Why is SharePoint 2010 so widely used? I believe it is because it offers for the first time one technical solution that meets many business needs rather than just one.

If you want to improve knowledge sharing you will have many tools to consider. Again if you need to manage your documents you will have a wide choice of vendors. But if your business has more than one need or can see how solving one will create other requirements then a solution like SharePoint 2010 comes become more attractive to consider.

What if your organisation needs employees to use your intranet while away from their place of work? There are huge savings in office costs and increases in productivity if employees can use the intranet to help them with their work while they are mobile.

Source: intranet-pioneer.com Posted by markmorrell 1 day, 17 hours, 13 minutes ago

A corporate blogging tool can help employees share ideas and opinions. It’s not just used to comment upon internal communications. Blog posts can also help employees doing similar work or having a similar interest in different business units to save time and effort. Employees can find someone else’s views who they do not know to help them solve a problem or speed up a task.

And blogs are something employees are becoming more familiar with on the internet and expect to see on their intranet. For example in the UK many of the BBC reporters blog what they report on TV and radio. There are also many bloggers who post on subjects of interest to employees, whether work-related or of personal interest.

The main point for internal communicators to understand is blogs are established, accepted, and understood on the internet by the same people, employees, who are the audience within an organisation who receive news. So, I recommend a few points internal communicators consider:

Source: intranet-pioneer.com Posted by markmorrell 20 days, 17 hours, 31 minutes ago

Internal community managers are communicators, techies, business people and usually the life of the party. In fact, I like to refer to them and sometimes myself, as the ultimate party planner. These skilled folks have to arrange constant moving parts, talk to all of the "guests", make sure nothing is boiling over and still make the “party” a success. And believe me, managing groups of people through the intranet, online forums, blogs, etc., isn’t as easy as it sounds. In fact, it can be rather tough. So let’s jump right in. Here are the 5 tips that should make life a little easier...

Source: accdn.tl Posted by http://christopherswan.myopenid.com/ 30 days, 11 hours, 24 minutes ago

In my last post ‘Is your culture right for collaboration tools to improve internal communications?‘ I gave my view on the corporate environment needed to encourage internal communications professionals to welcome collaboration tools being used by employees. Internal communications need to realise they are not the sole people who can communicate using the intranet. Neither are their official channels the only route to communicate with other employees.

If you threw a stone into a pond it wouldn’t just be the size of the splash the stone made but the ripple effect that went as far as the edges of the pond. Instead of success being the perfect execution of the stone being thrown, it is also the number and size of the ripples and how far they spread across the pond.

Source: intranet-pioneer.com Posted by markmorrell 35 days, 12 hours, 30 minutes ago

The goal of any innovation, idea or continuous improvement is to ultimately increase profit (either through less costs or greater revenue).  The quicker an organisation (or a project within an organisation) can move from an 'innovative' state to an 'operational' state, the quicker an organisation can begin to reap the benefits. This article looks at how the intranet can help with this process.

Source: cibasolutions.typepad.com Posted by roowright 42 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes ago

How do we do social? In our wiki? In the document management system? …or do we just buy Chatter/Yammer/SocialCast? These questions are being asked in many organisations – my own included – and the answer is not always easy. Truth is we do social where it makes sense. It’s not about the tool, it’s about the context.

Source: connaxions.wordpress.com Posted by http://connaxions.wordpress.com/ 48 days, 13 hours, 24 minutes ago

Intranets have developed over recent years from mainly being a channel for a few people to publish news to becoming places where any employee can collaborate and share knowledge with other employees. I find it ironic that it is internal communications who are hesitant, even resistant, to embrace these changes. Ironic because many intranet teams are located within internal communications. Doubly ironic as it is normally intranet teams who are involved with how collaboration tools are used.

Is this scenario something you are familiar with in your own organisation?

Source: intranet-pioneer.com Posted by markmorrell 49 days, 17 hours, 1 minute ago

I have written before about career paths and future job opportunities for intranet practitioners. I don’t believe the only option is to become intranet consultants like I chose to do after leaving as BT’s intranet manager. If you want to move to another organisation then IntraTeam’s job vacancies in LinkedIn is a good place to start looking.

This post is about career development and progression within your own organisation. It’s about taking advantage by the creation of the digital workplace to extend your experience and skills into wider and more strategic areas of your business. I also owe this post to a certain intranet professional (yes, you know who you are!) who I promised this to sometime ago.....

Source: intranet-pioneer.com Posted by markmorrell 57 days, 17 hours, 49 minutes ago

Thank you to everyone who read my last post ‘What is a digital workplace?‘ and contributed to a great discussion helping to define it. Staying with the digital workplace theme I want to show you the views given in my workshop at IntraTeam 2012 event ‘How to build the right governance model for the digital workplace‘ which produced some great responses.

The workshop covered four areas needed for the right level of governance: Ownership, Consistency, Standards, and Integrity.

Read about the outcome and add your views to the discussion.....

Source: intranet-pioneer.com Posted by markmorrell 64 days, 17 hours, 1 minute ago

I will be at the IntraTeam 2012 conference in Copenhagen this week presenting on 5 ‘Must Have’ Principles for a Great Digital Workplace and running a workshop on How to Build the Right Governance Model for the Digital Workplace. For Twitter users follow #IEC12.

The digital workplace is a phrase that I have written about before and is becoming more frequently used for intranets that are developing beyond being a traditional communications tool.

Find out how five principles can help you to work anywhere, anytime, using any device in a digital workplace, how to use my experience to help you and how to contact me for further help.

Source: intranet-pioneer.com Posted by markmorrell 85 days, 16 hours, 17 minutes ago