Beyond

The Intranet –
Enabling A Digital Workplace

Creating a world-class employee experience

that drives employee engagement and
customer delight.

In this White Paper we argue that
creating a compelling customer
experience, regardless of your
industry, is required to stay
competitive. We further state that
focusing first on creating a world
class employee experience that
drives employee engagement
is a necessary precondition for
delivering a great customer
experience. We finally assert
that creating a great employee
­experience requires delivering
the technology solutions to
employees necessary to create
a true Digital Workplace. The
term Digital Workplace has been
in use for some time now (our
own definition is provided) but
we firmly believe that we have
arrived at an inflection point
where the previous hype is now
reality -- where the low cost/high
performance solutions and devices
first available in the consumer
space will now take hold in the
Beyond The Intranet-
Enabling A Digital Workplace
enterprise. Our view is that all
employees in the organization
play a role in delivering a great
customer experience, so taking
a broader view of the enabling
tools and solutions available to
them is necessary. The tools and
solutions covered in this paper
are focused primarily on what
have recently been referred to as
“Systems of Engagement1” – which
encompass content management,
collaboration, and social – and
less so on traditional “Systems of
Record” technologies like ERP, HR,
and finance.
The Digital Workplace: We
define the Digital Workplace as
an environment where employees
are able to quickly and easily share
what they know and find what they
need with consistent experiences
across devices and locations.
1 Systems of Engagement and the Future of Enterprise IT: A
Sea Change in Enterprise IT - See more at: http://www.aiim.org/
futurehistory#sthash.PA6dfBKk.dpuf
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Contents

The Opportunity 5

Impacting the Employee Experience 6

Digital Workplace Defined 7

Employee Experience and the Digital Workplace 8

The “Four Cs” 9

Digital Workplace Components  10

Conclusion 14

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The Opportunity
In a highly competitive world where products and services are becoming
more commoditized, organizations have to constantly develop innovative
ways to compete for loyal customers and the talent that will keep them
loyal. Going beyond mere price and service competitiveness, leading firms
are now looking to create more engaging customer experiences as a way
to differentiate and drive greater loyalty. They are
looking to do this by providing not just a transaction
at an attractive price point, but a complete experience
that is aesthetically pleasing, highly personalized,
and technology enabled. Starbucks was among the
pioneers in the brave new customer experience
frontier. They emphasized aesthetics by designing
stores to be reminiscent of a European café, and they
offered loyalty cards (and now mobile apps) that
could be scanned at the counter that not only helped
speed check-out but also provided personalized
rewards based on purchase history. They also
provided Wi-Fi (now free!) to customers so they could
hang out and check email or write a paper for school.
The actual product they were selling was certainly
not new and consisted of a beverage (coffee) that was readily available
to consumers in the home, office or through various other retail outlets;
and they charged a significant premium for it. And people flocked to their
stores. The use of design and technology (point of sale, loyalty cards/apps,
Wi-Fi) to create a compelling customer experience has led to explosive
growth over the last 20 years. In 1993 Starbucks had 272 stores; now there
are over 17,000 worldwide (a growth rate of over 6,000%)1.

What hasn’t been mentioned thus far is the people aspect to the customer
To be successful
experience – the employees that are on the frontlines ensuring that the
organizations need experience is not diminished by surly, inattentive, inefficient, uninformed, or
to understand that disinterested staff members. A superbly technology-enabled customer
creating a great experience punctuated with lousy service will not win the day. This is
customer experience certainly true in the retail world as well as any other industry where some
level of personal service is part of the total offering and critical to meeting
first requires focusing
customer/client expectations. Starbucks did not achieve its phenomenal
on the employee growth by having a lousy employee experience. With turnover rates
experience. roughly half the industry average, and placement on Fortune’s 100 Best
Places to Work for the last 13 years in row, it’s safe to assume a strong
correlation between employee experience, customer experience and high
performing organizations2.
1 Source: www.starbucks.com/about-us/company-information
2 http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2012/09/21/starbucks-is-hiring-health-plan-good-coffee-but-watch-out-
for/

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Impacting the Employee Experience

