At one time, in the late 90s, IBM had 10,000+ intranet sites. No, not pages, 10-THOUSAND intranet sites (representing millions of pages).
What’s a megalithic corporation to do with 10 grand rebel sites? Shut ‘em down.
Of course, they weren’t so crass to start hacking and slashing every site. Though by establishing a centralized platform, a set of enforceable policies, and a measure of political campaigning and time, IBM eventually rationalized more than 6,000 intranet sites. The campaign saved IBM $9-billion (BILLION!).
Most intranet owners cooperated willingly. And why wouldn’t they? If the corporation provides a central platform, an easy-to-use publishing tool, indexing from the central search engine and technical hosting, why wouldn’t renegade site owners jump at the opportunity to close their intranet site? They would; they did. Some of course were reluctant and a less subtle form of persuasion was needed in the end.
“Driving the consolidation of sites was difficult,” said IBM’s Liam Cleaver, a key manager of IBM’s intranet portal W3, in our recent webminar, Intranet World Tour with IBM. “We owned little and controlled less. “But we (the portal team) do own the URL w3.ibm.com and groups want to have that root in their URL. To be part of that they have to adhere to standards and we have the authority to shoot down sites. We don’t like to play cop but prefer carrot and stick approach that sells the value.”
Close the rebel site, migrate the content, relinquish the hassle, pocket the money.
Well, easier said then done. Believe me, by jove, it isn’t easy. It takes an open pit mine full of gumption, political fortitude and a double reinforced iron gut. If you’ve got brass kahunas to try it, the rewards can be high.
Here are the ingredients needed to attempt a site rationalization program:
- A forceful and tactful executive champion that is, with few exceptions, a C-level chief.
- A united and strong central steering committee or council that widely represents core business services and business units.
- A strong business case with anticipated and measured return on investment (dollars and cents sell business cases).
- A robust central intranet portal and supporting technology.
- An engaged and participatory IT department (no more excuses about understaffing and bigger priorities).
- A set of enforceable intranet standards and polices (development policy, editorial policy, etc.) that spell out the rules, roles and responsibilities of all.
- A central content management system and publishing tool that stores and indexes all content with standardized page and document templates.
- A decentralized content publishing model where content authors and owners write, publish and manage their own content via the central CMS while adhering to the aforementioned polices and standardized templates.
Start small and seek out friends for some easy wins. Rationalize a few sites. Talk about the program benefits and success for the content owners and the publishers. Sell, sell, sell. Once the carrot looses its shine and ceases being effective, then pull out the big stick.
Whatever you call it, rationalization, cooperation or adoption, the path to success will be fraught with politics. Intranets are political footballs and politics will almost always be an intranet manager’s top challenge, in most organizations. This is a natural outcome of the many divergent groups with different minds and ways of looking at the world forced to work together in a cooperative environment and a common platform. Communications sees the world far differently than IT. Marketing approaches business far differently than HR. So friction is natural. Hence the need for a strong champion, a cohesive steering committee, and an armful of polices (legislation) to support the process.
“I’ve had the opportunity to work closely with both developers and end-users during these system adoptions and have always noticed a subtle but very real threat to the outcome,” writes intranet journalist Paul Chin in his latest column, Lil’ Orphan Intranet: Adopting an Ownerless System. “It isn’t a technical threat, it’s a social threat. IT may feel some animosity, justified or not, toward renegade developers… Users, however, should never have to bear the brunt of this frustration.”
There’s the rub. The intranet must serve the audience: the users, your employees. Measured ROI and cash saved is important. Without the support and use by employees, however, that ROI will never be realized. The buck stops with the users who are tired of the frustrating experience that the intranet has become. A rationalization program will save money, but it will also save the sanity of frustrated users who are tired of complaining, “I can never find anything!”
