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7 Steps For Implementing A Mobile Intranet

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7 STEPS FOR IMPLEMENTING A MOBILE INTRANET

Having an intranet that employees value and use on a daily basis — something most internal communicators hope and wish for — is possible with a mobile app solution. A mobile app solution is ideal because you can reach employees where they are — in the office, on the warehouse floor or remote.

Everyone can have the same level of access. You can also target information to specific employee audiences, and cut down on email clutter. In addition, mobile app solutions give internal communicators incredibly valuable data that can be used to gauge success and improve communications.

INTRODUCTIONImplementing a mobile intranet app might seem like a monumental undertaking. But there are steps you can take to make launching a mobile solution more manageable. Here, we’ll explore seven things you need to do when implementing a mobile intranet app. Following this advice can help set you up for success and take communicating with your employees to that fabled “next level.”

On average, Americans check their phones

96 times a day.1

Mobile — the way to go for people on the go Assuming 14 awake hours in a day, that

means we check our phones an average of once every 10 minutes.1

Sources: 1 Survey by Market Research Firm Solidea Solutions conducted August 18-20, 2019


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By 2025, almost three quarters (72.6 percent) of internet users (3.7 billion people) will access the web solely via their smartphones.2

For all the benefits of implementing a mobile intranet app, there are also many potential pitfalls. Far too many mobile implementation projects are plagued by miscommunication, confusion and lack of ownership or direction. Luckily, you can avoid these challenges when you:

On the following pages, we’ll explore each of these points and explain why they should be part of your plan. Proper planning will save you an enormous headache when it comes time for execution and doing your due diligence will pay off tenfold.

Develop thorough requirements

Involve your IT organization early and often

Engage your stakeholders

Create workstreams

Develop your content strategy

Understand your employee data

Define and evolve your metrics

3 out of 4 Americans keep their phones within reach at all times.1

of internet traffic is driven by mobile use (by the end of 2019)2

56%

Sources: 1 Survey by Market Research Firm Solidea Solutions conducted August 18-20, 20192 Statcounter Global Stats, a company that measures internet usage trends (https://gs.statcounter.com/)

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1Depending on your organization, an IT business analyst might help you to define and document these necessary elements. But it’s helpful to understand them, how they’re different and why they’re so important.

A business requirement is a business need. It describes why a solution or platform is needed, and it’s independent of a particular solution or platform. For example, a business requirement could be to build a stronger connection among employees, and help individuals find others with similar professional experience and interests.

On the other hand, a functional requirement describes “how” a system should work. For example, a list of functional requirements might be:

• Employees can search for peers online

• Employees can create, update and personalize their individual profiles

• The profiles are searchable so employees can find others with similar experience.

PLANNING

Develop thorough requirements

Success comes when you start with the end in mind — and that’s what requirements are all about. There are two different types of requirements: business/user requirements and functional/system requirements.

BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS• Represent a business need• Are independent of a solution• Describe “why”

“ As an employee, I want to be able to find other employees who have the same professional expertise as me.

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FUNCTIONAL REQUIREMENTS• Explain how a system should work • Are specific to a solution• Describe “how” the system should work

Business requirements tell the story of what problem you are solving for and why the project is important.

Functional requirements outline specific steps and describe how the product will work.

As an employee, I want to be able to look up contact info for my peers on my mobile device.

I want to have a personal profile where I can list my professional expertise.

I want peers to be able to find me by searching for my professional expertise.

We strongly recommend that you take the time to document your business requirements.

Here’s why: Your business requirements represent your overarching goals. In the case of the example above, the business requirements help achieve the goal of facilitating connections among peers. Making sure everyone is clear about your goals can make the difference between a smooth implementation and a rocky one.

Functional requirements, on the other hand, will help you evaluate the mobile intranet solutions you’re considering. Using the example above: Various mobile intranet providers offer an employee directory. But do they allow custom fields so employees can enter their areas of expertise? And are the fields searchable? Are there any limitations? Good functional requirements will help you ask the right questions so you’re assured the solution you choose accomplishes your goal — in this case, connecting colleagues with similar expertise.

