Since October 2009 we have been rolling out Incentive on IBS as a part of their new internal communications strategy – named Colin (short for Collaborative Intranet).
Table of contents
Short backgrounder about IBS
They have been around since 1978 and are today the world leader in distribution resource management with subsidiaries in 22 countries with approximately 1100 employees. IBS is also listed on the Stock Exchange in Stockholm.
Centralized intranet, or?
It all began with the need of a centralized intranet. The reality showed that there was almost an intranet for each country creating silos. So their first idea was to try to centralize what they already had and then add social features.
Oskar Ahlberg Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications explains:
"We initially wanted to add collaboration to our existing intranet, but after listening to the principles of Enterprise 2.0 and especially what Incentive had to offer we decided that an intranet should really be completely turned upside down to be effective. So we scrapped the entire intranet and re-built it with Incentive"
This is brave. This is a leap in my opinion. I usually recommend extending the existing intranet with a social platform. But Oskar among others saw the window of opportunity to take this leap. So they did.
The plan
We had a lot of initial meetings discussing around the phenomenon Enterprise 2.0 and how that could fit IBS´ needs.
It was also a question of building the self-confidence to make the move, get all pieces in place. This was a work done by Oskar, Pia and Jill at the beginning and later on Maria joined – this is the core-team of Colin. They are the champs.
The launch
In November we gathered what we considered being the opinion builders and the people that had the immediate need for an efficient intranet.
Then we did what we always do – we did the wiki & blog dance. We invited them all regardless of geographical location by using Bambuser to live stream the launch.
We launched the principle, the tool - not the new intranet. That is a very important distinction.
Normally when launching a new intranet it’s full of information (structure), instead we launched an empty notebook waiting to be filled (emergence).
Why did we launch an empty notebook? We wanted the new intranet to be a tool for everyone, everyday. Not a tool for management to broadcast the latest news and guidelines. We treated the employees like visitors to a public web page – like stars! We wanted the pull effect – not the push. And it was important to not force anyone onto the intranet but rather attract individuals and later teams, groups, divisions...
Contributions, some diagrams.
We installed Incentive in late October, a couple of weeks before the official launch and we have extracted some data to see the progress.
First of all we can see that over four months the users have created 6500 wiki contributions, 24 new blogs and attached nearly 2500 files. To see the progress over time, I’ve created two diagrams – one showing contributions per month, the other showing the accumulated growth.
Here we see a huge “hockey stick effect” in November – right after the launch, as a lot of material from the old intranet was migrated over to Colin. Again (as in The Pizza & Beer case) we can see that the most popular feature is the wiki, in second place we see files and in third place we see comments.
Here we see the accumulated diagram for the same period of time. We see the growth, but it’s slowing down – and we’re yet to see if this is the normal state.
There are 943 profiles registered. A profile means that they have been visiting their new intranet but not necessarily contributed.
If we extract the contributors – there are 143 of them. So, 143 persons generating 6500 wiki contributions and uploading 2500 files in four months is quite impressive. They are the real champs – believing in the principle.
Bad news and where to dig in!
The bad news is that the contributors are only 15% of the total profile count. That is startling close to the figures we apply on public social communities (such as Wikipedia). We call it the 90-9-1 rule = 90% lurkers, 9% editors and 1% creators.
So if we compare 15% with 10% it’s too close – the figure for internal usage should be between 40%-60%.
Why only 40%-60% some of you might say? You will never get 100% contributors. If you stumble upon any report that says so, do send it to me. I’m convinced that hell will freeze before that happens, but that’s my humble opinion.
The reason for these figures - I think - is that this is on the verge. When we do a follow-up in another 6 months I think the figure will be higher. The new intranet is settling in, the champs are doing their job – attracting readers. Next thing is to get them to understand that they are a part of the experience.
Visitors
Looking at the visitor statistics using Google Analytics we can see that in February 2010 alone we had 7000 visits, 31000 page views from 19 countries spending in average 5 minutes of their time on their intranet.
16% of them used the search to locate information with a total of 2000 unique searches. The reason I’m highlighting the search is because a new behavior we stress is the search of content, not the navigation (hierarchy) of content.
In a successful Enterprise 2.0 roll-out there will be tons of information published making it nearly impossible to structure in a hierarchy. More importantly, any structure implemented will almost immediately be found to out of date as well as being ambiguous to users (should a Danish customer story be filed under Denmark, Customers or Marketing?).
Therefore it was important to adopt a search behavior early in the process. Thanks to Google, that is quite easy today.
The shining parts
Being listed on a Stock Exchange gives the use of Enterprise 2.0 an extra twist. You have to watch what you say. And the other way around – a lot of communication going out is targeted to the stock owners. This spells “mumbo-jumbo” for a lot of employees – so how do you explain that in a simple way? Another tricky challenge is how to bring the management closer to the “floor”.
Oskar has solved that by creating a blog named Blog-O. The blog is intended to spread information from Group Management and to “answer questions” raised by the stock market.
This sounds easy – but it’s not. You need to apply the correct tone - down to earth, informative but not patronizing, and so on. You also have to handle both bad and good news.
Oskar does this brilliant – I can’t give you any details – but for example he explains the latest published report in human, non-bureaucrat way.
He immediately receives feedback like “OK! Now I understand and I feel a-lot more positive”. He raises questions from Group Management urging everyone to get involved, their opinion is valued.
This is so right. Being proactive. They are making conversation instead of broadcasting – as commonly done in a traditional intranet.
Summed up
So – let’s try to sum this up in a couple of bullets;
- The key decisions
- Not making an existing intranet act social – use the window of opportunity and take the full advantage of Enterprise 2.0.
- Launching the principle – not the new intranet.
- The challenges
- Raise the percentage of contributors from 15% - this is commonly done with viral marketing, calling to interact and the oldest medicine in the world - endurance.
- The surprises
- The management approach through the Blog-O – a perfect way of creating a close relationship regardless of the title on your business card, their ear to the ground.
And the most positive conclusion is that a company listed on the stock exchange can adopt Enterprise 2.0 – believe me, I’ve heard a-lot of times that that is impossible. Well, it’s not.
The end
Feel free to comment me, contact me through Twitter or E-mail if you want to clarify anything in this case study – I’m happy to serve!
Regards,
Rickard