Why an intranet helps support Office 365 governance

How an intranet can help with Office 365 governance

Office 365, SharePoint and intranet governance are big topics that weve previously featured in this blog. Effective governance is essential for the success of your platform and covers many areas including:

  • senior sponsorship and decision making
  • technical standards
  • data management
  • the content lifecycle
  • legal and regulatory considerations
  • design and branding
  • and more!

Governance of the use of tools

One aspect of Office 365 governance which many digital workplace teams are currently grappling is with around the use of different tools within the enterprise. In any given organisation there are a plethora of applications in use, with:

  • some centrally supported and encouraged
  • some owned within specific departments and lines of business and not centrally supported
  • tools which are actively discouraged because they provide less value, are costly duplicates of tools already in use or are risky (Shadow IT)

Office 365s ever-expanding library of tools, applications and capabilities provides one of the best strategies to cut down on wasteful and risky shadow IT because it provides effective alternatives to those in use. It also helps replace ancient legacy applications. You cant tell users to stop using a system unless there is a decent official alternative. If you want to reduce the use of Dropbox, Whats App and the creaking custom-built telephone book then One Drive, MS Teams, Skype for Business and Delve are the way to go.

However, the plethora of Office 365 tools can also lead to another dilemma for digital workplace teams. Often the pace of new tools being added is faster than the ability for central teams to properly evaluate use, launch them and then carry out effective training and support. And some Office 365 tools when released in beta need time to mature before they are truly enterprise-ready. Therefore, a key Office 365 governance issue is deciding on which tools to roll out to users and support, and which ones to lock down.

In our experience Office 365 governance is best approached with carrots rather than sticks. Creating positive and valuable experiences for the tools that you want employees to use is the best way to advance a set of centrally-supported tools. Then you need to do far less work on the discouragement or locking down of the tools you dont want people to use.

The intranet can help!

An excellent way to drive use of certain types of tools is through a SharePoint intranet which effectively acts as a gateway and experience layer lying on top of the Office 365 tool suite. Using an intranet helps to:

  • Drive a better experience, creating positive and valuable experiences of tools such as MS Teams which underpins successful usage
  • Integrates tools into the flow of work: brings the use of tools into the flow of work so they become the natural applications to use
  • Makes some tools easier to access and some less so, encouraging use and reminding employees about the tools they should be using
  • Helps with support and training by highlighting good use and providing support on how to use these tools
  • Support an approach to experiment with tools which have not yet been rolled out fully, supporting a framework to experiment and valuate new Office 365 tools

Lets look at each of these aspects in more detail.

A better experience

A good user experience is not generally regarded as a governance tactic, but it will have more impact than creating a policy document. Ultimately, outside the use of Outlook and the core Office suite, the use of most of the Office 365 suite is not mandatory, and therefore you have to persuade employees to use your preferred tool rather than another.

Sometimes an intranet, particularly a SharePoint-based product like Wizdom, presents a superior interface to the Office 365 tools, and encourages use. Dont underestimate the importance of a nice look and feel in driving adoption and underpinning governance.

Integrates tools into the flow of work

Intranets have evolved into digital workplaces, acting as gateway into the wider suite of tools, including those from Office 365. An intranet can integrate data and content from different Office 365 tools and provide access to them through dashboards, workspaces and profiles, helping to make these applications the tools of choice.

For example, a Yammer feed in an intranet workspace with all your community members makes that the natural tool to use for community discussions. If Skype for Business is integrated into your employee directory, employees may use that tool to message the colleague theyve just looked up. And with AD integration, single sign-on also removes a barrier to using these tools. Integrating the core Office 365 tools with your intranet directly supports your governance model.

Make some tools easy to access and others less so

Above integrating preferred tools, there are other ways an intranet can make some applications easier to access and others less so. These include:

  • Providing access to selected tools via your global navigation
  • Providing favourite links to applications on the homepage, perhaps using prominent icons
  • Creating a service catalogue with supported tools (and sometimes allowing users to add to their own favourite links from here)
  • Providing feeds from different tools or lists of different sites relating to tools from your own homepage e.g. a list of Team Sites an employee is a member of, a Yammer feed etc.
  • Providing landing pages with a list of all the sites a person is a member of. For example, we recently integrated a page for a client where an employee can find all the Teams they are a member of.
  • Providing a form to request a new team space, site, group or community

All of the above heavily encourage use of preferred tools. Excluding the tools in the Office 365 suite which are not yet rolled out will help to limit their use.

Helping with support and training

Encouraging the use of preferred Office 365 tools is also supported by providing training and support resources via the intranet. For example, you could have a what to use when matrix which indicates the optimum digital tool or channel to use for which scenarios.

You can also have specific training resources including how to guides and videos, and even support communities which include intranet teams, site administrators, IT helpdesk and knowledgeable users. Here people can ask questions and swap tips. Again, this reinforces the use of the right tools to dissuade users from using alternatives.

Drive an approach to experiment with tools

While you are likely to want to lockdown some of Office 365, you may also want to encourage some experimentation or pilots with newer tools to help you evaluate their use before they get fully rolled out to the company. This also helps you to allow early adopters and mavericks to use tools they are keen to try, but in a more controlled environment.