To be successful organizations need to understand that creating a great

67%
Two-thirds of organizations
reported that flexible work
arrangements had a positive
impace on employee
engagement and morale.
Source: Workplace Flexibility in the 21st
Century (SHRM, 2009)
customer experience first requires focusing on the employee experience.
Organizations need to apply the same principles that Starbucks used
(design, personalization, technology enabled) to create a compelling
customer experience to deliver an outstanding employee experience. There
are many contributing factors to an outstanding employee experience
and, just as customer experience can be measured by customer loyalty,
employee experience can similarly be measured by employee engagement.
The research organization Gallup and consultancy Towers Watson have
conducted studies on employee satisfaction for years and have developed
models for measuring employee engagement. Gallup defines engaged
employees as those who “work with passion and feel a profound connection
to their company. They drive innovation and move the organization
forward”3. Gallup argues (rightfully so) that effective leadership and great
managers are the primary drivers of employee engagement. Technology
solutions will not compensate for deficiencies in this realm.

However, when you look at several of the factors in the employee

engagement model it is clear that the effective application of technology
solutions can help create happy employees and ultimately happy (and
profitable) customers.

3 Source: Gallup 2013 State of the American Workplace

“Freedom from obstacles to

success at work”
“Availability of resources “Ability to meet work
to perform well” “The mission or purpose of my challenges effectively”
company makes me feel my job
is important”
“At work, my opinions “I have the materials
seem to count” and equipment I need
to do my work right”

Figure 1 – Factors that drive employee engagement

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Figure 1 provides a subset of factors from the employee
engagement research that could be positively
impacted by the effective application of technology
solutions. These factors combine elements of corporate
communication, collaboration, and the tools necessary
for employees to get the job done. In our increasingly
knowledge-driven and service-focused economy,
“getting the job done” more often than not requires
having ready access to knowledge stored digitally or
in a co-worker’s head. Flexible work arrangements are
becoming the norm, whereby employees can work
from home based on some agreed upon schedule,
or as part of their job description (e.g. outside sales).
Studies have shown that providing these types of
flexible arrangements can have a positive impact on
employee engagement. The key point is to provide
flexibility without hampering their ability to do their
job effectively. Irrespective of where employees are
located, the appropriate application of technology solutions can improve
the employee experience by helping to reduce communication “friction” by
easing access to people and information, as well as “noise” by delivering
relevant content personalized to the user. Reducing employee frustration
created by not being able to quickly and easily find the right information
is a key way in which technology can help drive improved employee
engagement.

Digital Workplace Defined

We are using the term Digital Workplace to describe the set of capabilities
– a desired end-state if you will – an employee has available to them that
will help drive employee engagement and allow them to be informed,
We define the Digital knowledgeable, and more responsive to customers, be they internal or
Workplace as an external.
environment where We define the Digital Workplace as an environment where employees are
employees are able to able to quickly and easily share what they know and find what they need
quickly and easily share with consistent experiences across devices and locations. The environment
what they know and find described here has both physical and virtual elements. The physical aspects
include mobile devices and kiosks and potentially other to-be invented
what they need with
delivery mechanisms. The virtual elements are delivered via software
consistent experiences applications running on these devices. The types of solutions one may find
across devices and in this environment would be content management, collaboration, social,
locales. and enterprise search integrated with (system of record) applications such
as HR, CRM, and finance/accounting. In the simplest terms, the Digital

