Last week, a member of the Intranet Professionals Group on LinkedIn recently posed the following question:
”How can the effectivity of intranets be measured? Of course it's a matter of tasks that have to be defined individually and relatively. Apart from that: Do you know about already existing standards, maybe even programmed routines for the measurement of intranet-success? And in general: what variables would make sense to gain insight in intranet-measurement?”
Upon reflection, I posted the following reply…
When the topic of intranet metrics arises the conversation often starts with in one of two questions, namely:
1. What stats do you capture? (i.e., how many page views, how many users, who had clicked on what and so on – the data typically captured in log files.)
2. Which reporting/analytic tools are you using? (Google Analytics, Web Trends, Site Catalyst, etc.)
In a recent gathering of the Intranet Benchmarking Forum, we contemplated three main points that every Intranet Manager should be prepared to demonstrate at any time are:
1. State the current investment levels and business as usual costs
2. List current intranet services and deliverables including their benefits to the organisation
3. List additional beneficial intranet services that can be added at low cost to help the organisation improve or cut costs
Examples of things that should be on the list for items 2 and 3 (and their likely benefits) include:
- Travel Booking (saves transaction costs)
- Online Meeting Tools (saves time and travel costs)
- Live chat (employee engagement; email overload avoidance)
- Leadership online (as above)
- ‘One Source of Truth“ (can reduce risk and error, increase reputation)
- Room Booking (saves manual labor)
- On Boarding Services (enables new hires to work efficiently faster)
- Off Boarding Services (enables to minimize knowledge drain)
- HR Self Services (saves transaction costs and manual labor)
- Web Library (saves distribution costs and time on finding books, reports, etc.; avoids duplicate buying/subscriptions)
- Sell advertising space on the intranet to external organizations (actually generates income and provides benefits to employees)
So how would you go about building your intranet measurement strategy? Here are some initial thoughts to get you moving along the right path.
1. Design metrics that support your intranet strategy. Think about what you want your metrics to say and why. Ideally, your metrics will serve as a backdrop for discussing on how to take what you know now about the intranet and raising performance to provide greater business value. James Robertson has written two excellent articles that point in this direction.
• 25 reasons why saving time on your intranet is a bad metric
• Intranets: measuring before and after
2. Bite the bullet. Put in the effort to produce good metrics. If you need to collect data by hand initially, allocate the resources to do just that. Also invest time on the visual presentation too! Consider a dashboard format that guides your reader to key wins, issues or decision points. Once you’ve whet stakeholder appetites for critical information, you can leverage dashboard production stats to lobby for more automated solutions.
3. Contextualize results properly. Provide a contextual narrative to support metrics. This should include developments inside of the organization during the reporting period. The internal perspective will help flag correlations and draw out insights, but it will also help stakeholders understand value drivers instead versus basis traffic statistics.
4. Add depth by highlighting how your intranet is performing relative to industry peers. Take the time to do thorough external research and benchmarking. Tap into sources such as the Jane McConnell’s Global Intranet Survey and the Intranet Benchmarking Forum, which provides league tables for its member organizations as part of annual benchmarking.
Although your aim is alignment with internal company strategy, understanding the (often huge) differences between intranets and the reasons for these can really open your eyes to the possibilities and allow you to take a step back and assess your own company intranet more objectively.
5. Be transparent about intranet metrics. Carry your intranet dashboard around with you at all times. Incorporate a review of key performance indicators (KPIs) and key operational metrics into intranet governance meetings. Discuss intranet metrics openly – warts and all.
Further reading:
