Feature

posted 30 Mar 2006 in Volume 2 Issue 9

A global perspective

By Stephen Musselwhite

Through a clever combination of technology and policy, the Electrocomponents Group has built a global intranet that can ‘speak’ to an international workforce.

The Electrocomponents Group is a truly global business. It employs 6,000 staff across 26 countries under two brands: RS and Allied. The business has its headquarters in the UK, with 11 other operating companies in the rest of Europe and 14 in the rest of the World, including Japan and the USA. Through the RS and Allied subsidiaries, more than 350,000 products – including PCs, industrial lubricants, office supplies and power tools – are distributed to more than 1.5 million technical and industrial professionals throughout the world.

Our success as a business relies on our ability to responsively market that vast product range to a far-flung international audience of existing and new customers. The company’s core operations, however, are based in the UK, along with half of the group’s employees. Because of that, an existing group intranet was often perceived as a UK-centric resource, particularly among the smaller and more geographically remote operating companies.

That was a problem we needed to address. Our existing intranet had something of an identity problem, but we were convinced that it had a central role to play in the transformation of the Electrocomponents Group from a regionally structured business to a more global one. A truly global intranet, we decided, was one of the most cost-effective tools our organisation had at its disposal for providing a global communications capability that would engender a strong sense of brand identity across all our operating companies.

From regional to global

The Electrocomponents Group has grown rapidly in the past 15 years through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions in order to achieve multinational status. But, as a result, communications across the business had evolved gradually and were sporadic in nature. The existing group intranet was not a true group resource because although the European businesses were strongly represented, there was no presence from our Asian or North American subsidiaries, with each region having their own local sites. This lack of global reach (not to mention the duplication of effort in sharing business information across the group) prompted the launch of a project to rationalise the regional intranets around the group, consolidating them into a single system for group communications, knowledge sharing and applications.

What was needed, we decided, was a global intranet that offered content that was relevant to (and trusted by) all our employees across the world. We knew that local relevance could only be achieved with the full participation of those operating companies, with content being provided in local languages where required.

Technology selection

Recognising that successful intranet developments are really about people and processes, and that technology is purely an enabler, we set about selecting a technology platform that would enable us to enforce a strong governance structure over the management of the global intranet.

This, we knew, involved a careful balancing act: we needed an easy-to-use, web-based tool that would give employees around the world the freedom to create and manage their own content, but also one that would give sufficient centralised control, in order that we could meet corporate requirements for content presentation and comply with important legislation such as the UK’s Disability Discrimination Act.

With only a very small team available for training and coordination (and a team of more than 150 global intranet contributors to train), the selected system should demand a minimal training and support overhead. Given the geographic dispersal of our business, and to ensure easier adoption by the existing global webmaster community, it was essential that the interface to the content management system (CMS) was available in a range of languages and that the contact directory for use across the business was available in all languages spoken across the business.

After a short period of review and reference site visits, we selected RedDot’s CMS software, and shortly afterwards, work began on implementation with our RedDot systems integration partner, Corporate Document Services (CDS).

Building on key strengths

In redesigning the new intranet, we were keen to minimise the impact of this change on the business and to avoid losing any

of the perceived strengths of the existing intranet. The early requirements definition and design testing phase, therefore, focused on what we needed to keep, what we needed to build upon and what we needed to enhance.

The navigational structure of the existing intranet mirrored the organisational structure of the business with each process and nearly every operating company within Europe owning its own ‘sub site’ within the structure. Although this approach has fallen out of favour with some companies, we found that, given the matrix style of our organisational structure, this approach offered a number of benefits.

First, employees of the various operating companies or processes tended to identify themselves as ‘belonging’ to that specific operating company or process, with each intranet site having very specific content and applications. Few existing business processes or applications, moreover, were shared between the departments.

Second, the sponsors could readily identify the benefits of having an intranet site for their own area of the business and were thus better placed to appoint resources to manage their site.

The third main benefit we saw with mirroring the organisational structure of our company was that the webmasters could easily relate to managing an area of content that corresponded with the area of the business in which they worked. Aligning with the organisational structure worked for us, allowing us to gain rapid traction in encouraging business units and operating companies to establish a presence on the intranet and to build on that presence.