“““

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• When you’ve defined requirements

• When you’re looking for IT to weigh in on technical requirements related to things like system security and authentication processes

• When you’re meeting with vendors and asking questions to evaluate their offerings

• After you’ve agreed on a vendor and start contract negotiations

• When you’re ready to officially kick off your project team

Going it alone may seem like the path of least resistance but as soon as something goes wrong — and something always goes wrong — you’ll need IT’s buy-in and support to get through it.

2IT PARTNERSHIP

Involve your IT organizationearly and often

Be wary of the vendor with a sales pitch telling you that you can implement a mobile intranet alone. There is no such thing as a DIY app. No matter what, you need to work with IT, and probably other stakeholders as well.

Some logical times to enlist help from IT are:


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3 COLLABORATION

Engage your stakeholders

Engage your stakeholders — and, like IT, do it early. First, they may want stewardship of certain content areas, which could help with the care and feeding of the mobile intranet. Second, you might want or need to integrate with one or more of their systems or processes — so you’ll need their buy-in.

What do your stakeholders need to know about the mobile intranet app?

What questions are they most likely to ask? For example:

• HR may want to understand how employee data is being used;

• Legal may want to understand if the app impacts any existing policies;

• Other key departments may want to know if they can use the app for distribution of their content

What do you need from them?

• Are there any potential integrations you’d like to pursue with systems that fall within their sphere of control?

• Is there content you want them to manage in the app? (e.g., Facilities: gym schedule, café menu)

Start by defining your key stakeholder groups: HR, Legal, etc. Your requirements should guide you. Next, think through these three points:

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?

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Human Resources

Legal

Finance

IT

Marketing

Division Leads

Facilities

POTENTIAL STAKEHOLDERS

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4 PROJECT GOVERNANCE

Create workstreams

CONSIDER CREATING

THESE WORK

STREAMS

Another method for avoiding the ownership struggle is to appoint a project manager from Internal Communications to oversee the whole end‐to‐end project. This will help make it clear from the beginning that Internal Communications has the lead on the project.

LAUNCHprepping for go-live

SUPPORT how the IT help desk will be prepped for supporting the new app

APPLICATION DEPLOYMENThow employees will get the

app on their mobile devices

TESTING responsible for QA testing, functional testing, and user acceptance testing

CONTENT STRATEGY what content

employees will have access to in the app

INTEGRATIONSseparate work streams for each software platform (e.g. SharePoint, Workday, Concur, ServiceNow, etc.)

EMPLOYEE DIRECTORY AND DATA

how employee data will display in the app and make decisions about where it will come from

AUTHENTICATION APPROACH how employees will access the app

That’s because IT often manages implementations independently. For your implementation to go smoothly, you should be equal partners. Make your partnership with IT explicit by setting up business/IT co-leads for every work stream that makes up your project team.

So you’ve involved IT and now you’re preparing to implement. It’s not uncommon to see an ownership struggle between IT and “the business” at this point in any project.


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5 CONTENT

Develop your content strategy

Your content strategy should consider...

CONTENT

The focus can and should be a balance between company news and information and location-specific content like the cafeteria menu and gym schedule. Having that balance will ensure there’s something that draws employees to the app daily.

STRUCTUREThis requires looking at what topics or categories the content falls under. It also requires considering who the content is for — your target audience. For example: A potential topic might be Open Enrollment, which would be organized under HR/Benefits. The target audience would be full-time employees. Site News could be another potential topic targeted to anyone at a specific location.

PROCESS

If you already have a desktop intranet, a good place to start would be adapting your intranet content for mobile. Think through who you’ll need to bring into the fold and how you’ll work together. Define your content contributors, editors, and approvers/publishers. These roles are standard parts of a content management system that you also commonly find in mobile app products. These will likely be the same people adding content to your app once it’s built — your content creation team.

It’s important to establish style guidelines for your content. This style guide should include things like: article structure, word count, terminology, tone of voice, visuals — anything that makes your content truly come together even though it’s being created in a distributed fashion. You should also think through guidelines for which content does and doesn’t make the cut.

