Something new…

I just wanted to write a post about the three hours it took me to teach a colleague how to publish videos on the intranet (and that only covers half of the work), and about that I’m looking forward to calculating a business case for the new solution we’ve been discussing for more then a year.

This morning, I got the amazing news: My project has been approved by the management board. We will build a new intranet. I started to work on the first proposals in November 2007  – so that were really really long discussions.

Now it’s signed; the main requirements we want to meet are:

• build a portal that’s accessible for everybody from every country we’re operating in
• introduce publication processes that talk with one voice to everybody (same content, same time, all audiences)
• introduce permission management and closed usergroups where necessary
• introduce group-personalisation to create different views on the content for different audiences
• enhance the corporate directory towards an enterprise network
• carefully introduce well planned blogs and microblogs with attractive authors
• provide wikis as collaboration-, documentation and knowledgemanagement tools (knowledgemanagement projects are running in parallel)
• use tags as additional navigation- and categorisation tools, introduce rss for easier and for flexible customization
• support and train employees especially with increasing their media literacy

Detailed planning will continue now, I will keep posting and I’m looking forward to comments and discussions.

ROI Dashboard – User Experience Indicator 2

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

We need to measure what we do – that’s what we agreed on in part 1. What do we need to measure? Let’s assume we’re introducing a small state of the art 2.zeroey employee-portal in a not not small company.

The company does already run an intranet, it’s almost ten years old. People are used to it, they always complain but there’s nothing special about it.

What can be improved?

• With the new solution, it’s easier to create content, so editors can work faster.
• They have a better flow in their work, so they make less mistakes.
• The new portal offers a better navigation, so people should find content easier.
• Tags are introduced, so that should also increase findability.
• Search is improved.
• Some basic content features have been introduced, so now it is possible to create slideshows, embed videos, audios and other media – that improves the user experience and saves the editors worktime.
• Basic statistics are part of the tool (tracking the backend and the frontend).
• Wiki functionalities allow fast editing for a bigger and not so skilled audience – that saves training, editor time and user time and reduces errors.
• Blog functionalities introduce new possibilities and enhance communication.
• RSS is used for feeds – in the portal, in blogs, wikis, the other way round; they optimize the use and reuse of content.
• Comments are introduced and are a simple feedback tool for users.
• Tags, clouds, categories in the fronted are just some next generation tools in the frontend, they enhance and train the employee’s media literacy.

These are just words… They have to be transformed into measurable numbers, the numbers have to be interpretable so that they relate to values, and finally the complete package has to be transformed somewhere into money.

The desired improvements have to be transformed into trackable metrics: What are the indicators, can they be found in the cms/portal?

The metrics need to be clustered into rememorable topics, and they need a visualisation: create charts, get sample data, build words and their stories.

Finally, an obvious connection between the indicators, their behaviour and the financial development of the project has to be made visible.

Visualization: Key Values based on easily trackable indicators.

But step by step.

• In the current project, four main values could be identified: Effiency, Satisfaction, Quality, Impact. Each of these values is based on several metrics, these metrics can be combined to several graphs that indicate trends and development.
• This leads to a balanced-scorecard-like environment, where small changes on a basic level are aggregated to effects on a visible level, on a level that can be communicated on a senior management level: You don’t have to say “We are having less usercomments than last month”, but you can say “Our portal is loosing on impact”; you don’t have to talk about painful cms editor-tools, but you can talk about efficience in the work of editors or about increasing or decreasing cost per content or cost per user.
• Changes on the value level finally have to be translated into financial dynamics: where do changes in the techy metrics in the underground make you loose money, where do they make you win some?

Relations and data are quite complex by now, but it is really important to keep the dynamic parts really simple and related to as little data sources as possible – preferrably only one: Everything that comes out of the portal can be measured in the portal; everything else should have to be defined only once.

This is what we will cover in the next part.

Part 1: ROI – social media metrics based on investments in the future

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Mash ups and the single page

It’s great to just casually collect information, bookmark something here and there, add a few tags. Highlight things in your Google Reader, add a note on Netvibes, store it on Secondbrain, read a few lines, open some more links and just continue.

That brings a lot of information, it really helps to create a big picture and it is a lot of work.

It actually meets many requirements we have in daily work (flexibility, global orientation, speed, always being ready for an alternative) and it fits to your working style if you are collecting requirements, shaping products, evaluating solution scenarios or doing other rather creative work.

Once you’re used to that style of working it gets really hard to forget the always growing always open network attitude and to focus on one idea on one piece of paper.

• First of all it is hard, because you have to exclude so many things. You can not touch on this perspective or that point of view – focus on one thread and try to make it understandable.

• The second reason why it is hard is because we also have to focus on one targetgroup. To whom are you talking, which of your many ideas and what part of that one idea is it that might be really interesting for them? You have to decide, you have to exclude the rest and you can not just start somewhere and wait for comments.

• A third source of trouble is: We have to get it done. We actually really have to finalize it. We can not start it, leave it open for discussion, add a few links and hope for people to use it as a starting point for their own thoughts. We are expected to tell a fully flavoured story, and we are expected to sell something. Most audience want to have a clear proposition and the end: what am I supposed to do now, what can I get.

A clear, compelling and competitive vision, neatly designed and written on one piece of paper – that’s what is expected in most senior management meetings.

If you can not deliver your idea in that shape – then it’s either you or your idea who is probably not worth listening to.

But are our products like that? Do we have a onedimensional linear backbone in our ideas that can be easily followed and tells everything?

Should we have that?

Is actually our reality still like that, is there anything we can describe in a distinct, not misunderstandable way?

And (here comes my alltime favourite question): Does it matter?

Does the grade of reality of what we describe as reality matter? Does it matter if everything is covered by what we say? And how do we want to know if the reallity we want to describe is also the reality that our counterpart is able and willing to understand?

We don’t know and we can’t control it; we probably only talk of the same thing when we say nothing at all. – Ok, that’s pretty philosophical.

I’m convinced that open, unclean, unfinished mashups describe way better what we are up to and what happens out there. But I’m also positive that it are the very simple stories that sell – they are the only thing you can buy; everything ellse is so undefined that you can not even attach a price tag to it.

So again: It does not matter. Don’t try to reduce complexity in your thoughts or in the way you look at things.

But find a single and simple storyline that tells a good story. That can be reused in many different ways. Tha can be understood by several audiences.

If it’s a really great story, it seems to address only a very limited part of your idea. But you can reuse it in every way you need and as often as you need it.

That’s economic, far more economic then one sheet of paper.

And it leaves enough space, spirit and energy for what you really want to care about.