The most significant strength identified with the existing approach to managing the intranet, however, was that the granular governance framework already in place provided a strong foundation for the adoption and development of the new system.

In particular, the existing intranet policy required that intranet sites were only created once the senior manager proposing the new site had submitted a detailed benefits case. Once approved by a central team, the site was then created centrally to ensure consistency in design and navigation, before being handed over to the webmaster following a training session.

This approach helped to ensure that the new site contributed to the objectives of the department in question and, in turn, the objectives of the business as whole. Business cases also identified the metrics by which the success of the site could be judged and created realistic expectations as to the volume of usage we could reasonably expect individual sub-sites to attract.

The existing intranet Policy also clearly defined intranet roles and responsibilities as shown in figure one.

Senior management sponsorship

Success in intranet initiatives (and most other IT projects) is often dependent on the level of senior management support and enthusiasm it is able to command. Indeed, a lack of senior management sponsorship is one of the most frequently cited causes of project failure. Gaining strong support from the senior management teams, therefore, was very high on our list of objectives from the outset – but it quickly became clear that sponsorship could not be taken for granted

Senior managers frequently needed to be convinced of the benefits of the intranet initiative, so it became the joint responsibility of the intranet manager, the central team and the regional and local intranet coordinators to reinforce the understanding of the role the intranet should play.

We knew from the start that passive sponsorship and tokenism were real threats and that we needed to guard against them. Our experiences revealed that these threats could be mitigated by clearly communicating the responsibilities associated with the role of sponsor and maintaining clearly documented guidelines.

Our approach to maintaining senior management support and sponsorship has been to demonstrate regularly how the intranet has met its objectives, by measuring success against the metrics established in the original benefits case and relaying success stories from elsewhere in the business. Meetings with the sponsors also provided opportunities to gather new requirements and, by fulfilling those requirements responsively, to further enhance the position of the intranet as a tool for delivering our business objectives.

Evolving roles

Throughout the implementation of the new intranet, and as the only full-time employee working on the intranet, my role as intranet manager evolved from a project management position during the implementation phase, to a training and support role immediately prior to launch and during the first few months following launch – when intranet webmasters around the business were getting used to the new system. Later, when the dust had settled some months after launch, it became a more general management role.

The key responsibilities of the intranet manager role are:

Driving the wider adoption of the intranet and its continuing development;
Driving the creation of an appropriate governance structure;
Acting as an interface between sponsors, coordinators and intranet webmasters;
Providing interface design for the intranet and ensuring conformance to accessibility requirements;
Building a community of contributors to the intranet;
Providing support to that community;
Ensuring the adherence of content to accessibility requirements and usability guidelines.

In order to achieve these objectives, one of the fundamental responsibilities of the intranet manager is to understand the business priorities of the management teams (potential intranet site sponsors) at a global level and ensure the intranet plays a role in achieving these objectives.

Following the launch of the new intranet, encouraging its coordinated growth centrally with a small third-party team became increasingly difficult, given the constraints of language, time zones and varying cultural approaches to managing and progressing projects. In recognition of the importance of engaging webmasters and employees alike in creating culturally relevant content, two new tiers in the governance structure were created. These roles are regional intranet coordinator and local intranet coordinator. As with all other intranet roles these responsibilities are part-time roles of existing employees.

The regional intranet coordinators are primarily responsible for:

Driving the usage and growth of the intranet at a regional level;
Providing advocacy and evangelism for the intranet to the senior management team at a regional level;
Managing communications between the central intranet team and the local intranet coordinators for larger developments where required.

Regular contact between the central team and the regional intranet co-ordinators is essential in gathering new regional business requirements and ensuring the network of sponsorship is maintained.

The local intranet coordinators, meanwhile, ensure that intranet webmasters at different sites are trained and that support is delivered in local languages. They are essentially part-time intranet managers, providing decentralised support to end users and intranet contributors.

The danger of a fully centralised intranet is that it is perceived by those in the more remote offices as being ‘irrelevant’ to them or even imposed from above without really fulfilling or even recognising their particular needs. Local coordinators guard against that view and provide vital local understanding of the culture of the countries and offices in which they are based – essential in creating an intranet site that fulfils local needs.