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2.1
hours
Average number of hours
of lost productivity per
day due to distractions
and interruptions.
Source: Basex Research
“Remote workers log
an average of four
more hours per week
than their on-site
counterparts… these
workers are slightly
more engaged (32%)
than employees who
work on-site (28%).”
Gallup 2013 State of the American
Workplace
Beyond The Intranet-
Enabling A Digital Workplace
Workplace is a place where employee engagement and happiness is found
by delivering the right information, to the right person, at the right time.
This is not just a nice-to-have but necessary in order to meet continually
escalating customer expectations. These rising expectations are requiring
companies to be more agile and innovative. The free flow of relevant
information (i.e. reducing friction) has a direct impact on company agility –
a sort of rapid company-wide “sense and respond” capability that leads to
service improvements, ideas for new offerings, etc. From the employee
perspective they feel like the tools and information available to them are
smart enough to understand who they are, what they do, where they are,
and what they need.
It is important to note the technology has helped create the problem of
information overload, so a more thoughtful approach is the answer, not
simply more technology. It’s easy to image a scenario whereby all the
latest cool tools are dropped on the employees’ desktop that connects
them to all their colleagues as well a vast storehouse of documents and
other content. The potential downside to this is a situation where the
employee is subjected to a constant deluge of interruptions and endless
time spent searching for documents. Studies have shown that on average
a worker loses over 2 hours of productivity per day due to distractions and
interruptions. To address this workers need to be in control the information
flow and the interactions with their colleagues, so that what is presented
to them on daily basis is relevant to their job, their current project, and
the customers they serve. The more effective enterprise search is, for
example, the less reliance employees will have on their colleagues to answer
questions or locate relevant content. Additionally, by offering presence
awareness capabilities where employees can proactively notify others of
their current status, location, and availability they are better able to control
and organize their time to help minimize interruptions and focus on the task
at hand.
Employee Experience and the Digital Workplace
So what elements of employee engagement can the Digital Workplace
realistically impact? First let’s look at the essential elements of the Digital
Workplace that we refer to as the “Four C’s”: Content, Collaboration,
Communication and Context.
• Content – this deals with where your organization’s content is stored,
in what form, how “findable” is it, and how “shareable.”
• Collaboration – refers to the ease with which people (individuals or
teams) can connect with one another to quickly resolve issues, get
questions answered and develop new ideas.
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• Communication – addresses the degree to which robust
communication capabilities exist that can reach all employees in a
variety of formats and channels based on the purpose and nature of
the communication (i.e. instant message, email, newsfeed, phone call).
The “Four Cs” • Context – this refers to the degree to which the overall experience is
personalized and relevant to each employee – i.e. right information,
Content right time, delivered to the right person.

Collaboration You can think of the Four C’s as representing the starting point for
evaluating the maturity of your organization along the path to the true
Communication Digital Workplace. This evaluation should not be done in the abstract but
tied closely to the needs and aspirations of your key stakeholder groups:
Context customers and employees. By understanding the customer experience
first you establish the proper context for the employee experience as the
two are obviously intertwined. Your definition of the customer experience,
supported by a core set of principles, will help establish the foundational
principles for the employee experience. A simple example of a customer
experience principle in practice might be: “any customer inquiry to a call
center is resolved with a single interaction” – the old “one and done.” So
you want to make certain these front line folks have at their disposal the
knowledge necessary to make this happen. A good employee experience
involves having the right information, readily available to respond to the
customer’s inquiry on the spot. In this scenario the customer is happy
because he/she gets their issue resolved in a timely manner.

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The employee feels good about providing great service. This ties directly
to employee engagement metrics referenced earlier such as: Availability
of resources to perform well,” and “Freedom from obstacles to success
at work.” In addition, this reflects positively on the company, ultimately
impacting customer loyalty and the company’s bottom line.

The point of this is not that every organization can or should operate like
a high volume call center. What’s important is to first develop a set of
principles that define the customer experience that will in turn drive the
desired behaviors and results. It is our contention that moving towards a
true Digital Workplace will help enable the desired employee behaviors, and
focusing on the “Four C’s” will help organizations accelerate that process.
Recent research by the McKinsey Global Institute on how the typical
employee allocates their time provides a good baseline for what behaviors
and activities could be impacted by the Digital Workplace. According
to their research only 39% of a knowledge worker’s day is focused on
their “role-specific” tasks. The remaining 61% is spent on: reading and
responding to emails (28%); searching and gathering information (19%);
and communicating and collaborating internally (14%). What organizations
should strive for -- and what the Digital Workplace needs to enable -- is
maximizing the time spent on roll-based tasks, and minimizing all the rest
(e.g. emails, searching for documents). By focusing on the reallocation
of employees’ time, organizations can provide a clear guidepost as to
what behaviors are desirable (don’t use email for every conceivable
communication) and outcomes that focus on what’s in it for employees
(allowing more time to focus on your work).

Digital Workplace Components

The primary technical and functional components of the Digital Workplace
are outlined in the graphic below. These represent the core capabilities
that employees must have in order to realize the true vision of the Digital
Workplace – the right information, delivered to the right person at the
right time. You will note that we use the “Four C’s” to categorize each of
the functional areas to ensure that there is alignment with these critical
elements and the capabilities you are delivering to your users. It is
important to note the placement of customer experience and employee
experience and that the combination of capabilities must be understood
in context of the needs, desires, and expectations of these stakeholder
groups. In addition, Mobile and Process/Workflow are critical in addressing
the issues of accessing information wherever you are, but also being
able to take action. To realize measureable improvements in productivity
and employee engagement the notion of “access” and “action” must be
addressed by enabling mobile and workflow whenever appropriate. It’s not

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enough that employees can access information from their home, office, or
coffee shop but they also need to be able to take some sort of meaningful
action that resolves and issue or closes out a task.

