Mobile and frontline support in intranets and EXPs 

In our latest Intranets and Employee Experience Platforms report we evaluated leading digital products against eight scenarios. The final of these real-world business scenarios is ‘Mobile and frontline support’. 

What we explored 

People often need to access information or check updates away from their desk (or have a role that is entirely deskless). We asked vendors to show us how their product made it easy to deliver an engaging experience on devices such as mobiles, tablets and on shared screens. We wanted to see: 

• What solutions were offered to help businesses enrol users onto the mobile version of the site. 

• The ease of use and whether the experience mirrors a consumer app.  

• What features were present on the mobile experience to support the needs of frontline workers. 

• How easily admins could control the content and layout of the app. 

Note that we don’t dictate a long list of specific features, but instead consider common employee needs. We then ask the vendors to demonstrate how they would address the scenario in whatever way they see as the best approach.  

What we found 

We’ve broadly seen four approaches to this scenario, which stems from the overall approach the vendors are taking with their products. The approaches are: social sites, communications platforms, modern intranets, and mobile-first products. Organisations should therefore consider what experience they want to provide for employees across device types before making any buying decisions. 

Social sites and communication platforms typically focus on community content and / or internal communication needs. Often there is a parity of experience across device types because products take an overall simpler approach to features, for example navigation doesn’t tend to have multiple menu layers. An example here is ahead, where features particularly suit a mobile environment and so the experience is strong. 

Employees engage with each other through ahead’s ‘Communities’ feature, which benefits from the product’s excellent usability on mobile.

Modern intranets typically serve the needs of a classic intranet – document / policy storage and presentation, top-down communications, a good search, engagement tools, and a variety of other features that vary between products. We find that many of these products lift and shift their platform into an app environment, which can be overly comprehensive for frontline or other mobile users. Some allow admins to control what mobile audiences see and simplify the experience. Interact is a good example here, where admins have a great deal of control over both desktop and mobile environments. 

This year we’ve introduced mobile-first products into the range of platforms we’ve reviewed, many of which are employee mobile apps that enable frontline workers to do what they really need to from one place. These products are very simple on desktop, but this translates into an excellent mobile experience as this is the focus for the vendor. These vendors typically understand frontline and other mobile audiences very well, so the all-round experience is positive. Blink is an excellent example here, offering services beyond just a product to serve frontline needs well overall. 

How SharePoint and Viva fared in this scenario 

The browser-based experience for SharePoint generally works well. The SharePoint and Teams mobile apps are clean and snappy to use, but neither feels like an ‘intranet in your pocket’. The Teams app, when Viva Connections is enabled, does show an icon for your intranet, but it opens onto a dashboard view rather than news. Teams is marketed as a frontline solution, particularly as a mobile app, and there are some features to support this approach. 

Overall, this is how the products scored in this scenario: