At the Digital Leadership Forum, Klaus Kraigher, Head of Communication at Energie Agentur Österreich, will chair a roundtable discussion on podcasts. Volker interviewed Klaus and asked about his experiences with their podcast Petajoule.

Can you tell us a little bit about your podcast,
the content and strategy behind it?

We see our podcast Petajoule as a tool to address our stakeholders. The aim is to reach Austrian decision makers in the energy sector.

As you can easily imagine, these decision makers are much sought-after people, all of them confronted with an overwhelming amount of information, but they have little time. So another evening event with panel discussion was not an option for us and we had to look for more innovative methods.

We would like to reach these people with highly complex and often controversial topics and draw their attention to the Austrian Energy Agency, its services and experts. And we would like to do this when the target group is receptive to it.

This is why we have taken the Austrian Energy Agency’s strategy “We provide answers for a climate-neutral energy future” literally and launched Petajoule – the first Austrian podcast on energy.

How does the production process work in your organization?

We started in 2019: From the logo to the editorial plan, we did everything in-house and then launched Season 1. In 2020 we decided to do another season due to the success. Our goal is to produce about 10 episodes per season.

The most time-consuming part is often the search for a recording date with our guests. Of course there is also a lot of brain power in the conception of the episodes, the creation of a rough outline of the discussion and the briefing with guests. The recording itself takes about an hour and it takes place in our office, in any meeting room that is currently available. For the editing, processing, putting online and answering comments, as the podcast is now well shared, we need a maximum of two days.

What are your top tips for organizations considering a podcast?

Think carefully about who you want to address and whether you have content for this target group or how complex it is to create this content. The Austrian Energy Agency, for example, has around 80 employees from a wide range of disciplines who provide scientific advice to politics, business, administration and international organisations. We can therefore access a wide range of projects, papers as well as studies and use this knowledge for the podcast. This works well because we explicitly address a expert audience. If, on the other hand, you have to research each episode of a podcast from scratch, and perhaps also produce it in a more entertaining way for a broad audience, the effort increases enormously.

Another important point: Define a communication strategy or measures to make your podcast known to the desired target group.

A podcast lives from authenticity and in our case from in-depth expert know-how. A little slip of the tongue and a few “uh’s” are ok. We only cut larger verbal mishaps. And: Think carefully about how you deal with approval processes – because subsequent change requests are difficult to implement.

Which equipment are you using for the podcast?

We use USB-Micros, which we have ordered from Amazon, and Adobe Audition. Important is the podcast hosting platform, were we rely on Podigee.

Thank you, Klaus, for the interview.

Der Beitrag Thinking of producing a corporate Podcast? Here are things to consider… erschien zuerst auf Advatera.

Ellen came up with some very good reasons why internal search engines don’t match up with the expectations employees have. I want to add one very simple reason which I believe can be good explanation for employees asking for a Google alike search experience on Intranets.

There are two main search patterns:

• first pattern search
• known item search

First pattern means, you are happy with any search result that gives you a good answer. For example: searching for a recipe with having specific ingredients in mind. The first result shown in Google which is a good match with the ingredients you have in mind, is a good result for you. There might be thousands of good results.

Known item search means, you are looking for that one exact document or information and of course the actual version of it. So with the recipe example it would mean: you are looking for that one recipe how your grandmother always made the dish. You won’t find it in Google easily (even if your grandmother would have put it online somewhere).

You use Google a lot for first pattern searches whereas Intranet search is way more often used for that one single truth type of information. So Intranet search is more often a known item search.

Actually about 70% of searches inside the organization are known item searchs whereas just around 30% in web search are that pattern. Of course, every search engine has much more troubles finding the single truth information rather coming up with thousands of somehow alike documents.

Maybe that helps understanding why intranet or enterprise search is often rated bad in comparsion to web search.

Some literature

• Here is a study comparing known-item vs. first pattern search in a library: http://searchstudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Pre-print_Behnert_Lewandowski_2017_Known-items-69091.pdf

Der Beitrag Why intranet search is not Google erschien zuerst auf Advatera.

Traditional communications with stakeholders has seen dramatic changes in the sources and channels for information that people trust. Anybody can say anything regardless if it is true or not. But who holds the “truth”? More people trust search engines than human editors. Two third of the general population find leaked information more believable than press statements [Edelman Trust Barometer]. Corporate communications must strengthen its understanding of the public opinion to navigate.

Louis de Schorlemer co-chairs the EACD Working Group Stakeholder Insights and Analysis since 2006. He serves on the board of directors of Gault & Millau, a tasting agency, and has held senior international communication roles with Sibelco, Cargill and Gallup.

Der Beitrag Food for thought: Upholding a reputation of truth in corporate communications erschien zuerst auf Advatera.

Two constructive days with Advatera and digital managers from all parts of Europe

On June 6th & 7th, 2016 digital managers from all over Europe met at the Digital Leadership Forum hosted by the expert network Advatera, as it has been our annually conference since 2013. It was another productive and successful event, where practicing experts were able to share their knowledge and experiences as well as make new contacts.

Monday, June 6th – Workshop Day

A focus on people during digital change

The workshop with Tania Tasheva on the topic of establishing a digital culture at Heineken kicked off the Digital Leadership Conference. In her position as change and communication manager Tania focuses on structural and digital change in the organization. Her workshop explained why people are such a critical factor during change. New work processes always bring the end of established processes, and persuasive responses to the question “Why change?” are critical in determining the success or failure of such change.

Using drones to produce content and virtual assistants offer new opportunities

Digital communication requires first-class current content, which has to be able to achieve high visibility on the internet. Reinhard Lanner former digital manager of the Salzburger Land Tourismus and now entrepreneur at workersonthefield introduced two exciting topics and innovative solutions:

• Videos shot by drones allow for cost reduction when producing visual content. Professional videos, such as this example from the tourism industry require an investment of only a few thousand Euros due to technical innovation and change.

Live videos to publish on channels like Facebook or YouTube can be produced more cost efficiently as well. They create a lot of attention and are an excellent opportunity for creating emotional connections.

• During the second part of the workshop Reinhard discussed the opportunities of virtual assistants (knowledge navigators) like Siri or Google Now, which are rapidly gaining importance in making (commercial) content discoverable online. His examples illustrated the clean outline of content for these services and their effect on the discoverability of contents on the Web.

When do employees care about the intranet?

Cary Rueda, communication expert of the British oil and gas company Petrofac, devoted his workshop to the motivation of employees to use internal digital communication channels.

His motto for digital communication in organizations is “Your child will follow your example, not your advice”. Employees will only use and accept the intranet if those responsible for technology and digital change act as role models. Employees are more likely to stop attaching documents and enter them in the digital collaboration platform instead, if those in charge of technology do it as well.

In addition, participants in his workshops created a campaign on how to motivate employees to use digital communication. The basis for this assignment was a global organization in a dire economic state with the added challenge of having to integrate two different cultures. The intranet is well equipped technologically and content wise, but was only used sparsely by employees during the first year. Four groups endeavored to determine how acceptance of the intranet could be measured and improved on a sustainable basis. Of course, there was a price for the best campaign.

Tuesday, June 7th – Conference Day

The conference began with a round table discussion, where topics such as these three were debated:

• Lean management and agility modelsGerhard Wehe investigated the validity of lean management and agility models.Many organizations work with agencies or with their internal IT department using modern management methods, such as SCRUM or lean management. Initial euphoria has been replaced by reality, however: changing the project management style is not a solution for all problems. Providers often claim to practice agile project management, for example, but the implementation of projects uses different classic processes – a step back into the traditional waterfall model.Organizations also report a high testing expense when using agile methods. Byers used to test only during final acceptance. Today, testing of interim results is shifted to applications or from IT to the specialized department, which often lacks organization or personnel – not to mention quality management or the establishment of a professional testing department.

• Digital asset managementPeter Hofer discussed digital asset management at his table. Organizations have to decide how to best store media (pictures, videos, texts,..), so that they are available worldwide for download and further use – including automated information regarding media rights and possibly even automated interfaces to different channels. As an example, pictures are not only posted on the internet, but also used in press releases or product catalogues.Technological systems by themselves are not an appropriate solution, unless organizational change occurs at the same time. These systems can only bring competitive advantage if they are actively used, which requires work in the areas of strategy and motivation.

• Newsroom concepts for digitally positioned organizationsRichard Howard‘s round table discussed newsroom concepts as the basis for all organizational communication.Unlike classic communication models, the newsroom does not aim to develop specific content for different channels of communication, but to identify topics that are relevant for the entire organization as well as business partners, customers, and the general public. Newsrooms make it possible for integrated stories to be developed and distributed through different channels. They bring different departments to one table and thereby structure the communication culture as well as the knowledge management in an organization by bundling resources and making them transparent.Newsrooms are an appropriate efficiency tool for not only general organizational communication, but also for agile project management. When implementing newsroom concepts, regular face-to-face meetings and digital communication go hand in hand.

