An Intranet can do a lot for any organization. In fact, the potential for an intranet is limited only by the imaginations of the people in the organization who build, grow, and use it. From a broad perspective, though, everything an Intranet can do can be explained under two simple categories: The Intranet allows employees to use information technology they are using in their daily lives, and it provides all the benefits of any new technology.
This chapter examines each of these two purposes for an Intranet because it is critical that systems professionals develop a thorough understanding of what kinds of technology people are using and why people are using them. More to the point, systems that are implemented without this understanding are often doomed to failure.
Consider e-mail as an example. In most organizations, systems departments set up e-mail without the collaboration of the departments or the employees who will be using it. These e-mail systems function precisely as they are supposed to. That is, they send information intact from the sender's workstation to one or more receivers' workstations.
Still, many employees who have to use e-mail find it frustrating and annoying. They consider it, along with voice mail, a leading cause of information overload. Employees complain bitterly of overflowing in-boxes containing irrelevant messages. For any employee who travels on business, one of the worst parts of returning to the office is knowing that dozens of e-mail messages are waiting to be reviewed. True frustration sets in when only a small percentage of those e-mail messages is aimed directly at the employee. The rest are
For many employees, the solution to this information overload is simply to delete all messages, which means they might delete important messages along with the garbage. But it's easier than spending hours out of a work day to separate the wheat from the chaff.
In one organization I know, this situation was resolved not by
the Systems Department that implemented the e-mail system, but
by the Employee Communications Department, which existed prior
to the implementation of e-mail but was not involved in the deployment
of e-mail throughout the company. Employee Communications established
a policy: All e-mail messages destined for distribution to all
employees must be routed through the Employee Communications Department.
Employee Communications does not censor the messages; nor do they
rewrite or edit them. They simply gather one day's worth of such
messages in a single e-mail message. The message begins with a
list of the subjects of each e-mail message; thus, an employee
can quickly scan the daily message for items of interest. The
list might look like this:
| TODAY'S ALL-EMPLOYEE MESSAGES | |
| 1. | Lost Wedding Ring |
| 2. | After-Work Pizza Party |
| 3. | Rear-Door Access Restrictions |
| 4. | Quality Day Update |
| 5. | Carpool Rider Needed |
| 6. | Recycling Notice |
If employees find something of interest, they can easily skip to it. If nothing appears interesting, they can delete the message without wasting any more time. And they know that the rest of the e-mail in their in-boxes is very likely meant specifically for them.
That's a good solution, but the problem with it is that it is reactive. In other words, somebody had to come up with the solution to a problem that the e-mail system created. It would have been far better for the Systems Department to understand the information needs of the employee audience in the first place and design the system to prevent information overload. Working together, the Systems and Employee Communications departments might have arrived at the same solution before the e-mail system was unveiled, and there would have been no problems to solve.
Intranets are no different. If you understand the way people expect to get and use information, and what the technology can do to meet those expectations, you are more likely to produce something that won't need to be fixed-or scrapped-later.
The information revolution has arrived, and its effects can be seen everywhere. The workplace, however, has been slow to catch up with the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, employees do not distinguish the workplace from the rest of the world. If information is only a keystroke away when they are in their living rooms or dens, why not from the computers on their desks at the office? If their children can study for tests or do research for their homework on the Internet, why can't employees do the same kind of research using information housed in company computers? If bank balances are available by touching a few pads on a telephone, why isn't work-related information as accessible?
There are three main reasons why companies need to provide information systems that accommodate the changes that are taking place around the world and throughout cultures in how information is presented and used:
Ask any human resources manager to define the primary role of
the human resources department, and you're likely to get an answer
that sounds a lot like, "To attract and retain the best employees."
Companies consider many factors in their efforts to attract employees,
including salary, benefits, location, career advancement potential,
and the work environment.
| NOTE |
For today's college graduates, the use of information technology as a means of accessing information and communicating with colleagues is a given. |
Universities are among the most wired of our institutions. Students entering college receive e-mail addresses along with their student identification cards and their dormitory keys. For a minimum of four years, these students use e-mail, Gopher, the World Wide Web, and other online tools to do their day-to-day work. Many even turn to the World Wide Web and sites such as CareerMosaic to facilitate their job hunts. To force these graduates to abandon these tools in favor of memos, voice mail, faxes, and other older tools would be like asking graphic designers to give up their design programs and return to X-Acto knives, waxers, and parallel rulers!
So, given a number of job offers in which all other elements are roughly equal, a candidate is likely to accept the position that provides the same tools he or she grew accustomed to using in school. The companies that offer these tools-many of which are built into the intranet-will acquire the best talent.
At a time when companies are trying to shrink their way to success through downsizing, layoffs, reengineering, and other activities that lead to reductions in the employee ranks, many employees are looking for signs that the company is doing something to help keep them from becoming unnecessary in the organization. As organizations begin to use new systems for information processing and communicating, those employees who resist them are likely to become redundant. A company can, therefore, make a strong case that implementing intranets is a way for all employees to learn a new skill that will become vital in the very near future, helping to ensure their employability. (Of course, organizations also will need to offer training and other tools to help employees make the shift.)
I have already pointed out that college graduates are accustomed to working with Internet tools. They are not the only ones. The younger the child, the more common computers and online technology seems. Many 12-year-olds have developed World Wide Web pages that have attracted substantial attention. It is not uncommon to hear of a 7-year-old who can surf the Web, find the Disney home page, and download videos of the latest animated extravaganza.It has always been there. They are not afraid of it. They do not require manuals, training, or technical support to use it. And they are the future employees of the organizations I am talking about.
If that seems far off, just do the math. A 40-year-old employee can expect to work another 25 years before retiring. A 7-year-old will likely enter the workforce in about 11 or 12 years. That means there will be about 12 years of productive work for current employees during which they will have to compete for jobs with those for whom technology is simply the way things are done. Employees who have not learned how to maximize their productivity and efficiency using tools that have become common will certainly be considered expendable.
On the other hand, if employees learn to use intranets, they will have at their command a working knowledge of how to use the most modern and exciting of technologies in every aspect of their work. That will make it much easier to keep pace with the college kids and their younger brothers and sisters.
Employee communication audits conducted in companies large and
small, in North America and around the world, all indicate the
same problem. Employees want information sooner. Nothing drives
an employee crazier than learning about an action the organization
has taken by hearing it on the nightly news or-worse-from a neighbor
or friend who has already heard it!
| NOTE |
With an intranet, organizations can provide information in the timeliest possible manner. |
Information that must, under Securities and Exchange Commission regulations, be disclosed to financial communities before it is communicated internally can, thanks to the Intranet, be delivered to employees simultaneously. Breaking news also can be delivered to employees before they hear it elsewhere.
In Arizona, a hospital was able to provide employees with updates about the search for a missing Med-Flight plane because the hospital's public information officer attended sheriff's department briefings and transferred her notes to the company's e-mail system, distributing the information to all employees before they had an opportunity to hear it from anybody else. That effort discouraged employees from paying attention to rumors, because they would rather wait for the straight news from the organization through the e-mail system.
Companies maintain vast volumes of information in their databases, but most employees have no idea how to access it. Intranets offer employees a simple-to-use interface that allows them to get at data within any database the organization wants to make available, anytime and from anywhere.
For example, employees can identify items in inventory and obtain
other data that can serve customers calling for information on
their accounts. A benefits provider in the Pacific Northwest is
planning to convert all of their word processed documents to HTML
so customer service representatives can quickly call up a customer's
contract from a database and move directly to the information
the client needs.
| NOTE |
To young people, a computer, along with its online communication, is not technology-it's furniture. Access to data increases employees' ability to perform their jobs faster, move accurately, and with confidence that they have the right information. |
With an intranet, employees can manage their own personnel information, reducing data-entry requirements. Additionally, human resources can add and delete employees and update their files using the same interface they use for other communications and information-gathering activities-the Intranet.
