Connected Knowledge

Communication, collaboration and transparency are often trumpeted as core values of the “progressive enterprise”. The rise of the corporate intranet and the increasing sophistication of many workplace-web environments is a good indication that we may be making progress toward actually realizing these values. Many executives seem to finally understand that enabling their staff to find and share information is key to an efficient and productive workplace. Over the past few years, budget and staffing levels have increased an average of 27% in organizations with vibrant intranets.  According to the Neilson Norman Group, the average size of a dedicated intranet team for a mid-sized organization with a highly functional intranet is now 14 people.  The companies making these investments have realized enormous ROI both in terms of productivity and employee satisfaction.

Unfortunately, the economic upheavals of the past two years have derailed much of this progress. I recently conducted a survey of the employees of a large organization that defunded support for their intranet as a result of the economic crisis.  This was an illuminating snapshot of corporate priorities and its consequences.  While the organization felt it could not justify expenditures on its internal web, it increased funding of its outward facing web. As a result, they have made dramatic progress on improving the usability of the web for their customers while their workplace-web has degenerated to the point of being unusable.

Out of 508 people only 3 said they could find

what they need on the corporate intranet.

Of the 508 people who responded to my survey, three said they could always find what they needed on the company intranet.  That’s not 3%. That is three people.  26% of respondents said that they have given up on looking for information on their intranet or only use it as a last resort.  An additional 20% said they rarely or never find what they need.  When a user is able to find relevant information among the 88,000 pages of content, it generally proved to be out-of-date, conflicting with other information on the intranet or just flat out wrong.  One of the main causes of this is the difficulty users have in publishing information.  27% of respondents claimed that their departments are unable to add or edit content on the intranet.  This proved to be more than just an annoyance.  Because this organization had placed its emphasis on its outward facing web, including deploying a new content management system that simplified publishing, sensitive information that belonged behind the firewall ended up being posted for all the world to see. 

This trend is likely to be self-reinforcing.  As with so many other companies, this organization was forced to make dramatic reductions in its workforce.  Among the first to go were its experienced webmasters.  This may have seemed to be a reasonable action since with the new content management system, advanced web skills were no longer required to maintain the company’s many websites.  Unfortunately, the intranet does not run on the new content management system.  As a result of the layoffs, there is no one left who knows how to publish internal content.  It seems inevitable that the intranet will continue to deteriorate.

Annual cost of time spent performing common tasks

in a company with 10,000 intranet users:

So what is the moral of this?  Is there an actual cost to poor intranet findability and functionality?  According to usability guru Jakob Nielsen there is.  And its big.  In a study of 27 Intranets, Nielson found that employees of a company with a poorly designed and supported intranet spend about 43 hours a year performing 18 common intranet tasks.  Assuming a labor cost of $30/hr this translates to $12.9 Million per year for a company with 10,000 intranet users.  That cost drops to $9.9 Million for a company with average usability and again to $7.5 Million for companies with a “good” intranet.  This amounts to a significant savings.  As Nielson puts it:

Thus, a company with poor intranet usability would save $3 million per year if it improved its intranet usability to an average level. And a company with average intranet usability would save $2.4 million per year if it improved its intranet to the usability level found in the best 25%.

Nielson goes on to point out that these numbers only estimate the productivity gains from the common intranet tasks they tested. In addition, “most companies have their own special, mission-critical intranet tasks that by definition can’t be tested across organizations, but which usually have much more impact on overall employee performance than do the common intranet tasks.” It would follow then, that most organizations would actually realize a larger return on their investment than demonstrated by the most common tasks.

The past couple of years have been difficult for most organizations and knee-jerk cost saving actions are understandable, but short-sighted.  While engaging customers and clients is essential to any organization, without supporting the information needs of staff, no one will be able to respond to the needs of those customers and clients.  Such fuzzy savings as productivity gains rarely win out over line-items cost reductions such as reducing headcount.  But when headcount has already been reduced, enabling the survivors to do their jobs more effectively through access to information is the only reasonable response.  Without adequate support of internal knowledge sharing environments, such as a well crafted and supported intranet, “communication, collaboration and transparency” are likely to slip into the waste bin of empty slogans.