After the round table sessions many talks where held in plenary. Including those:

Julia Sloans of EY discussed the three levels of digital change in her presentation:

• The purpose, and therefore the value, of change has to be obvious to each employee (which, by the way, very well matches Azfarul Islam’s approach „Train the why, not the how“).

• Trust is a very important value in digital change. Julia reinforced this fact with several studies, which showed that teams with a higher level of trust also perform better. She demonstrated the level of trust to the audience in a live example: Each participant asked their neighbor three questions about their childhood, with the third one being rather personal. By answering those three questions the audience could experience the trust level live.

• The third level of change is creativity. Julia provided a live example here as well – this time participants were to draw their neighbor. This is an easy task for children, as they simply use their creativity. Adults often lose their trust in their own creativity, however. It is therefore important to foster employee creativity and therefore motivation in workshops. Creative people are usually more likely to be open for change!

Change communication: Information gaps block change

• Cornelia Erschen of Roche Diagnostics discussed the importance of complete and seamless communication for the success of change. One of the most common problems during change processes is that employees have a lot less information than management at the time when decisions are made. The purpose of and reasons for change are therefore not always clear to employees, and there is no motivation to actively participate.It is the job of internal communication experts to fill any information gaps between management and employees during change processes. It is critical to communicate not only at the beginning and the conclusion of change projects, but also during difficult phases throughout the process.
  It is just as important to paint a positive picture of the new situation using appropriate communication measures. Cornelia named the following components as being essential:
  • Spreading success stories
  • Creating rituals – by celebrating successes, for example
  • Recognizing the participants of change processes

The member of parliament: Digital change needs a political framework

• Eva-Maria Himmelbauer, a member of the Austrian parliament, spoke about the importance of an appropriate framework – provided through legislation, among others – to ensure successful digital change. Further initiatives regarding topics such as cyber security, broadband availability, and data security are needed, especially on a European level.

Loyalty loop: Sustainable customer retention instead of traditional distribution

• Adriaan Bloem of MBC demonstrated that the traditional sales funnel is „old school“ and largely outdated. Successful organizations have to start considering the loyalty loop instead, because retaining customers and motivating them to make another purchase is always more cost effective than finding new customers.
  Adriaan describes another effect using the Dunning-Kruger-Curve. Those with little experience often have  more trust in their own abilities and performance. As they gather more experience they realize that they don’t know everything after all. Even real experts often realize that they only have partial knowledge regarding a specific topic. What we already know from web designers – the nephew of the CEO is still the best web designer – also holds true for Facebook & Co. (and other areas of the digital world).Adriaan also urges us not to take buzzwords too seriously:
  • Big data simply stands for „more data than we are used to“
  • Cloud means that servers „are probably not in our own building“
  • Content marketing stands for „marketing with content“
  • And block chain stands for „something like bitcoin in a different industry, but nobody really knows“

Social Media Case Study

• Kate Kahle of CERN took a closer look at the effects of social contents. Large pictures have a huge impact on the number of likes, comments, shares, clicks, and even on time spent on the site. Videos, on the other hand, have less impact on likes and comments, but more on time spent and retention rate. Discussions lead to a large number of comments, but participants rarely keep clicking. The retention rate is lower in discussions than with pictures or videos as well, according to analyses done by CERN.

The Vienna Experience

As always, the Digital Leadership Forum was accompanied by events in order to provide participants an intense Vienna experience. This year’s Vienna tour focused on Jugendstil. Our event was held right across form the “Secession” – the exhibition hall formed by artists around 1900 for the purpose of advancing Jugendstil and Art Deco. The artists realized as well that they could achieve more together than as lone warriors – the digital world refers to collaboration for the same reason.

The first day of the Digital Leadership Forum 2016 pleasantly ended with a get-together in the Museumsquartier on a beautiful summer evening. The conference day concluded on the patio of the Novomatic Forum.

We are already excited about the next Digital Leadership Forum – see you in Vienna on May 15^th & 16^th, 2017!

***

High resolution pictures from the conference are on our media asset platform from mediamid.

Der Beitrag Recap Digital Leadership Forum – Conference 2016 erschien zuerst auf Advatera.

The odds are that many employees are already using personal OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Apps or Office 365 accounts to sync data and perform collaborative work. They are simply doing it without official support from you and, therefore, with no oversight. The question then isn’t whether you should be looking at cloud solutions for your intranet, but what the best way is to capitalize on the technology, while avoiding the most common pitfalls.

The Good Stuff

One of the main advantages of using cloud applications on your intranet is that they can have a positive effect on productivity. Of course, this depends on using the right workflows and methods. In a best-case scenario collaborative productivity apps such as Docs from Google can significantly reduce the need for in-person meetings, multiple versions of documents or time consuming round-robin style consultation, rewriting and contribution.

