James Robertson is Managing Director of Step Two Designs and author of Award Winning Mobile Intranets. The purpose of the Intranet Innovation Awards is to share the best new ideas (so the rest of us can steal them!). The 2012 winners presenting in today’s session are Paige Rhodes, Quality Manager, Weston Solutions; Craig Stoll, IT Senior Project Manager, Weston Solutions; and Dan Lewis, Principal Consultant, Mobility, The Judge Group.
[These are my notes from the KMWorld 2012 Conference. Since I’m publishing them as soon as possible after the end of a session, they may contain the occasional typographical or grammatical error. Please excuse those. To the extent I’ve made any editorial comments, I’ve shown those in brackets.]
NOTES:
- The New South Wales Department of Education. The innovation in their portal is a beautifully designed “Essentials” bar that the user can personalize by adding other essentials that you like. Further a user can recommend a specific essential to other people in their network. When they do, that essential pops up on the essentials bar of the people in their network. While usually only 5-10% of users personalize their portals, in the NSW Department of Education portal, a huge number of users have personalized their essentials bar.
- Enter LLC. Enter LLC is a retail company in Russia. They are focused on growing rapidly by helping people have fun. They have done this through gamification. Users can earn points. There are many ways of winning points: you can earn a small number of points by taking action within their Jive environment (e.g., posting, commenting), by recommending somone else for doing something that merits points. You can earn a large number of points by taking action in the physical world, particularly if you do something in a retail store. You can also earn extra points if recognized by a senior manager. The top point earners win significant prizes (e.g., international holidays).
- Scott Corp. Scott Corp is an Australian company that moves really dangerous substances (e.g., explosives). They have huge reporting obligations to the government. In fact, they used to spend one full week each month gathering and auditing these paper reports. Their new process is that the truck driver completes the same paper report they have always filled out. However, next they photocopy their reports using a multifunction device and use soft buttons on the copier to indicate the severity level. That report is then automatically added to a database in SharePoint, which then triggers some automated work flow appropriate to the severity level. Now, the auditors have reduced the time spent from one week to zero.
- Judge Consulting Group’s mLink. Judge is a privately owned professional services firm specializing in technology services. Rather than using a traditional CRM, they use a candidate tracking tool (they call EDGE) to keep track of their staff. For each potential staff member, they keep contact details, as many as three resumes, and tools that allow Judge personnel to document interactions with potential hires. Participation is recognized by posting photos of the top users on a leader board. Another functionality they provide is real time information on staff time and attendance. You can also see paystubs. (Pay fluctuates since it is a commission-driven business.) They also included mobile calculators to help personnel determine margins. They deliver this and more functionality via the mobile web and through their own app store.
- Weston Solutions. Weston Solutions is an integrator providing services in environmental solutions, specialty construction and green development. It is an employee-owned organization with a staff of 1,800 in more than 60 offices worldwide. They have a diverse workforce and client base. They had a collaborative culture, but needed an intranet capable of supporting collaboration. Their intranet is currently ranked #1 in the Worldwide Intranet Challenge. This is an indication of user support of the intranet. LessonTrack is the functionality they are discussing today. It is designed to collect and share lessons learned. The landing page allows users to subscribe to a lessons relating to a specific area of interest. Each lesson has links to the author (included a link via Lync so you can contact them directly), and the ability to add comments to the lesson. The data entry form has only three mandatory fields: The title of the lesson, the lesson itself (three sentences will suffice), and some way to connect the lesson to a project number or opportunity number. The system can then connect that lesson to other metadata automatically. Other fields are key words and a list of contributors. They have built this in SharePoint. Using that common platform, they can tie a lesson to a specific project tracker (which tracks the operational status and financial health of a project). Employees are expected to enter their lessons learned immediately after they learn the lesson. The key to this is that the data entry form can be invoked no matter where you are. In each system there is a button that the user can click to generate a data entry form at the moment they realize they have a lesson to share. Finally, they gathered up all the existing lessons learned and pre-populated the LessonTracker so that users could get value from the minute the tool was launched.
Above and Beyond KM 