Insider's View

Creating the Social Enterprise: The First Steps
By Subhasis B, Head - Product Management

Why does everyone love Social media? Is it the comfort of being able to reach out to people from your desk or the flexibility offered by the multitude of applications and functionalities on these platforms? Whatever may be the case, it remains a fact that social networking platforms, in all their avatars and permutations have permeated all levels of modern day communication and collaboration. As seen by the rising acceptance of social media applications and functionalities in enterprise intranets.

But before acceptance comes the question of relevance and economic feasibility; an issue that came up during a recent client engagement. We were in the middle of discussions on the functionalities to be included in the clients’ employee portal. While it was clear that almost every single item on his wish list was already prevalent on social media platforms, the prevailing issue, obviously enough, was the questionable relevance and feasibility of these functionalities in an Enterprise environment. Eventually, through a process of assessment and analysis, these are the solutions we arrived at for the client:

• Customizable User Interface:
  An enhanced and simplified user interface was provided to the user through a redesign of the home page. The various modules of the application were re-arranged and re-organized for better presentation and easy navigation. Also, the user was provided options to control banner displays on their individual landing pages. Options were implemented that enabled users to collapse existing banners and view expanded versions of new banners as per their preferences. We also reviewed the possibility of introducing themes for giving users increased personalization options, in addition to letting users choose the tools and widgets they would like to have displayed on their individual home pages.
  
  
• Efficient Search:
  The decision to implement an improved search function and better presentation of search results stemmed from the reasoning that an efficient search makes for increased usability and effectiveness of the user interface. Not only does the improved facility give better results but also helps users explore various sections more effectively, thus increasing the usability of the portal. Category based search was introduced; the idea being to improve search efficacy by displaying results with supporting data and facts on the researcher or the searched keyword and information.
  
  
• Call to Actions:
  Strategically placed call to actions persuade users to spend more time on the portal and thus usability and engagement levels. By building on the nature of content provided on each page, related call to actions could be provided that would prolong user session through related content and effective navigation. The tricky factor here is to maintain a balance between provision of attractive user functionalities without hampering employee performance.
  
  
• Enhanced User Profiles:
  Employee intranets are designed for collaboration and effective communication. It helps if the portal enables employees to get to know each other, to connect and share knowledge and resources. In such cases, an effective user profile page provides a window to user capabilities and gives an idea of what a user is capable of bringing to the table. Considering this, the user profile page was re-created and new fields were introduced, allowing the system to capture more details and display more relevant information on the user.

The conclusion of this engagement provoked us into brainstorming mode and enabled us to come out with a roadmap for a new product. All said and done, social media platforms today offer a mind boggling variety of applications and facilities for enhancing portal usability and resource utilization. The issue, as always, lies in deciding what fits and what doesn’t. And this assumes increased relevance in the current market scenario, where enhanced employee collaboration and increased productivity through reduced costs is the corporate mantra.

As the first in a series of articles on Enterprise Portals and associated concepts, we hope this account was able to give you ideas and insights to revisit the functionalities on your Enterprise portal. Our next article will host a discussion on the technology concepts associated with Enterprise Portals. We hope to see you there and await your feedback and comments on this article.

About the author

Subhasis has more than 15 years’ experience in Sales & Marketing. He has played key roles in various organizations in Corporate Sales, Account Management and Profit Centre Operations.
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