Apart from the the factors that make a cloud intrant appealing to users, there are quite a few compelling reasons your IT support department may like using cloud applications for your intranet. If you are using services hosted in a public cloud from Google, Microsoft or Amazon a lot of maintenance drudgery goes right out the door. You don’t have to worry about software upgrades, compatibility or dealing with peak loads on your network.

Thanks to hybrid cloud implementations you can even integrate cloud services that look and act as if they were running on your local network, but are actually a virtual service that can expand and contract seamlessly as demand from your users go through peaks and troughs. You only pay for what you need and you don’t have to over capitalize on servers and other network technology to deal with occasional peak demand.

Deployment of cloud applications can also happen at a much higher pace, even in large enterprises. From the cloud application provider’s side the infrastructure is basically always on tap, so the main time commitment comes from integrating your existing intranet with the software from the cloud application provider.

Some of the features provided by cloud applications such as DropBox are simply not available or easy to implement in a traditional intranet setting. DropBox is far more advanced than a shared network drive on an intranet and doesn’t need you to jump through hoops so that people outside the intranet can access the data. The same goes for collaborative cloud apps such as Google Docs. Trying to achieve that sort of functionality on your intranet independently is a tall order, if at all possible.

These different advantages add up to what’s probably the most commonly cited reason for cloud technology implementation: saving money.

Computing power and applications become a utility like electricity and water. You don’t need to have your own coal station of water plant, so why have an expensive data center whose full capacity you only need some of the time?

The Bad

Many people, especially those that aren’t particularly computer savvy, are loath to upgrade things like Windows and Office. This is understandable, because new versions mean changes to the interface, new features and new ways to do old things. This adds additional pressure that most working adults would prefer to avoid.

The problem is that cloud applications are running on a remote computer and the user has no control over things like updates. Some users may find it unpleasant to open their productivity tools to find that things are no longer the same compared to the day before. There’s not much you can do if the application is running on a server you don’t control, but if you are running a cloud application on your own servers for those on the intranet, think twice about the pros and cons for a given update. Add features in a controlled and logical way, allowing users to habituate to these changes.

In certain circumstances, especially when it comes to niche proprietary software, achieving interoperability between cloud applications and your other systems could be a challenge. However, cloud app providers are often willing to assist with these issues and it’s worth approaching them for help. Many cloud infrastructure products such as Microsoft Azure are very customizable, but need developers experienced with cloud technology. Something which may not be part of your in-house skill pool.

The issue of control is probably the most contentious one for network admins and their organizations when it comes to cloud computing. Where is your data? Is it safe? What happens if the apps go down?

Although in practice specialist companies like Google and Microsoft can provide better uptime and security than you could, there is still a psychological disjuncture and a legitimate concern about cybersecurity to contend with.

Even it turned out to be a false alarm, reports about stolen user account on DropBox gave the whole community a sharp wakeup call in 2014.

Finally, although shifting to cloud application should be cheaper, pay close attention to the terms of the service agreements. There may be hidden costs that aren’t apparent at first glance. Don’t assume that licences for cloud applications cover the use cases you think they do. This is a potentially costly mistake that too many people overlook.

Conclusion

Cloud apps can be a great boon to productivity and reduce costs, but doing so successfully requires patience, research and a realistic game plan. Are they good for your intranet? Ultimately that depends on how you use them, but those that get it right never have a reason to look back.

Der Beitrag The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Is a Cloud Intranet Good for your Company? erschien zuerst auf Advatera.

Striving for Simplicity

Aside from the convenience of the anytime/anywhere access enabled by using the software over the Internet, increased productivity is considered one of the main benefits of moving to the cloud. Practically speaking, whether or not productivity increases by using SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions can be summed up by the simple question: Does this make my job easier or not?

The logic here is that the simpler the user experience, the greater the yield in productivity—whether it’s an administrator adding a new user to the organization’s network or upper management using Google Docs to draft policy and procedure documents. Both Microsoft and Google have invested heavily in trying to make Office 365 and Google Apps top-notch when it comes to keeping user and administrator experiences as straightforward as possible—but have they really succeeded?

Constant New Features Can Mean Clutter

My main objection to this premise of simplicity and one of the challenges organizations face when subscribing to cloud vendors is the ongoing addition of features that automatically pop up on subscribers’ desktops. Marketed as an advantage by both providers (who doesn’t love product enhancements?), these automated updates can counteract the ease of use both Google and Microsoft aim for.

