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strategy Tag

31 Jul 2012

SharePoint 2013: What’s New for Intranet Sites

by Sam Marshall
in Communications, Intranets, SharePoint, Strategy, Technology
Comments

[frame]This post is part of a series that looks at what’s changed from an intranet manager perspective, in particular things employees will notice and improvements for site and content owners.SharePoint 2013 SeriesIs SharePoint 2013 worth waiting for? SharePoint 2013 for intranet sites (this post) SharePoint 2013 social features SharePoint 2013 for collaboration SharePoint 2013 digital workplace and mobile (forthcoming) SharePoint 2013 governance, analytics and search (forthcoming) SharePoint 2013 user experience (forthcoming)See our summary webinar...

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30 Jul 2012

Is SharePoint 2013 Worth Waiting For?

by Sam Marshall
in Digital Workplace, Intranets, SharePoint, Strategy, Technology
Comments

The new SharePoint has been released as a public preview, along with hopes by the Microsoft team of “leapfrogging expectations” (see the launch blog post). Is it worth holding out for the full release? Do the new features make it compelling to those planning a social intranet?[frame]This post is the first of a series that looks at what’s changed from an intranet manager perspective, in particular...

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20 Jun 2012

Five Principles for Managing Intranets in the Digital Workplace

by Sam Marshall
in Digital Workplace, Governance, Intranets, Strategy
Comments

Intranets have always straddled multiple functions, but with the growth of the digital workplace, balancing what is in and out of scope for an intranet is getting trickier. Often related initiatives such as SharePoint, Yammer, mobile access or BYOD risk confusing employees, but are not necessarily within the remit of the intranet manager to set their strategy. Here we present five guiding principles for that balancing act: 1. Don't Plan Your...

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01 Mar 2012

Mobile and Social Intranets – IntraTeam 2012 Day 3

by Sam Marshall
in Adoption, Communications, Digital Workplace, Intranets
Comments

Day 3 from the IntraTeam ConferenceSee also: Day 1, Day 2  Sharon O'Dea - Mobile Intranet at UK Parliament Sharon (@sharonodea) wins my vote for the most entertaining session. She talked about the challenges of being an intranet manager in the unusual world of a near 1000-year old organisation. When she started there was an old intranet, but with elections coming and a new influx of younger, novice MPs, ...

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29 Feb 2012

IntraTeam Conference Day 2: What’s Happening in Intranets and the Digital Workplace

by Sam Marshall
in Adoption, Collaboration, Communications, Digital Workplace, Intranets, SharePoint, Strategy, Technology
Comments

This is part 2 of a day-by-day blog of Intrateam 2012See also: Day 1, Day 3 Tony Byrne - Latest Trends in Collaboration and Social Computing Within Larger Enterprises Tony (@TonyByrne) of the Real Story Group (RSG) began by saying: If you throw in blogs, wikis etc. at the organisation and people don't use them, it's not an adoption problem, it's a technology strategy problem; you haven't...

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04 Jan 2012

A Review of the 2011 in Intranets and the Digital Workplace

by Sam Marshall
in Adoption, Collaboration, Communications, Digital Workplace, Governance, Intranets, SharePoint, Strategy, Technology
Comments

Many people are boldly doing 2012 predictions, which is nice guesswork if you can get it. I’m going to stick to more certain ground and talk about the 10 things that stood out for me in 2011.1) Intranets remained stubbornly not dead. There seemed to be a rash of articles by people writing headlines “The Intranet is Dead” and then saying why it wasn’t. Unfortunately...

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28 Oct 2011

Should Intranet Managers Ever Listen to their Users?

by Sam Marshall
in Intranets, Strategy
Comments

Post-Steve Jobs, there's been much about how Apple innovates differently, creating demand that didn’t exist before . On the surface, the implication is paradoxical:Apple is famous for usability but doesn't listen to users.In a great blog post, Jane McConnell made a knowingly-provocative comment on how this relates to intranets:"User research is not necessarily the best way to take your intranet to the next level....

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21 Oct 2011

The Digital Workplace: Think Strategically, Act Tactically

by Sam Marshall
in Adoption, Digital Workplace, Intranets, Strategy
Comments

Managing the digital workplace brings some tough challenges and calls for a mixture of clear strategic thinking, combined with pragmatism about how employees respond to the changes you envisage.  Most knowledge work does not happen within processes but is more free-form and people-focussed. The appeal of social tools in this context is that they are better adapted to this kind of work than enterprise workflow...

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24 Aug 2011

Intranet Strategy Needs Leaders Not Managers

by Sam Marshall
in Adoption, Intranets, SharePoint, Strategy
Comments

When I run workshops on intranets, I sometimes put down cards on the floor labelled “HR”, “IT”, “Communications” etc. and ask people to stand on the card that reflects who sponsors their intranet. Typically there are clusters around Communications and IT, one on “Knowledge Management” and a few people that end up playing Twister trying to straddle multiple cards. Others merely sigh and shuffle over...

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04 Aug 2011

Collaborating or Communicating?

by Sam Marshall
in Collaboration, Communications, Governance, Intranets, SharePoint
Comments

One of the questions I increasingly encounter with intranet governance is when to use team sites (collaboration areas) and when to use publishing sites (‘intranet’ pages). It's important to be clear about when somethign is still work-in-progress and you want people to make changes (collaboration), and when it is a product that you are disseminating (communication).A variant is when to put content on a department...

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