Often organizations implement SharePoint for the advertised purpose. Because the IT folks understand its value they adopt; but the rest of the organization needs to understand HOW to implement it so that the tools serve the organization's people and free them of time to allow for creativity and innovation--ultimately improving productivity and employee satisfaction (benefit, employee happiness/retention).
If your SharePoint intranet is designed just as a website to tell visitors that "Kilroy was here!" (org charts, pictures of people, short descriptions of what each organization offers, and a repository where information from "those on high" are transmitting pearls of wisdom--you will continue to see a drop in page views!
I answered a question on a LinkedIn forum and decided my response was worth expanding a bit and sharing as a blog post. The individual on LinkedIn stated that he was the owner of his company's intranet which was based upon SharePoint. He noticed that the page views of the site kept dropping each month and wondered how he could increase page views.
A drop in page views is actually a symptom of a larger problem. Drop rate shows a lack of use/interest by the employees! Start with them! Interview individuals within each division or community of your organization and ask them what (if any) value do they see in the current design/content of the intranet. If they tell you that:
- it "doesn't really add any value;
- doesn't help me "do" my job;
- or help me share/learn information about other divisions within the organization
You will gain valuable insight from those interviews. The next step would be to put a quick tiger team together (one person from each sector of your company--maybe some of those people you interview!) for a day to brainstorm how to make your intranet a place people actually want to go to. An intranet using SharePoint as a foundation offers a lot of opportunity in automation through lists, libraries, workflows and audience targeting.
If you can get the members of that tiger team to commit to ownership of their web content, and allow them freedom (and training) to be in charge of "how do we become more efficient/productive?" they just might surprise you. The power of SharePoint is its ability to present sites that offer rich, interactive and dynamic content, managed by the process owners.
It all boils down to a very simple question. What are you trying to do with this resource? If your circumstances are similar to the LinkedIn individual, that should tell you that the employees aren't really sure what the purpose of your intranet is; and it may seem to them like the intranet is just something else that currently takes from their valuable time.
If you use SharePoint as an enabler in your organization to improve processes, streamline communications, and increase collaboration, you'll find your page views increase and the employees going to their tiger team reps and having conversations like:
"You know, there's this product/service we do every month. Currently it takes us seven steps to complete it (using Excel spreadsheet, or Word/PDF document), it has to be approved by at least three people (printed and hand carried, or individually emailed), the final output is reported and saved in our repository (shared drive), and emailed to all employees. It takes us 5 days from start to finish. Is there anything SharePoint can do to help us shrink this time hurdle and streamline this process?"
As with everything that involves IT and humans in the production of anything, ask yourself; "Is the IT serving the person, or is the person serving the IT?" If your observations point to the latter, its time to sit down and rethink your about your purpose and architect a solution that respects the person first, and puts the IT in a support role!
Saturday, August 10, 2013
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