The application of technology to communication and information
has invaded every corner of our lives, and employees are living
through the transformation, experiencing it, and coming out of
it with expectations about how information is made available,
how they can access it, and how they can interact with it. Companies
and organizations that do not accommodate these changes are at
risk.
| NOTE |
The explosive growth of the Internet demonstrates that people- people who are likely to be your employees- are embracing the new ways to communicate and obtain information. |
Employees who have easy access to information everywhere except at work can grow frustrated. They can begin to perceive the organization as old-fashioned, restrictive, unable to keep up with the rest of the world. The best of those employees may well leave the organization to pursue opportunities with other organizations-including competitors- that "get it." Thus, companies that do not embrace the new models of communication could wind up with a workforce mired in mediocrity, since they cannot attract new employees or retain the best of those they already have.
Out in the world, there are four models of communication that are changing: many-to-many, receiver-based, access-driven, and communications based on demographics. I will present each one and describe how it is becoming commonplace in the outside world, along with an example of how it can be applied inside an organization through an intranet.
We have been living in a "few-to-many" world, in which
those who can afford to, publish information that is distributed
to everyone else. The information age is changing this age-old
few-to-many model to a new, "many-to-many" model. Since
anybody can publish now, people are no longer limited to the traditional
media for the information they need. They can turn, instead, to
one another. Increasingly, that's exactly what they are doing.
| NOTE |
The World Wide Web and USENET newsgroups are two methods by which many-to-many communication works. |
The World Wide Web is primarily a publication medium: Web site hosts develop their pages and post them on servers where clients can request them for viewing. Interactivity is, of course, a key characteristic of the World Wide Web, but generally, senders provide information to a receiver who absorbs the information to do with as he or she pleases. The principal change from traditional publishing is that anybody can put up a Web page.
The traditional media have invested awesome sums of money to develop sites on the World Wide Web. Over 500 daily newspapers have established Web sites, as have most of the major national news outlets (such as CNN, the major television networks, Time magazine, and the like). Corporations that have sunk millions into traditional advertising have turned to the Web as a new venue. Yet these do not necessarily represent the most successful Web sites.
The ease with which people can publish provides audiences with a wealth of information and ends their reliance on the traditional media as their only source of information. People can elect to listen to, for example, NBC's nightly news story about a particular subject, then surf the Web in search of additional (or contradictory) information. Or they can choose to bypass the traditional media altogether, getting information directly from the sources they learn to trust online.
Despite the visibility of the World Wide Web, USENET newsgroups are where much of the significant many-to-many communication shift is taking place. It is in newsgroups (and their counterparts on BBSs and commercial online services) that the power of distributed, networked communication is most evident.
It is easy-and getting easier-to find information from people who have it, as opposed to relying on the traditional media. The difference between getting information from traditional media and getting it from people who are actually involved in the issue you are interested in is the difference between viewing a map and being on the landscape.
Consider the following examples of many-to-many communications:
| NOTE |
As you can see, many-to-many communications have obvious advantages, providing people with the ability to tap into resources far beyond those which were available before. Regardless of where they are in the world, in what time zone, and despite having never met one another, people with mutual interests can share experiences and knowledge. |
Challenges also accompany many-to-many communications. The same abilities allow individuals to organize into activist groups overnight, whereas this type of organizational effort once took months and even years. It allows unpopular viewpoints to have the same exposure as credible, well-researched opinions.
I have described several examples of how people are using many-to-many communications in their daily lives outside the workplace. Inside the workplace, however, without the benefit of an intranet designed to meet their needs, employees are frustrated in attempting to use similar tools as they approach their jobs.
Without these tools, employees are limited to old-fashioned methods of getting information. If they need design specifications for a certain product, they must make a phone call to the right person in order to process a request. If they have a question about how to perform a certain function-say, an engineering task-they are limited to asking only those individuals they already know, usually those whom they see on a daily basis. With an intranet, on the other hand, employees can
In the emerging information economy, people want "what they want when they want it." Unfortunately, the common method of delivering information is to give them "what we've got when we get it to them." In most cases, the material presented to audiences is linear (it must be absorbed from beginning to end) and produced from the point of view of the sender.