A Note about Social Collaboration

You should also note that “Social” is not listed separately but is included
under both collaboration and communication. Although there has been
much discussion -- some would argue over-blown hype -- concerning social
applications and the concept of the social enterprise, we like to think of it as
simply another form of communication that can help accelerate the transfer
of knowledge throughout the organization. By viewing social as another
form of communication and not something separate and apart from the
rest of your Digital Workplace strategy, organizations are then more likely to
take a more integrated approach that will translate into a superior employee
experience. The trick is understanding the combination of capabilities that
will best fit an organization’s specific needs, not searching for the new
“silver bullet” that will unleash a torrent of previously untapped knowledge.
The point is not to minimize social as an essential tool in the toolbox, it is to
understand that it is in fact one tool available to organizations and should
be applied in the proper context.

Under Content you have the tools and capabilities that help to store,
manage, retrieve, and share content in either structured form (data) and
unstructured (documents). The ultimate objective here is to make certain
the content is “findable”, measured by how quickly a user can find relevant
content, and “shareable”, which addresses how easily a user can share the
content internally with a colleague or externally with a customer.

The Collaboration toolset involves connecting people to get answers

and enabling sharing of knowledge. The two critical elements to keep in
mind with collaboration is the extent to which one can quickly and easily
connect real-time with a colleague, and the ability to capture that exchange

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for reuse across the organization. A simple example of this would be
two colleagues exchanging Instant Messages regarding a customer issue,
employee 1 one drops into the IM a link to a document that has the right
information to address the issue, and employee 2 shares the information
with the customer that solves the problem. Employee 2, very pleased that
the issue was resolved in a timely manner, posts a quick message on her
personal newsfeed that provides a brief synopsis of the issue and link to the
helpful document. Colleagues that subscribe to her newsfeed will see the
update immediately. In addition, her post will be included in Search results
for others in the future that may run into the same issue.

Enabling effective Communication across the organization is essential to

meeting organization-wide goals for reinforcing the culture and supporting
change management initiatives. The traditional corporate intranet has
historically been where most of the corporate communications took place,
with the focus on keeping employees informed of the latest developments.
This typically involved one-way communication, without employee feedback
and involvement. With the inclusion of social tools the notion of an
ongoing dialog is now a possibility. In addition, with capabilities to conduct
polls across the employee base, organizations can gather both qualitative
(blog post comments) as well as quantitative (poll responses) data.
With the advent of video as a cost effective and high impact means of
communication, organizations have more tools in the toolbox to reinforce
values, culture, and execute on initiatives that involve change management.
As the first mass communication tool available to employees, email still
holds a special place as the go-to means of communication, either one-to-
one or one-to-many, in most organizations. The habits and behaviors that
drive the heavy use of email are not easily changed, and in fact, dramatically
changing those behaviors may not be a priority for most organizations.
However, there are two areas that organizations should consider with
respect to email use that will help improve overall communication and
information flow. The first would be to ban attachments, the other would
be to eliminate company-wide communications via email and use corporate
blogs or video messages. Reinforcing simple practices such as employees
using links instead of attachments, and CEOs doing blog posts rather than
all-employee emails can start to change behaviors.

The final category, Context, presents a bit of a challenge when looking at

tools and capabilities as there is no real comprehensive “context tool” as
such. Let’s start with the idea that information that would be useful to the
organization as a whole is either captured as content stored somewhere
in the organization or within a colleague’s brain. The issue of context
deals directly with relevancy - how can I find the right document or the
right person with the right answer. Relevancy impacts responsiveness.
Understanding context starts with answering questions like: who is the end

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user (skills, experience, competencies)?; what are their responsibilities?; what
customers do they serve?; what are the customers’ expectations?; what are
their information needs?; what process do they follow? One of the best
tests of whether or not the context is understood is when the answer to
a question is “it depends”. So, for example, what’s the best way to get to
Times Square? Well, it depends. Where are you now? How much budget do
you have? Are you afraid of flying? When do you want to leave? So, in this
discussion, context is useful in identifying specific point solutions that can
help to address the “it depends” issue.