If you’re using Microsoft SharePoint in your organization, I would say from experience that it’s more effective the more functions you turn off. The more active features you have, the more complicated usage gets and the more clutter those using the service have to deal with.

As with the classic Microsoft applications like Excel and Word: Many people just use a fraction of the available features because an overload of unnecessary functions means a loss in user experience that ultimately leads to the tool being less productive than it otherwise would be.

Of course, this isn’t to say that new features are inherently undesirable―quite to the contrary. But you need a structured way to roll them out that gives organizations enough time to decide which features they’ll want to keep and prepare for and which ones they’d prefer to ignore.

Better Coordinating with Customers

With the Office 365 Roadmap, Microsoft took an important step toward better selling new features to existing users. The roadmap serves as a detailed calendar that lets users know which updates (at various stages, from development to being fully available) subscribers can expect a few months in advance. Another addition, Office 365 First Release, gives users the option to receive updates to the service two weeks ahead of the default release cycle. Jake Zborowski, a group product manager for Office 365, said in a blog post years ago that the changes to Microsoft’s update communication were made in response to user feedback and are meant to give subscribers “the ability to consume change in small chunks”.

But arguably, this isn’t enough. With in-house solutions, organizations always had control over what was happening in the system―something that’s lost when users receive new features automatically under the SaaS model. But given that when intranet tools like SharePoint implement a universal update it affects every user within an organization, a mere preview of the scheduled releases as provided by the Office 365 Roadmap doesn’t truly coordinate releases with customers. It’s essentially a calendar that allows users to see what’s going to happen, with the option for it to happen two weeks ahead of schedule but no equivalent option to delay updating if an organization isn’t ready.

Google offers a similar release calendar, but with one significant improvement: Google Apps subscribers can choose between two release tracks, with the Scheduled Release track giving administrators the option to delay the release of new features to other users within the organization, which, according to Google, is meant to give you “extra time to train your support staff and prepare users for the coming changes.”

The Bottom Line

If new features are meant to enhance user experience, then their release has to be better coordinated with subscribers. While the Office 365 Roadmap does improve visibility around service updates, a calendar of “what’s coming” doesn’t give organizations much, if any, control over how to incorporate new features into their day-to-day business.

Der Beitrag Chaos in the Cloud: How New Features Can Impair User Experience in SharePoint and Google Apps erschien zuerst auf Advatera.

If your business has a social media account, I’ve got some bad news for you – it doesn’t belong there. Social media has been conceived, designed and built for humans to interact with other humans – not for businesses to reach their customers.

But while the social media jungle is not a corporation’s natural habitat, it’s not all bad news. With a bit of camouflage it’s possible to blend in and go undercover.  And like anyone going undercover, a back-story is essential – including a character, a history and a set of values that can be easily understood.

Where to start?  With Greek philosophy of course…

In the words of Socrates – Know Thyself.  Or in this case – know thy brand.

When I start writing for a corporate social media account, the first thing I always do is find out a bit more about the company’s core values.  What’s its USP?  Why do people value it? How does it sit in the market place?

To turn that information into something useful (and more relatable), I then go one step further and imagine that company or brand as a person.

How?  By asking some simple questions:

• If your company was a person, how old is it?
• Is it male or female?
• How educated is it?

How does it compare with its peers? What do other people value about it? Does it have any brothers or sisters?

What are its parents like? (This may feel a bit weird, but stick with it…)

With a bit of imagination, it’s possible to build up a very clear picture of who your business is and what it might sound like.

Eventually, you might be able to write a character statement like this one.  This is Petra and she’s the ‘voice’ of Radio 4 Extra on Twitter:

Because I could put Petra in the real world, and because I knew her core values were the same as those as the brand she represented, I knew exactly what to write – and how to write it.  All I had to think was ‘what would Petra say’.

It helped me deal with online criticism:

And it helped me interact with our competitors:

Rather than ‘selling’ our content, the brand was ‘talking’ about our content in a friendly and informal way – with a human tone of voice.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to finding an authentic tone of voice.  To truly masquerade as a human, it’s also necessary to know what your surroundings are (the social media platform), who you’re talking to (your customers) and who you want to attract (new business leads).

And if you don’t have time to work out a proper character for your social media account, then this golden rule should at least improve your chances of sounding like a human.

Put simply – Read your posts out loud.  If it doesn’t sound right coming out of your mouth, it probably doesn’t sound right for your business.