Traditional communication must be absorbed from front to back, from chapter one to chapter two, from page one to page two, from paragraph one to paragraph two, and so on. If individuals need specific information that is buried somewhere within the document, they will have a hard time finding it, and if they do, it will be completely out of context.
Furthermore, these communications are invariably written from the point of view of the sender. If you have ever received an employee-benefits handbook, you know what I'm talking about. The benefits department almost always bases the handbook on plans. There are health plans, life insurance plans, and disability plans. Under health plans you find medical insurance, dental insurance, and vision insurance. Under medical insurance you can find indemnity plans, preferred provider organizations, health maintenance organizations, and managed care plans. If you need to find out what coverage you have if your child breaks her arm, you are still limited to finding the appropriate information from within the maze of plan-based information.
The World Wide Web is one example of receiver-driven communication.
Using search engines and hyperlinks, individuals can find precisely
what they are looking for. Most information presented on the Web
is based on the usefulness of the information on the individual
page; you can start in the middle.
| NOTE |
Receiver-based communications presume that the receiver will be able to "pull" the information he or she wants rather than have the sender "push" the information. |
For example, I recently needed to find the appropriate procedure for a particular part of Robert's Rules of Order. A search on the search engine AltaVista took me directly to the page that contained the procedure; I did not need to start with a table of contents or an index.
Here's another example: My accountant wanted my California tax return for 1993. Because I have moved, I couldn't find it. "Well," my accountant said, "you'll have to order it from the state." Great, I thought. I'd have to drive to the post office to see if they had the right form. If not, I'd have to call the Franchise Tax Board and get transferred around from department to department before finally ordering the right form. Then I stopped myself. It might, I thought, be on the World Wide Web. A quick search got me to the California Franchise Tax Board, where Forms was listed on the home page. It took less than five minutes from the time I hung up with my accountant to the time I had the right form printed out and in my hand. I never left my chair. That's receiver driven, and that's what people are coming more and more to expect. (I sure am!)
Newsgroups are another example of receiver-driven communication. On the groundbreaking BBS, The WELL, a conference called Experts on The WELL allows anybody to ask a question of any kind. Hundreds of individuals browse the daily postings, and when they feel qualified to answer a question, they do. That's just one example of the receiver being able to seek the specific information he or she needs from the growing community of users. (It is a particularly interesting phenomenon that people online practice the age-old concept that it is just as important to give as it is to receive. It's this philosophy-one that suggests employees would be just as willing to help others as to seek help-that makes online communities such vibrant and useful places!)
Receiver-driven communication also allows the users of information to customize the data they receive. Here are some examples of customized information:
In a custom-built information environment, the traditional information "gatekeepers" have dramatically less influence than they had in the past. When you customize your information, if employees don't want to know anything about a specific issue-such as developments in an international hot spot or an update of the company's strategy-they don't have to. That presents a new challenge to those who are charged with ensuring that appropriate audiences receive key information.
That, of course, is what an intranet is all about! All of the information stored in a company's computer memory banks, all of the intellectual capital stored in the heads of the organization's employees, and all of the knowledge developed by each department of the company can be made accessible without the employee ever having to leave his or her desk, find and complete a form, or make a phone call.
At National Semiconductor, for example, employees can tap into the "Communities of Practice." Here, they can quickly drill through discussions employees have already had online to learn whether information they need has already been addressed. If they find that it has, they can identify other employees who have insight into the topic and either send e-mail or even pick up the phone and call. (It's less technological but very efficient anyway!)
If receivers of information want what they want when they want it, they must have access to it in a way that makes sense for them, using tools that are available. Remember the benefits-handbook example? Even if the handbook leads you directly to information about your coverage when a child breaks his or her arm, it won't do you much good if the incident happens at home on Sunday and your handbook is locked in your desk drawer at your office!
