Intranets used to be completely static. There was no sort of interactions among employees. So you would go there now and then to see if there is any important company announcement or to search for a document you needed. Thing is that you would hardly ever find the information you were looking for.
Bottom line: Intranetadoption was really low and the company´s management wondered why people didn´t adopt it. You know why? Because it´s BORING. If you want people to use it you´ve got to make it interesting for them to come back over and over again. It´s like making a website. If it´s boring people won´t visit it again. Period. You´ve got to make a great first impact to hook them.
According to a Forrester research only 44% of corporate users can find the (internal) file they’re looking for compared to 86% of similar internet users.
Knowledge workers spend up to 30% of their working day looking for data says Butler Group.
And this is happening today, in 2012. Can you believe it?
The consumer world has moved much faster than the corporate world has. People are used to search for information on Google and find it in a matter of seconds. They are used to interact with friends, peers and family on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. If they have a question they go to Quora, Yahoo Answers or Answers.com and they get an accurate answer within seconds.
But that´s in their private lives. At the office the situation is quite different. It´s like you go back in time. And you notice it as soon as you sit in front of your desk and turn on your computer. Boom! Back to the 90´s.
So let´s say you have a question. You are a product manager and you want to know if the company has successfully launched product x in other countries.
So what do you do? You send a few emails to colleagues (usually people based in your same branch …because you already know them right?) asking if anybody knows how product x is doing in other countries. Guess what happens. Well, as expected they don´t know it either (how on earth would they know). So now, each one of them forwards your email to a few people they think might know the answer to your question. And the circle goes on and on. So by now 67 emails have been sent in the faint hope of finding someone who can give you the answer to your initial question: Do you know how product x sales are doing in other countries?
I think it´s ridiculous, it doesn´t make any sense and what´s worst…it makes your company loose money.
Why? Because your internal procedures are old fashion and extremely inefficient.
Now the good thing is that you are not the only one. Probably your competitors are in a very similar situation. Maybe not. Perhaps they are planning to implement an Enterprise 2.0 strategy to boost productivity or they already did. You never know.
The world has changed dramatically in the past 10 years. Some companies have noticed that and have implemented new, modern strategies to face this new scenario. By doing this they are putting themselves ahead of their competitors. They are being innovators. These early adapters will benefit tremendously of their competitors lack of vision.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
Charles Darwin
How fast (or slow) do you think companies are adapting to this new “social” scenario?
