The Workplace Blog

Over the last few months, Forrester has been talking about the “Information Workplace”, which they consider to be the integration and delivery of collaboration, e-learning, contextual role based information, real time analytics and application data via a single, user centered interface . This interface would be available on any device. They finally have a case study from Verizon which demonstrates what this information workplace may look like. Let us know what you think.

Jacob Neilson has published an alertbox which discusses how intranet portals are being streamlined. The article emphasizes that slimmer information architecture, fresh content and useful applications matter most. His findings, including those regarding are role based personalization, are nothing new but are worth reading as simply a reminder of what’s important in intranet design.

If you are looking to better understand the blog revolution better then make your way over to Corante which is the first blog media company. According to the About Us page on its site, Corante is a trusted, unbiased source on technology, science and business that’s authored by highly respected thinkers, commentators and journalists. Be sure to check out Future Tense, a blog about the future of work.

A recent New York Times article discusses how office multitasking is affecting employee productivity. It talks about a study by Gloria Mark (University of California at Irvine) in which she showed how technology distractions such as email, instant messaging and telephone calls prevent employees from doing their jobs. It also discusses how future operating systems from Apple and Microsoft can ease the pain.

It’s these challenges that will be solved by the enterprise workplace when all employee productivity technologies are integrated into a single, adaptable, consistent and natural user experience.

According to both Forrester and Gartner, IT spending is estimated to rise in 2006. The thrust of the spending will be on application development and integration. While this is good news for IT departments, the growth rate will not keep pace with overall company revenue growth. Read the full article at News.com

Portals Magazine has published a thoughtful article on enterprise blogging. The article covers the basics on what blogging and RSS are and goes onto discuss how blogging can be used as a knowledge management tool within organizations. It also covers how company executives can use blogs to communicate with their customers.

We couldn’t agree more with Portals magazine on this subject and like the examples they sited which include blogs belonging to Randy Baseler, VP of Marketing at Boeing and Fast Lane which is written by Bob Lutz, GM Vice Chairman. Another often discussed corporate blog is Jonathan Schwartz’s blog. He is the Chief Operating Officer at Sun.

Salesforce’s recently launched application sharing service AppExchange includes an online customer service chat program and a program that allows companies to share information with workers in remote locations. Salesforce hopes to become an online marketplace for mini web based, on demand applications that help enterprises communicate and conduct business more efficiently.

The Intercontinental Hotels Group has launched the first phase of their new global intranet. The intranet will be used by IHG employees spread across six corporate offices and 614 hotels within the European, Middle Eastern and African (EMEA) regions. This is yet another example of global intranets being used to tie decentralized, geographically dispersed organizations together. Included below are excerpts from their press release.
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Marketers are always looking for ways to effectively manage information – to their prospects, customers, vendors, and other shareholders. Shiv Singh, Director of Enterprise Solutions for Avenue A | Razorfish is giving a presentation on how a company intranet or employee portal can help an organization effortlessly communicate, collaborate, knowledge share and perform business tasks. He will use the Avenue A | Intranet maturity cycle framework to show how intranets and extranets mature.

According to Technorati Founder David Sifry 70,000 new blogs are created everyday–that’s one a minute. But only half of those blogs are active three months later of which only 15% are updated at least weekly. A key question is how many employee blogs are being created in the Fortune 500s and how long do they last? Granted, the numbers are probably very small but it would be interesting to see what they are and what factors are driving the success of some employee blogs versus others.