Communication technology makes it possible for receivers of information to get what they want when they want it. An example of providing access to information that most of us already take for granted is Interactive Voice Response (IVR)- a telephone technology that people use to retrieve information by simply pressing numbers on a telephone keypad. Odds are, this isn't a new concept for most readers; you probably use IVR routinely.
For example, what do you do when you need to know your bank account balance? Before information became access driven, you waited for your monthly statement to arrive in the mail, by which time the balance listed was several days old. Now, you simply dial your bank's phone number, enter your account number and a personal identification number, and hear your balance as of the close of business the previous day.
You probably also use IVR to find the movies that are playing nearby, to check and manipulate the investment balances in your employee savings plan, and to get directions to civic buildings. IVR is access driven because everyone has a phone, or access to one!
Interactive touch-screen technology is another example of access-driven communications. More and more, touch-screens are showing up in medical centers, shopping centers, and high-rise buildings. Users who need information simply walk up to the screen and get what they need. For those individuals with computers and Internet connections, the World Wide Web provides access-driven information.
Just as with many-to-many communications, organizations need to figure out ways to provide access to the information employees need to do their jobs, because they are growing more and more comfortable with accessing information of every other kind for their nonwork-related activities.
The factory floor provides an ideal example of providing access to information via an intranet. Employees working on the line can go to a kiosk and quickly find the latest specifications for a product they are required to produce, tracking the updated information provided by the engineers who produce the specifications. It's much faster than trying to get in touch with the engineers directly-they may work in a different time zone-and much more likely that the project will be up and running according to schedule.
Another example: The employee magazine carried an article two years ago that answers all the questions an employee may have about a particular topic. The employee who needs the information, though, may not have kept all his or her back issues of the magazine. If he or she did, it would be time-consuming to try to find the right article. Perhaps the employee did not work for the company two years ago and does not know the article appeared. A search of the intranet, however, makes all the articles ever published in the company magazine instantly accessible, and produces the one that meets the employee's search criteria.
Under old communication models, those who were distributing messages sought the broadest possible audiences upon whom to push the message. If they were targeting, say, affluent younger women, they would make sure their commercial appeared on the television shows demographically proven to appeal to that group; they would try to place articles in the publications young women were likely to read. Within an organization, even though the audiences are captive, they still require definition: all employees, all management, all secretaries, all factory workers.
In the technology-driven communication environment-in which audiences pull their information rather than allow it to be pushed on them-demographic identifications don't work. Instead, it is important to ensure that the message is available and waiting for the individual who goes looking for it.
I worked for an organization a few years back that held quarterly managers' meetings. These meetings were designed to update managers throughout the company about events that had taken place during the last quarter to shape the organization, and to look at the challenges that lay ahead for the upcoming quarter. These meetings always began with a long, boring overview of the finances, presented by the equally boring chief financial officer. The belief was that managers needed this information. But most of the managers fell asleep during the presentation! And, for a session that was designed to serve as an update for all managers, the presentation was made only to those at headquarters; the rest received a videotape, which they may or may not have watched. This was an example of pushing information to the right demographic group in the hopes that some would absorb the information.
On an intranet, the same information can be placed strategically so that those managers who need it, and can make use of it, can find it when they need it. The information is available "just in time"-that is, just when they need it. Under the old system, the same information was pushed to all managers "just in case"-that is, just in case they could actually make use of it.
It is common for somebody who is close to a subject to become enraptured by the tactics of his or her interest and lose sight of the bigger picture. A human resources manager can get excited about a new program or benefit that will not fit right in the organization. A communicator can become enamored of expensive print production advances even though there is no place for an expensive magazine in the company. A finance executive can get excited about the prospect of managing the company by using shareholder value as the linchpin, even though shareholder value might not be the best way to evaluate performance.
An Intranet offers the same trap to systems professionals, who may be inclined to recommend that an intranet do one thing or another simply because it can, because the technology makes it possible, and to do so would be fun; it would be cool. In the end, though, there are only three conditions under which an organization should consider investing in technology:
The intranet offers spectacular opportunities to accomplish each of these conditions.