So when the question arises - “Which presentation in the document library

is appropriate for my meeting?” capabilities like tagging and the application
of metadata help to identify which PowerPoint presentation is most relevant
given the meeting objective and audience. Additionally, the availability of
in-depth personal profile data can help to identify the right person to bring
along to the meeting or to consult with prior to the meeting. Finally, context
is important at the organizational level to help understand what tools and
capabilities are necessary and appropriate for specific employee audiences.
What tools and capabilities are appropriate for sales? It depends. What tools
are appropriate for human resources? It depends. Answering the questions
above is a good start.

Shifting to the Digital Workplace

The move to the Digital Workplace requires first taking an outside-in
approach. It starts with your customers/clients/constituents and requires
that you define the overall experience that you are looking to create in a
clear, concise, and unambiguous way. Let’s look briefly to the definition
Customer experience
of customer experience so we know how best to proceed from here.
is defined as: “the According to our good friends at Wikipedia, customer experience is defined
sum of all experiences as: “the sum of all experiences [emphasis added] a customer has with a
a customer has with supplier of goods and/or services, over the duration of their relationship with
a supplier of goods that supplier. From awareness, discovery, attraction, interaction, purchase, use,
cultivation and advocacy”4.
and/or services, over
the duration of their The key point (and why it’s emphasized) is “the sum of all experiences”,
relationship with that which implies that the customer could have multiple touch points across an
organization, from the initial sales call through to invoicing/billing. So
supplier.
basically every employee can have an impact on the customer experience,
either directly or indirectly, depending on their role. So, wouldn’t it be
prudent to identify what exactly that experience should be, and what
employee behaviors you are trying to encourage in order to deliver the
desired experience?

4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_experience

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Conclusion
Below is a process we have identified that draws heavily from our own
…the conversation experience implementing custom collaboration and content management
solutions on the Microsoft SharePoint platform, as well as principles found
should always start with
in design thinking and user centered design. One of the first principles
customers and users, not that drives this process, is that the conversation should always start with
features and functions. customers and employees, not features and functions. When you start with
features and functions you never properly establish context and therefore
do not define the problem to be solved. For example, the appropriate
questions to ask are not “should we implement social,” it’s more “how might
social impact our ability to be more responsive to customers?” It’s all about
asking the right questions.

5 Steps to the Digital Workplace

1. Clarify the Context – Identify your customer experience, as this is

the starting point for establishing the proper context for everything
else that follows. Keep in mind that this is not intended to be a long,
drawn-out exercise but should be used to extract the key principles
that can be clearly communicated and understood (and followed!).

2. Focus on Users – Understand roles, functions, behaviors,

impediments by asking the right questions and observing actual
behaviors. Determine information needs and how they differ
throughout a particular process – address both “knowing” and
“doing.”

3. Spec Out a Game Plan – Develop a roadmap that lays out the
implementation plan that describes the overall approach and
budgetary requirements. This will serve as the business case as
well as the game plan that can be used to gain executive buy-in for
funding of the project. This should also include change management
components and communication strategy.

4. Experiment/Measure/Learn – Your roadmap will outline your plan

for pilot testing your ideas, measuring response/behaviors, and the
process for applying what you learn. At this stage you are actively
managing your pilot(s), reporting findings back to stakeholders, and
refining your roadmap.

5. Rollout and Support – Once you have incorporated employee

feedback and made refinements you are ready to launch
companywide. Since the scale of this effort will differ dramatically
from the pilot program you need to develop a rollout and
communications plan and support model that provides adequate user
support during the critical initial launch period. It also important to

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implement a support model that includes both subject matter as well
as technical resources and incorporates change management best
practices.

So this may seem like a lot of work and you may be thinking, “is it really
worth it?” We believe that a well thought out game plan and the application
of sound practices related to user centered design, communication, and
change management can significantly diminish the challenges associated
with realizing the Digital Workplace. As to whether or not it’s worth it –
we believe the question is really “can you afford not to?” There are two
forces at work that are driving the need for the Digital Workplace – rising
expectations and intense competition. These forces are in play in both the
“war for talent” and “battle for the customer.” Employees have much higher
expectations in terms of overall work environment driven in part by their
experience as consumers – and actively engaged employees are more
productive and innovative rising customer expectations are nothing new
and it’s easy to imagine the acceleration of demands for easier, faster, better
and cheaper across all industries will continue in the future. The question
that every executive needs to ask is: are we prepared for this?

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Discover the Path to the Digital Workplace with Portal Solutions

We revolutionize the way employees collaborate by delivering digital

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