Our eWorkbook, 6 step guide for a social intranet business case, is an insightful methodology which aims to provide readers with a comprehensive guide to establishing a compelling business case for their social intranet strategy. This blog post is the second in a series of four, discussing some of the most important items within the guide.
Through six stages our new eWorkbook details the individual steps you need to take towards developing a good business case for a social intranet, and gives relevant tips and tricks to help you achieve this goal.
The six stages are as follows:
- Explore your organisation
- Identify areas of value
- Form your strategy
- Assemble supporting data
- Build your business case
- Engage stakeholders
This blog post will go through the second stage: identify areas of value.
Stage 2: Identify Areas of Value
The second stage of developing your business case for a social intranet utilises the information you gathered in Stage 1 and organises it so that it can be used to determine how an intranet will best serve your business and how to prioritise the areas that will benefit most from intranet implementation. How you handle the data you collected in Stage 1 will determine how your business case is initially developed.
The main goals of this stage include:
- Identify key areas where your intranet can add value
- Prioritise the areas to form the centre of your business case
Organise Information and Identify Themes
You should now have a collection of data gathered from various sources in your organisation. Without organising this data properly, a business case will be difficult to plan. The key to organising your information is themes.
Common business themes to watch out for may include:
- Problems
- Opportunities
- To-be-improved
Of course, theses are very broad themes and many businesses would benefit from making sub-themes or by being more specific in their data organisation. While organising your data you will start to notice common headline themes. Identifying these themes will help a great deal when putting together your business case, so be meticulous. Themes also highlight problem areas you may not have noticed before.
Determine Areas of Value
Once you have a few themes running through your data it will be easy to identify areas where your intranet is going to benefit your organisation. These areas should resonate with decision-makers; emphasise areas you know will be of importance to particular stakeholders. For example, “improving customer service” areas will encourage customer service managers to get on board with the business case.
Below are just a few sample areas of value and a description of how intranets can be used to meet the needs of the organisation.
Increasing Employee Engagement
To increase employee engagement, intranets provide internal communications to facilitate connections between employees and meet needs for more flexible working. A motivated workforce means enhanced productivity.
Improving Key Processes
Intranets provide relevant content resources for streamlining and improving key processes with your intranet. A few areas that can be improved by an intranet include:
- location particular employees, managers or experts
- resolving IT issues
- human resources services
Improving Customer Experience
Intranets are a vital source of information for both employees and customers. Employees have quick access to information about complex products and services, helping them to better understand customer experience and offer a better service.
Providing Trusted Information
Intranets are the best place to house official policies, procedures and other important business details. This helps when employees need to be reminded about the processes for common admin tasks, new employee training and supporting customer service.
Ensure you have some structure in place to prioritise these areas of value. For instance, “cost saving” areas might be classified as “high importance” while “supporting organisational change” could be classified as “low importance”. These classifications will determine what areas would benefit the most from an intranet and how this information will be laid out in your final business case, which should emphasise the immediate needs of your organisation.
In the next stages of our 6 step business case methodology, the eWorkbook will show you how to form a solid strategy for your business case.
The complete 6 step guide for a social intranet business case eWorkbook is available to download here.