Anybody who has ever worked in a corporation-or read "Dilbert" comic strips-knows that corporations are among the most imperfect systems ever created. Much of the difficulty that arises in an organization is symptomatic of the system's inability to move information to the people who need it when they need it. Let's consider some routine organizational problems that the intranet can solve.
As I noted before, if there is anything employees hate, it's hearing news about their employer from a radio news report on the ride home (or, worse, from a neighbor who pipes up over the fence, "Hey, I just heard your company's being bought by Megabehemoth Corporation. You gonna lose your job?"). With an intranet, the information can be released concurrently, and the company can document that employees did not receive the information any earlier than the financial markets.
Another example of solving a problem can be seen by revisiting
the quarterly managers' meeting I just discussed. If these meetings
are done right, you can learn some pretty important information
and, in turn, pass that information on to subordinates who report
to you. But what if you're out of town on business? What if you're
sick? Some companies produce videos, some generate memos that
try to cover the salient parts of the meeting. On an intranet,
you could scroll through a list of topics covered at the meeting,
find those that are of interest to you, and by clicking on the
hyperlink, either read a summary, listen to an audiotape of that
part of the meeting, or watch a video clip. And what about employees
who don't work at corporate headquarters where the meeting is
held? They would have the same ability, but they could also listen
in on the meeting in real time, as it is happening.
| NOTE |
Intranet technology can solve the problem of making informa-tion available that is genuinely useful. |
Nobody knows what information an employee may need to do his or her job in any given instance. Yet companies make information available based on what they think most employees are likely to need. In other companies, information is produced based on economic equations: What information is likely to be needed by most employees most often? That's what gets published. But what about that one employee who may well be the only employee who ever needs a particular piece of information, but that information could provide the key to coming up with a new blockbuster product, resolving a major lawsuit, or responding to a threatening competitive pressure? On an intranet, each department, unit, or individual can decide what information to produce. The volume of data that can be archived on the Intranet is virtually unlimited. And employees can search the entire system quickly and find exactly what they're looking for.
Just about every employee in the U.S. business world has been through at least one quality-oriented program. The programs use different acronyms, slogans, training methods, structures, and systems, but they all come down to the notion of reducing hassles by improving the way the organization gets things done. An intranet makes the idea of improving quality more than just a slogan to splash on banners and tack onto walls. I'll discuss just a few ways an intranet can improve existing processes within a company.
Many companies publish internal job postings. An employee visits the bulletin board, thumbs through the list of open jobs, jots down one or two he or she might be interested in, finds a job application form, fills it out, and uses company mail to send it to the human resources or recruiting department. Once the form reaches its destination, someone removes it from the envelope and types the information into a database. On an Intranet, on the other hand, the employee jumps to the Open Positions page and clicks or scrolls through the list of positions. He finds one he is interested in, clicks on it, reads the description, and decides to apply; so he clicks on an Apply button. That takes him to an online form, which he completes, then clicks on a Submit button. That action processes the data he entered directly into the database. The human resources department knows at any given moment how many applications have been received, and they can cut the data any way they please. No forms have been printed, no labor has been expended transferring a document from one geographic location to another, no duplication of effort has been experienced (and no opportunity for a typographic error has occurred in the process of duplicating data). And the amount of time the employee has spent applying for a position has been dramatically reduced, making that employee more productive.
In the customer service department, a call from a customer with a question about a contract means the customer service representative must find the contract, then find the appropriate section, before she can help the customer. With an intranet, she can simply jump to the Contracts page in the Customer Service site, enter the contract number or customer name to retrieve the contract, then either click on a hyperlink to the appropriate part of the document or enter a keyword to search the text of the document for the pertinent issue. This reduces considerably the time the customer is kept waiting and the time other customers have to wait on hold.
Nurses at a hospital refer to nursing manuals to ensure they are
using the currently approved hospital procedure. The hospital
is charged with keeping these manuals current. Using a printed
manual means finding it and spending a fair amount of time using
the table of contents or the index to find the right procedure.
