Intranet Case Studies

[outofthebox]

Hi friends,

My boss has asked me to provide case studies of how social intranets delivered superior outcomes for organizations that adopted them. The social capital it takes to transition an organization from email to a social intranet is enormous. Why should we pay this price? What are the incredibly high value outcomes we can expect? Case studies from the nonprofit world would be most relevant to me, but transitions within global for-profit enterprises would still have persuasive value.

In advance, thanks for any help you can offer! I hope we'll all be better prepared to make the case for community through this discussion.

[HAWK]

These people all work with internal communities.

I'll invite them in.

[Todd_Nilson]

Hi @outofthebox, are you aware of the 2012 McKinsey study on how social platforms enable knowledge workers? It's slightly dated now, I know, but it's still one of the most cogent studies I've seen pointing to the tangible value of online collaboration spaces for employees.

[outofthebox]

Hi Todd, yes, that's a terrific study. She wanted specifics from particular companies that introduced an intranet. What were the benefits for their companies? So, I'm looking for detailed case studies.

[Todd_Nilson]

Hi @outofthebox, intranet case studies pose a bit of a problem. Many of the organizations I've worked with are hesitant to share information about their internal workings, so you'll tend to see many more case studies about external communities. I'd be happy to share some experiences with you from working with clients setting up an internal community if you'd like to have a Skype or phone conversation. Send me a private message and we can set something up for this week.

[raull]

Hi @outofthebox, at Salesforce we have a distributed intranet that includes social, apps and an IT Ticket system. Our old intranet is still actually viewable, and it's crazy to compare the two. I don't have metrics to offer you, however I can say the payoff isn't just in faster response time, but a more connected and vibrant internal community of employees.

[outofthebox]

Hi Todd, Ryan, Sarah,

Thanks for the responses so far. Todd, I'm looking forward to our Skype call.

To anyone else who is interested, I did find that Jive has done a ton of work to put intranet case studies on their website. You can read the case studies here: https://www.jivesoftware.com/resource-library/?_type[]=casestudy. Click the “jive-n” box to see the ones focused on the use of their social intranet software.

Interestingly, Jive Software hired a consulting firm to test McKinsey’s conclusions (the 2012 study mentioned above) with their own clients.
Overall, “the researchers found that Jive:
• Improved productivity by 15%
• Grew top-line value by 2-4%
• Reduced email load by 21%
• Reduced meetings by 16%
• Reduced the time to find knowledge, expertise and best practices by 34%"

These are pretty encouraging results.