Thankfully there is a lot of advice about this that you can read online, and these are two of my favourites:

• Data-Backed Keys To Making Your Voice Stand Out From The Online Noise: https://blog.bufferapp.com/sound-human-stand-social-noise
• Twitter is an editorial medium and brands must get tone of voice right: http://wallblog.co.uk/2013/02/01/twitter-is-an-editorial-medium-and-brands-must-get-tone-of-voice-right/

Der Beitrag Sounding like a human on social media – BBC Radio 4 Case Study erschien zuerst auf Advatera.

As a manager, it is much more important to motivate your team than to monitor every minute detail of your operative business. Selecting the right people and motivating them not only increases productivity, but innovative potential as well.

Intrinsic motivation, which is driven by finding one’s work inherently rewarding, and extrinsic motivation―working towards external rewards―go hand in hand and need to be balanced in order to be most effective.

Why Immediate Feedback Works Best

Praise, giving an employee positive feedback on tasks well done, and potential bonuses are all part of extrinsic motivation.

All too often, these forms of motivation are reduced to an annual performance review. This approach doesn’t work, because one key factor of successful motivation is continuity. Nobody would play Tetris or any other game if the feedback for making it to the next level lagged behind by a whole year.

Social media tools part of the organization’s internal communication strategy can help here, but more important is a cultural shift towards an organization that welcomes feedback. Often, middle management is reluctant to embrace such measures, because they feel that open feedback threatens their power as the organization’s gatekeepers. They decide whether to praise an employee or not―while social media enables employees to praise their colleagues independently. Of course, such bottom-up feedback was possible in the past as well, but a “well done” said during a coffee break is much less visible than one published on an organization’s intranet.

A good example of the concerns that can be associated with such internal communication is the recent Google incident during which employees voluntarily shared their salary information on the organization’s social media platform in an attempt to discover potential discrepancies in pay. I won’t be the judge whether this was the right thing to do, but it certainly shows how perceived unfairness can lead to negative motivation.

But aside from providing a platform for extrinsic motivation such as direct praise, internal communications can play an important part in fostering intrinsic motivation as well. Participation in internal communications can influence job satisfaction itself, as well as the perception of fairness, ethical standards, and team spirit.

How Smart Internal Communication Empowers Employees

Smart internal communication can empower your whole team by ensuring that your employees are committed to achieving great results so that they can be shared. Therefore internal communication needs to:

• Understand the employee audience and their information needs. Not every employee has the same information need. Make a list of stakeholders, group them according to their requirements, and select the right channels and content for each group.

• Enable leaders to motivate people. Not every manager reached his or her current position because of great communication skills. Many underestimate the value of internal communication and could benefit from leadership trainings that specifically address good communication. The same motivators that work for employees also work for their leaders: Motivate them by giving immediate feedback

• A good practice is to implement an information seismograph and to check at least once a month which recently published information worked well, which didn’t and why. This helps managers to understand what type of content is successful.

• Choose the channels wisely. Although internal communications are shifting to digital channels more and more, you need to ensure that every employee is reached. Because every employee has a mobile device nowadays, a good starting point is opening the internal communication channel to private mobile devices.

By keeping these guidelines in mind, a well-thought-out internal communications system can be a source of the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation that allows your team to reach its highest potential and push the envelope of what the organization can achieve.

Photo: shutterstock / Catalin Grigoriu

Originally published on LinkedIn

Further reading:

• How to Manage Outside Innovation
  http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-to-manage-outside-innovation/
• Accidental Innovation: Seeing Potential in the Unexpected
  https://www.advatera.com/en/accidental-innovation-potential-in-the-unexpected/

Der Beitrag Managing as Motivating – How Internal Communication Can Empower Your Team erschien zuerst auf Advatera.

it’s not about filling a funnel. It’s about guiding the buyers through a journey,

said Erik Hartman at this year’s Digital Leadership Forum in Vienna.

Let’s take a closer look at the meaning behind his words and how we can improve our understanding of the buying process. Conversion funnels are an important marketing model, as they allow for easy tracking of the consumer buying process with statistical tools. They are often divided into different purchase steps, as in the graphic below:

However, the consumer decision making process is usually much more complex than can be adequately illustrated by the funnel model. Consumers look at competitors, compare prices and may get recommendations from other customers.

In addition, the conversion funnel ends with the customer’s purchase, overlooking the crucial post-purchase phase. It is during this phase that customers may need support, decide whether they are happy or unhappy with the product, review the product and recommend it to others – or don’t.

Depending on the product category, this phase is also important for winning recurring customers. The best tactics for generating high conversion rates through the funnel may not be the same tactics necessary to ensure that you have happy, long-term customers.

Customer Journey Mapping

Here, the more comprehensive customer journey mapping approach can help by paying attention to the post-purchase phase and its implications.