If the nurse is lucky, she is using an
up-to-date manual. After all, the hospital has spent some major
dollars reprinting the darn thing. With an intranet at a common
workstation, the nurse simply jumps to the Nursing Manual site,
enters the procedure name, and reads what she knows to be the
latest version. The hospital, meantime, has eliminated the cost
of producing paper manuals. (At one major hospital chain, the
money saved by putting the nursing manuals online was enough to
pay for the entire intranet.)
Technology enables us to do things we never dreamed possible. Because of technology we have been to the moon, under the sea, and inside the atom. Things we take for granted-the telephone, television, and automobiles, for example-are all the result of technological innovation. Computers and their ability to connect people to people and people to information make things possible that were never possible before within an organization.
For example, imagine that an engineer in a company's research facility in Des Moines is having a problem, and none of her colleagues are able to provide an answer. She finds an Intranet discussion group called Engineering and posts her problem. An engineer in one of the company's factories in Barcelona checks into the newsgroup and reads her post. "I dealt with that same issue last year on the Delphi project," he thinks, and he sends a reply that helps the Iowa-based engineer around the roadblock and on to the successful completion of the project.
Here is another example: A junior-level supervisor is scheduled for a one-on-one meeting with a senior executive. Until now, that senior executive has been nothing more than a box way up on the organization chart and a name muttered with a certain amount of awe and reverence around the water cooler. The nervous employee checks the senior executive's personal home page and discovers that the executive is an active volunteer in Boy Scouts. The junior-level executive is a Scoutmaster himself. Suddenly, a common bond allows the supervisor to view the executive as a human being rather than an anonymous symbol of authority.
Finally, imagine that an employee knows another employee who has
critical information that could help him or her finish a big project,
but for the life of him, he can't remember the employee's first
name-and the last name is Smith! Visiting the intranet-based employee
directory, he types Smith into an entry field and gets
a list of every Smith in the company, last name followed by first
name. He can narrow the search by selecting a department name.
Once he's found his Smith (it was Mary; doesn't it figure?), he
can either call because the phone number is listed, or he can
simply click on Mary Smith's e-mail address. The e-mail address
is hyperlinked, and clicking on it causes an e-mail window to
open; Mary Smith's e-mail address is already entered, as is the
employee's. All he needs to enter is a subject line and the body
of the message, then click Send. The employee never had to leave
the Web interface to invoke the e-mail program, since e-mail was
part of the integrated information infrastructure.
| NOTE |
Intranets will make possible innovations in your company that haven't been conceived of yet. |
The notion of using technology to accomplish things that were not possible before is borne out by the advances that have resulted from the popularization of previous technologies. Look at television, for example. Originally, television was a forum for old radio shows, stage plays, and vaudeville. It took many years before innovators began to identify things that could be produced for television that had never been possible through any previous medium. These innovators opened the doors to live news coverage, situation comedies, dramas that were shot on location, and other things we now take for granted. Computers provide another example. The first popular use of computers was as a replacement for typewriters and calculators, then as a replacement for traditional publishing tools. It was only recently that people began using computers as communication devices.
In your organization, you will find uses for the Intranet that nobody has yet dreamed of-from customer service applications to intelligence about activities of competitors; from new ways to look at data to new structures for team activities. It's up to you-the innovators-to figure them out!
An Intranet is hardware and software; it is a mirror of the Internet that exists within your organization, allowing systems to expand in the same type of open environment as the internet. But an intranet is far more than just the configuration of hardware and software that makes it work. It is a system by which real people produce, find, and use information. It is a system that enables people to do their jobs better and faster. It is a system that makes it easier to engage in the day-to-day tasks at work.
Systems professionals need to understand why an intranet is a good idea before rushing off to build one. When they understand this, they can build an Intranet that works-that meets the real needs of real employees. An intranet is a good idea because:
With that foundation in mind, it's time to turn our attention to the core components of the intranet, which are covered in the next chapter.