The key responsibilities of local internet coordinators are:

Providing advocacy to local sponsors and webmasters;
Translating training material and announcements into local language;
Training local intranet webmasters and content contributors;
Creating a network of local administration evangelists;
Providing ‘health-check feedback’ to the central intranet manager and providing early warnings of potential problems;
Creating a local support network and providing support in local language;
Co-ordinating requests for new sites, content and applications;
Conducting usability testing and gathering user feedback, reporting results back to the central team;
Conducting local user requirement-gathering exercises.

Through the local intranet coordinators, all operating companies across all geographies ‘own’ the applications on the intranet, by providing the interface translations and informing the central team of any unique local requirements (for example, Herr and Frau in title selection for Germany, different date formats YYYY-MM-DD or DD-MM-YYYY, and the number of fields required for address forms).

Our intranet webmasters, meanwhile, are typically not ‘technical people’ (in a web design sense), but are content experts within the business. As such, they are responsible only for the content of their pages, not the design of the interface or the navigation. However, because they collect feedback from their business areas and report back to the central team, they indirectly influence this area.

The roles of the intranet webmasters are:

Ensuring content complies with the requirements of the intranet policy and guidelines;
Ensuring all pages display the correct metadata (enforced through the RedDot CMS);
Promoting new content to their audiences;
Attending ‘webmasters’ forums’ to share best practice and success stories with their counterparts in other regions and departments.

Clear ‘ownership’ of every page of content and application on the site is essential in gaining the trust of users and is the responsibility of the intranet webmaster community. Visible ownership of all content further enhances the value of the intranet by putting business users in contact with subject experts and specialists within the business. This capability is further enhanced on the intranet by linking the content author’s and webmaster’s names directly into the global contact directory and search engine.

The content matrix shown in figure two provides guidance about who owns content and the language this should be made available in.

To engender a sense of ownership of the intranet across all of the operating companies, all staff within the business are involved in managing their details within the intranet contact directory. This multi-lingual directory is the main component of ‘level four’ content that requires user input and continued maintenance.

The power of networking

Building a ‘community of practice’ among the intranet webmaster community is vital to create a sense of shared responsibility for maintaining and improving the intranet. It is essential that successes are built upon, best practices developed and shared and any mistakes made along the way are highlighted so that webmasters can benefit from the experiences of others.

We have found that this information is shared best in regular meetings where intranet webmasters from around the businesses are invited to join a session on topics such as usability and requirements gathering from users and site sponsors.

Human nature often dictates that if an employee is unable to quickly find an answer to a pressing question, they will utilise their ‘social network’ instead of a business information network. In other words, they will simply ask someone they believe may have an answer, rather than attempt to find an answer themselves by searching the intranet. By building a network of ‘intranet evangelists’ within the department administration teams around the business, they are able to turn to a network of informed intranet advocates to point them in the right direction. Most typically, these roles are fulfilled by departmental administrators, secretaries and personal assistants.

Future directions

Building upon the success of its initial implementation, the Electrocomponent Group’s global intranet continues on an evolutionary path, using feedback gathered in continuous usability testing by experts and information provided by the local intranet coordinators and intranet webmasters.

Future developments will focus on the creation of tools to improve efficiency and knowledge sharing. Where the intranet is not currently enhancing the daily productivity of employees, it soon will do!

Stephen Musselwhite is group intranet project manager at the Electrocomponents Group. He can be contacted at stephen.musselwhite@electrocomponents.com

Roles and responsibilities

Intranet site sponsor: Commission the creation of an intranet site, complete the benefits case for the creation of the site and appoint a webmaster to manage the content of the site.

Intranet manager: Act as the interface between the intranet sponsors and the webmasters. Gain support from the sponsors of intranet sites. Provide support for the intranet webmasters and coordinate developments with the regional and local intranet coordinators.

Intranet webmaster: Manage content on the intranet. Following the guidelines as documented in the intranet guidelines document to ensure content adheres to the group intranet policy.

Intranet author: To provide content to the intranet webmasters in accordance with the policy.