What information does your audience want or need?

How should content be organized? Targeted?

Who will create content and how will it get published?

STYLEWhat are the policies and standards you’re applying to your content?

As a result, content is hard to find or buried multiple clicks deep. Having a content strategy for your mobile intranet can avoid this problem.

Your content strategy should cover how you’ll create and deliver useful content to your audiences, when and where they need it most.

The problem with most desktop intranets today is that they’ve become a dumping ground for information.

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Look into questions like:

6 DATA

Understand your employee data

It’s important to know where the data is captured and how you can access and use it. Knowing what fields are available will help you understand how much you can tailor your communications to specific audiences. For example, having an address with city and states allows you to send communications to employees in specific states. But having more robust location information, such as sites and building numbers, can help you target your communications even more directly.

It’s also important to have clean data. Having first and last names in the wrong fields, missing email addresses and different formats for phone numbers, for example, can make it difficult to use data efficiently. Sometimes the data exposes items we need to account for or explore further. For example, if an employee’s location is listed as remote, how do you account for that in your content targeting approach? Or, what’s the difference between a contractor and a consultant? Are they one and the same? These are important points to consider.

Having an advanced understanding of your employee data will help you validate what is and isn’t possible for reaching specific segments of your audience.

How is the data stored and how do you access it?

Is the data clean or will it require extensive updates?

What information can you collect? What fields are available?

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ACTIVE REACH the percentage of all employees who are

active on the app every week

ADOPTIONthe percentage of employees who have logged in at least once

ACTIVE USAGE the percentage of

employees who have logged in and

are active on the app every day/week/

month/quarter

Look into questions like:

7 METRICS

Define and evolve your metrics

It’s also worthwhile to document the performance of your desktop intranet content: metrics like page views, engagement with social features, most searched terms, etc. This will provide a benchmark against which you can compare the performance of your mobile app.

Then, revisit your overarching goals and business requirements and think of 3-5 indicators of success.

Your app might provide enlightening data that you can use to measure your success in reaching these goals. For example, if better engagement with content is a goal, you should pay attention to comments, likes and shares.

You also might be able to employ surveying tools that are inherent in most mobile intranet apps if you’re trying to gauge employee sentiment.

Finally, you can look outside your app entirely at some things you might be indirectly impacting. Are there any communication-related business issues your app is solving? For example: Will giving employees a way to submit support tickets through a mobile app reduce calls to the IT help desk? Or, will adding safety videos to an app that manufacturing employees can watch during lunch and breaks help bring down safety-related incidents? There are countless ways a mobile intranet can benefit the core business.

When it comes to metrics, there are several things to consider tracking, and some benchmarks to keep in mind. Pay attention to these as a way to assess the adoption rates and ultimate success of your mobile intranet app.

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Partnering with IT, and doing it early in the process, is key for efficient implementation. Engaging your stakeholders, and doing it early, will ensure you have much-needed buy-in. Structuring your project team into workstreams will keep you organized and in control.

Developing a content strategy will help guarantee you’re creating a mobile solution your audience will find useful. It will also help you understand employee data to ensure you target your content appropriately. Finally, defining your metrics and evaluating your data at regular intervals will help you make strategic decisions about your content.

ConclusionDeveloping a mobile intranet can be a smooth process when you follow the guidance we’ve outlined above. Developing thorough requirements will keep you focused.

With careful consideration of these seven points, you’ll be well on your way to developing a mobile intranet that will inform, engage, and empower all employees.


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About SPI Group SPI Group is an award-winning internal communications agency that uses digital solutions to amplify the employee experience. We combine existing, emerging and custom-built solutions, such as intranets, gamification, and employee apps, with thoughtful communications strategies and compelling editorial to create powerful, results-driven employee engagement programs.

We especially add value where communications and innovative technologies intersect, and excel at acting as a bridge between communications teams and their internal IT partners.

If you’re thinking about taking your employee intranet experience mobile, SPI Group can help.

For more information on SPI Group’s full breadth of services, visit www.spigroup.com

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