Building Belief with w3:the IBM Intranet

Karen Lilla, Director of Employee Engagement, IBM

We are a global technology and innovation company headquartered in Armonk, NY.

We are the largest technology employer in the world and employ 380,000 IBMers serving clients in 170 countries.

Generated 79.9 billion in revenue, 2016

160+ acquisitions since 2000

100K contractors

40% remote workers

179K mobile devices under management plus BYOD program

51% less than 5 years of service

We are a company of experts. We have colleagues with medical backgrounds, designers, developers, data scientists, cybersecurity specialists, meteorologists.

With 3,000 researchers and scientists in 12 global labs on six continents, the world is our laboratory.

6 Nobel Laureates, 10 US National Medals of Technology, 5 US National Medals of Science, 6 Turing Awards, and 10 Inductees in US Inventors Hall of Fame.

“It’s a simple equation: engaged employees drive the client experience, which drives business results.” –Ginni Rometty

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We are taking a systemic approach to IBMer engagement

380K IBMers60M Connections!

The IBMer — as the greatest source of influence at scale

Engaging IBMers to be advocates isn’t just about the intranet

+ We have 110 Agile studios globally and 165,000 IBMers trained in agile.

+ We use digital tools like WebEx, MURAL and Slack to drive innovation and collaboration.

+ We have contemporized nearly 7M square feet of agile and collaborative workspaces and focus on continuous renovation and modernization.

+ 600K views/month on home page

The information I need to do my job is outdated.

8Source: “Why Your Employees Hate Your Outdated Intranet”, Website Magazine

I can't find the information I need to do my job.

My intranet is a document dumping ground, where

documents go to die.

I can't reach out to people in my company who have the knowledge to help me do my job.

I have to reach out to my IT department to publish on our intranet.

Our intranet is too crowded.

Our intranet is down-right boring.

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Why employees hate your intranet

So why have an intranet?

These questions come up a lot when it comes to intranet planning…

▪ What information should be featured on the home page? How much news?

▪ Who should own the intranet?

▪ Should we have multiple intranets, one for IT, one for HR and one for Corporate Comms?

▪ How much should we invest in improving our intranet?

▪ Do we even need an intranet anymore?

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w3 Vision

To be an IBMer’s most trustedresource for finding the information and resources that they need to do their job so that they feel connected to IBM.

Meet w3: the IBM intranet

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Shortening the link between IBMers and their company

Evolution of the IBM Intranet (w3) home page

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version 1.0

Launch of w3.ibm.comCorporate news

and links

version 2.0

Standard design

and navigation

versions 3 & 4

Company directory,

Profiled news, Web tools,

Info Central

versions 5 & 6

Profile, Dynamic

Content, Taxonomy,

Integrated Search

Evolution of the IBM Intranet (w3) home page

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Version 7

Business Portals,

Personalization

Role Enablement

Version 8

Simplified Design

Cleaner Interface

Version 9

News and links

Some personalization

Widgets in masthead

The IBM Intranet today

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Tips

✓ Focus on user experience

✓ Go mobile, but not for everything

✓ Gain control of the content monster

✓ Embrace agile

✓ Focus on design

✓ Measure what matters

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Tip:Focus on user experience

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Why? User experience cannot be an afterthought

An IBM persona

Anna is a Distinguished Engineer

▪ Anna has little time to “read the news”

▪ Interruptions and unexpected tasks is the norm

▪ Resents poor tools, distractions due to how busy she is

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Devices

iPad Pro,

iPhone,

Mac

Tools

eMeeting, Telecon, Slack, Jira, Box,

Verse, w3 Intranet, w3 Connections,

Twitter, LinkedIn

Tip:Go mobile, but not for everything.

Mobile app strategy

▪ A “w3 Home” app has been considered several times

▪ Current strategy: very focused apps

– For example, rather than having a w3 Home app that can find people, provide Think Academy learning, connect to meetings, etc., instead provide focused apps for each.

– BluePages

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Tip:Gain control of the content monster

The content monster

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Forces driving an intranet

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Corporate Leadership“We know what

you should be doing”Read news, embrace our initiatives,

use our tools our way, win!

Role Leadership“We REALLY know what you

should be doing”Read news, embrace our initiatives,

use our tools our way, win!

Technical Constraints

End Users / Employees“Don't add to my work, make my work easier”

Just help me find what I need, and I'll win!

Technical Innovations

IBM Intranet (w3)Home Page

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Shifting from text to video

▪ The human brain processes video 60,000 times faster than text

▪ Video is the fastest growing form of content. 80% of the world’s internet traffic by 2019

▪ Webpages with video attract 2-3 times more viewers and double the time of each visit

▪ Video accounts for over 50% of all mobile traffic

Videos on the IBM intranet

▪ YouTube-like portal used to manage and deliver video on-demand (VOD) content

▪ Streams both live & on-demand content to large internal audiences and balances network resources

4,000+ videos

© 2016 IBM Corporation Page 27

Use Cases

Conferences

Dept Communications Town Halls

User Generated Webinars

Internal Training Apps

© 2016 IBM Corporation Page 28

NETWORKING

SECURITY

ACCESSIBILITY

SCALE

Core Requirements

Tip:Embrace Agile

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Intuitive workflows, beautiful designs, elegant products…and shiny, happy users

Agile principles

▪ Begin with clarity about the outcome, and let it guide every step along the way

▪ Listen, iterate, learn and course correct rather than wait until it's perfect

▪ Encourage self-direction for teams to unleash innovation, instead of concentrating leadership in the hands of a select few

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Tip:Focus on design

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w3 visual design

▪ Modern, clean – whitespace design

▪ Efficient, flexible

▪ Accessible to our diverse population

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Tip:Measure what matters

Measuring what matters

▪ Observe usage trends– Video– Crisis communications

▪ Subjective measures: satisfaction and NPS (via survey)

▪ Measure efficiency: before/after comparisons of common task efficiency (time or clicks)

▪ A/B testing: comparing two versions of a feature to determine which performs better

▪ Diagnostic: finding specific problems to resolve

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Thank You