Depending on the involvement the customer has, the journey can be longer or shorter. For high involvement products like cars, it might be a long process consisting of the initial search for information, looking for alternatives and, finally, complex decision making. Marketers need to understand these steps and try to guide to the potential customer in the best way. While the conversion funnel is focused on maximizing the ratio of visitors who make a purchase to total visitors, journey mapping is more fine-tuned and can be used, for example, to identify the right information to give the consumer at the right time to be at an advantage when the consumer makes a comparison with the competitor. Similarly, using journey mapping for the development of a clever retargeting tactic that reminds the customer of your offer can help address customer retention goals in a way the conversion funnel can’t.

Customer journeys are more complex than funnels

You can already see that thinking in terms of customer journeys is much more complex than in funnels. For this reason, it is good practice to think about the different steps in a customer journey and to then map out some typical journeys of your customers in workshops. As a guide, you would normally use steps like those from Kotler to represent the top of the chart:

Below, you then map out the exact steps a customer has taken, as detailed as possible and including not just those steps the customer has taken online, but offline as well. Because every customer is unique, you should map out at least 5 to 10 different journeys. Then think about how you can help the customer make the right decision during every step – keeping your digital platforms in mind.

Interviewing some customers to gather data is a great idea. A newer research method, called diary studies, asks customers to install a specific app that regularly asks them about their current stage in the process.

cXplore, a customer experience mapping tool by the Austrian start-up poolpilots, is an example of such an app and allows you to receive feedback about your customers’ journeys as they unfold. This means you can react to findings quickly using your digital outlets.

As Lee Odden elaborates in Optimizing Social Media Across the Customer Lifecycle,

“Consumers are empowered to publish now more than ever and increasingly expect social interactions from their friends, co-workers, and favorite brands. These expectations and interactions occur beyond the path to purchase and provide companies with an opportunity to leverage social content and engagement beyond the sales cycle to retention and advocacy.”

This is not to say that funnels don’t have their value. Their high tracking suitability makes them an important resource for identifying more basic purchasing dynamics. But focusing solely on funnels is inadequate. Customer journey mapping can give you the in-depth insights into your brand that you need to adjust your digital outreach campaigns in a way that will not only increase your sales, but allow you to form long-term relationships with happy, recurring customers.

Do you track already your customer journeys?

Der Beitrag The Customer Journey: Moving Beyond the Conversion Funnel erschien zuerst auf Advatera.

Avoid feature lists

Instead of writing a list of features, it is better to think about key tasks of the new intranet that will fulfill corporate goals as well as help employees in their daily work. After identifying these tasks, write short user stories (user scenarios) that exemplify them. This gives a much better overview of what the new intranet is expected to deliver.

Companies often stick to feature lists because they seem like the safest option. Feature lists mean that you can conveniently check off every feature the provider claims to have in their software. Afterwards, you can easily discuss internally why you should select this provider. However, as Aristotle has said, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts” – or in other words, the sum of all features does not guarantee that the whole business process is cohesive and will operate smoothly. For this reason, we highly suggest writing user stories – from the perspective of the actual users – rather than just feature lists.

Prepare a cost comparison template

Always send providers a structured Excel cost sheet and include that you are looking for a total cost of ownership calculation. In addition, ask providers to mention any costs you may have forgotten in your sheet. The offers of various providers tend to be so different that without such a structured cost sheet, it will be difficult for you to compare prices. We have examples of such sheets – please send us an email to info@advatera.com if you need one.

Ask for reference case studies of team members

Ask for references/case studies for the team members that are being suggested to work on your project. Providers and agencies are good at showing you general references and case studies that were perhaps completed by an entirely different team. For you, it is much more important to know the competence of the specific team being proposed for your project. By the way: This is where many agencies struggle the most during the RfP process – they often just want to send you sales managers and are very reluctant to showcase the actual team.

Intranet tender process

After evaluating the proposals, make a shortlist of about three providers and invite them each for a full-day meeting. That’s right, not just a 2-3 hour meeting – invite them for a full day. During this time, they should present their suggestions on how to solve the user and business scenarios you gave them as a challenge. Bring in different departments from your organization so that the meeting includes business and IT. Then give each user scenario presented by the various providers a score between 0 and 2. 0 means the scenario was not solved, 1 means it was solved but in a different or more complicated way than you expected, and 2 means they offered a good solution for it. This process allows you to fill out a score card that can help you in making your final decision.

The timeline for such an RfP process depends highly on the decision-making capability of your organization. We have seen decisions be made after three months or up to a full year in some cases.

