull it over for days: do it quickly.
• Have social media guidelines, even if you don’t intend to actively participate on social media platforms; your employees need them.
• Do not attempt to remove critical; even defamatory comments and do not try to shut down “negativity groups / spaces” – you will immediately be branded a "controller" and it will always backfire, as more than one organisation told us. When you find yourself in a social media storm, “facts simply don’t matter”.
• Befriend someone influential in your legal department and get them to take a real interest in social media; one organisation told how they have made one of their senior lawyers responsible for social media; all initiatives and considered scenarios are run past this lawyer. Every organisation should have a social media lawyer who can take a pro- rather than a re-active approach.
• Don’t befriend customers, clients or stakeholders anywhere in the social media space; Maintain a professional distance whenever you represent your organisation.
• Social media monitoring: think of it more as an alert mechanism than an achievement indicator!

I have deliberately not credited all the speakers for their good advice as many of them were talking out of very recent painful and still highly sensitive experiences, but thank you to all contributors nevertheless – and thanks to Bowen Craggs for facilitating and moderating all this valuable no-nonsense knowledge sharing!

For more on the impact of social media on the enterprise and the deafening hype around it, check out Peter Kim's talk on the subject given at the recent J. Boye conference in Philadelphia.

What is happening in your organisation? Control or conversation?

Consumer organisations such as BMW, BT, Coca Cola, Red Bull, Virgin and WWF have invited their customers to participate in conversations and taken their usage of social media tools, such as blogs, Facebook, Twitter and wikis very far. They have, in effect, become what analysts now call “successful social businesses”.

Social media has undeniably become a dominant phenomenon everywhere; yet most intranet experts continue to discount it as simply a collection of interesting features and emerging technologies with little relevance. Social media is indeed much more. Notably, some progressive social businesses are going out of their way to facilitate culture change through increased employee participation using mature, “enterprise-friendly” technologies. Notable examples of this includes the world's largest pump manufacturer Grundfos, pharma giant Novo Nordisk and financial network operators SWIFT.

This is causing disruptive intranet changes, which are happening in government administration, large enterprise as well as NGO's. It would appear that social media is destined to have a huge impact on the work of intranet professionals. Here are just a few signs from existing “social businesses” indicating how your intranet will be affected:

• Collaboration has been an integrated part of the intranet for many organisations for years. With collaboration spaces increasingly being opened to external partners, collaboration might be becoming too important to be left with an intranet manager alone. Collaboration continues to be pushed, mainly through the demands of an increasingly dispersed workforce. Moreover, it is one of the few actual strengths of Microsoft SharePoint.
• Content: once considered a centrally controlled and approved information asset. The amount of online content is exploding in social businesses. When the majority of employees embark on creating and commenting on content it easily causes chaos and places new requirements on governance and monitoring.
• Intranet as a term has disappeared altogether in some organisations. Many successful social businesses effectively don’t even have a corporate intranet. In a social business this development goes far beyond a simple name change: It makes little sense to have a dedicated intranet team, when what you have is an increasingly scattered collection of social media that nobody refers to as the “intranet”. Some social businesses still have their “legacy” intranet around, but this is not something that new employees are told to worry about.
• IT departments remain responsible for the intranet in many organisations, but rarely so in social businesses. Social businesses tend to have tiny IT departments that are busy enough keeping the IT infrastructure (e.g. remaining servers, desktop apps) running. While once infamous for their obsession with security and lack of communication skills, in social businesses  the IT departments are softening their firm grip to allow experiments such as cloud computing (e.g. Google Apps) for business critical (traditional intranet) tasks.
• Management have, with few notable exceptions, been very hard to persuade about the importance of intranets. They take a different position in a social business. Their expectations are constantly increasing and they see internal communications and employee applications as a part of a much bigger picture. The intranet silo has gone and been replaced by a networked set of tools.
• Mobile has been hyped up for many years, but now it is happening at an extremely fast rate. When employees can put the office in their pockets, e.g. e-mail and Office, they also expect their killer applications to work when they are on the move. Facebook is very popular, in particular on mobiles, in social businesses.
• Technology, in terms of intranets has so far been plagued by inflexible content management systems or enterprise portals. With a byzantine user experience and long implementation times (think Interwoven, Microsoft SharePoint, Oracle Portal or SAP), social businesses have taken alternative approaches. Blogs and wikis may have lost some of their sexiness, but are being deployed massively, also beyond technology-happy IT users. Social businesses tend to find the right tool for the job and are not afraid to put more than one tool in place.

Learn more

• Become a group member: Social intranets is a regular theme in our many J. Boye groups across Europe and North America. Not yet a group member? Find out which one is right for you.
• How does your intranet measure up? Get an intranet benchmark!
• Join us at a J. Boye conference in 2012: Our next conference will take place in Philadelphia from 8 to 10 May 2012. There will be a full-day intranet conference track and another SharePoint conference track.