>> Sample Intranet RfP (word file)

>> Sample Intranet RfP – Team CV’s and reference case studies (excel spreadsheet)

We are happy to share further material with you. Please contact info@advatera.com

Image source: Shutterstock / alphaspirit

Der Beitrag Intranet Request for Proposal (RfP) – download template erschien zuerst auf Advatera.

As Peter Drucker has said, “Don’t ignore the unexpected, it’s the richest source of innovation.”

We can see this in the way that many hugely popular products were initially invented for something else. Take Coca Cola, for example: Originally formulated by a pharmacist as a tonic to relieve headaches and anxiety, it went on to become the most popular soda in the world. Similarly, Kellogg’s Corn Flakes were not intentionally created as a breakfast cereal but were the result of the Kellogg brothersaccidentally flaking wheat while trying to make granola.

How Often Do We Look Back?

But what if the inventors of these iconic products had not seen the potential beyond their originally intended use? The question is, how often do we look back and check for unexpected successes in our digital projects? For example, by systematically looking into the analytics of our websites or intranets and asking ourselves how we can use unforeseen results to advance our project objectives. All too often, outcomes that lie outside of what we had anticipated are automatically dismissed.

While innovation can’t always be planned for, we can learn to foster the kind of vision that seeks possibility in the unexpected and examines things beyond their face value. In this way, even seeming failures can reveal hidden opportunities to improve our digital initiatives.

Additional reading on Peter Drucker’s insights into how to increase the potential for innovation by critically evaluating unanticipated events can be found here.

What Has Been Your Experience with Accidental Innovation?

Have you had any unexpected successes in your projects?

Photo: Sergey Nivens / Shutterstock

Der Beitrag Accidental Innovation: Seeing Potential in the Unexpected erschien zuerst auf Advatera.

Here are my top 3 problems in project management which should be avoided:

Friday afternoon surprise

Friday afternoon, the project is once again drastically altered; responsibilities are newly delegated; an unexpected management presentation gets added to the agenda, or the budget is reduced. Of course, right before the weekend or even a vacation.

Bas de Baar has written a book on this subject: ” Surprise! Now You’re a Software Project Manager” is a weekend read that allows newly appointed project managers to at least know the basics by Monday.

Such surprises on Friday afternoon can severely disrupt the project. Partly to blame is an overflowing inbox: The person responsible for the surprise may just want to quickly wrap up his or her emails before the weekend, and under stress, some task or responsibility may be handed off or escalated at the last minute.

Here we must check ourselves and be aware of the impact that a simple email can have. In addition, establishing a clear project structure, targeted communication with stakeholders, and a shared project culture all help to avoid surprises of this kind.

Unnecessary escalations occur more often if the project organization is not communicated clearly.

A colleague who does not know whom to contact, contacts his or her superiors or sends mass emails. If the project organization is communicated clearly, the likelihood increases that the correct person is contacted and unnecessary agitation is avoided.

Unclear budget authority in the project

Any project manager will agree that the project budget should be in the hands of the for the project responsible person or department.

The saying, “whoever has the money has the power,” is not without truth.

Of course, project management should not be based on the principle of power―but especially during a project crisis, control over the budget is worth a great deal. Divided budgets for specific responsibilities are also a feasible option. Nevertheless, I often see projects in which the budget is not in the hands of those responsible because of internal or organizational reasons.

Take a website for example: For whatever reason, the majority of the budget often lies with the IT department, even though marketing or communications are responsible for the overall project objectives. Typical of this are shadow budgets that are then used to enforce individual project objectives: Goodbye, cost accounting. Not only the organizational structure has to be clarified in project management but also the allocation of the budget.

Lack of joint understanding about the project

IT and business departments have different internal goals. Given the different responsibilities, this is rightly so. But for a joint project, it is essential that a joint understanding about the project is fostered with everyone involved―and possibly even with external interests such as software vendors and agencies. Far too often, the same thing is talked about but understood differently.

One major problem I see are the long feature request lists that often exist regarding the implementation of digital projects.

“The whole is more than the sum of its parts”, said Aristotle.

The problem is that the number of checks on the feature request list does not indicate anything about the interplay of these functions. In other words, the business process depends on a number of process steps and individual software functions. For this reason, methods such as story telling, wireframing, and prototyping have been established. These help to build a joint understanding.

What is your experience?

These are just a few examples from the Advatera Digital Managers Network. Through good project management, these problems can be avoided or at least reduced.

How did you proceed when faced with similar challenges?

Image source: stutterstock / PathDoc

Der Beitrag Why Digital Projects Go Wrong – Top 3 Obstacles in Project Management erschien zuerst auf Advatera.