Sometimes it pays to formalise an approach to piloting new tools on the Office 365 roadmap and bake that into your governance model. The intranet can help with this approach. For example, you may have a community which pilots tools and you may use the intranet to give them access the tool and collate their feedback. Of course, once a tool becomes fully supported you can then open this up to be a full support community with the appropriate support resources also available.

Use carrots, not sticks

Controlling the use of Office 365 tools is a challenge and it needs governance. We believe the carrot approach to encourage use of the tools you want employees to use is the best approach. Telling employees that they cannot use a tool because it is not yet supported does not always go down well.

An intranet can really help with the carrot approach by integrating tools so that they have value and also providing the right support. Office 365 is a fantastic and exciting platform, and a SharePoint intranet complements it perfectly.

Wizdom Conference 2018 – Full event video

Eight digital workplace takeaways from the Wizdom conference

The 2018 Wizdom Conference on The value of the digital workplace was recently held in the beautiful setting of Copenhagens Tivoli Gardens. With some incredible sunshine and a friendly crowd of 140 digital workplace professionals, here are some of the main themes explored over two days of inspiring presentations and conversations.

DAY ONE

The digital workplace is all about human to human

The first day of the conference started with a warm welcome from Wizdoms CEO, John Wainer. John reflected on how the digital workplace should be about making the working day easier, making employees more productive and making our colleagues happier. If the digital workplace can deliver this even just a little then we have succeeded.

This idea about the digital workplace being focused on people rather than technology was also touched upon in a fascinating and lively opening keynote session from Morten Albæk, Creator and Executive Director of Voluntas A/S.

Morten is a frequent and well-known international speaker and author. His powerful presentation delivered a strong message about how work must be meaningful. So many people say they regret spending too much time on work, but Mortens personal management KPI is to make sure that anybody who works under his leadership does not regret their time working. Morten also reminded us that too many people are feeling stressed or anxious from work and this is on the increase.

Morten dwelled on the importance of meaningfulness and how organisations can help employees find meaning in their work. Delivering a sense of purpose, receiving guidance from strong leadership and a strong sense of community can all support employees feeling differently about their work. In turn, having more meaningful work can lead to a more innovative, creative, loyal and productive workforce. Mortens observation that B2B and B2C approaches were in the past, and it was all about H2H Human to Human resonated with the audience.

Security and compliance are critical in the digital workplace

One of the great things about this years conference agenda is the variety of different topics being covered. One key theme was the importance of security and compliance in the digital workplace.

Rory Fitzpatrick, Senior Communications Manager at pharmaceutical company Acino International, told us how a virus attack had impacted virtually all the companys computers, temporarily preventing access to operational files. Although the business recovered quickly due to our excellent IT team, this incident was the catalyst for the companys move to Office 365 and the cloud where all the files would be backed up and accessible. It also kick-started an intense twelve-week project to build a new intranet.

It was great that Acino International now has a robust, secure and compliant digital workplace, but it was also inspiring to hear how the new intranet is also helping employees to communicate and collaborate and feel part of one company. This is extremely important for a company where there are often acquisitions.

We also had another excellent (and very timely) presentation from Ole Kjeldsen, Director of Technology and Security for Microsoft in Denmark. Ole gave us a very level-headed view of GDPR which comes into full effect in a few days time. While explaining we dont need to panic, organisations do need to do some work to achieve compliance, and Oles presentation was full of resources and useful tips. It was also a warning not to be complacent. No product can deliver GDPR compliance, but platforms like Office 365 can help you get closer to it. Another interesting observation was that GDPR was all about good data governance something which we all should have been doing for years anyway!

Were moving from the digital workplace to the integrated, intelligent workplace

Another key theme of the conference was the digital workplaces potential to become a truly intelligent workplace, with data and insights which help employees find things, get things done and make decisions.

Implement Consulting Group is already on that journey. We heard from Morten Rye Christensen, CIO, about how the company has built a data-driven, integrated digital workplace with different elements including Office 365, a Wizdom-based intranet and a learning portal. Perhaps most impressive was a project portal where critical client and project information from the companys ERP systems is readily available. Whenever a new project is set up a project site or an MS Teams site can be created to drive collaboration and document sharing. Bringing all this information and content together through the digital workplace and via a mobile app was helping consultants to deliver great outcomes for clients.

The integrated digital workplace is also set to become ever-more intelligent. Jess Lassen, Wizdoms CTO, delivered an exciting presentation on AI and bots. Jess established that AI is already a big part of our lives through using Amazon and Netflix. He also admitted that when he says good night to Siri on his iPhone it turns all the lights off in his house! Jess also painted a brighter picture of the impact of AI than some believe, arguing it will create more jobs than losses and will transform every aspect of our lives.

Organisations need to start acting now to gain advantage from AI. Jess gave the audience some tips including the importance of having the data to power AI, thinking about security and assembling the right team. The potential for AI is huge and could be a secret weapon to success, truly disrupting businesses and allowing smaller players to compete with much bigger companies.

The digital workplace needs both robust foundations and delightful touches

In the last presentation of the day our very own John Scott, User Experience Director at Content Formula, walked us through some of the ways you can delight users of your digital workplace. John introduced concepts such as Surface Delight (smaller flourishes and design touches which impress users), and Deep Delight where more fundamental user needs are met.

John also talked about a hierarchy of user experience needs where functional needs sit at the base of a pyramid, with further layers ensuring the digital workplace is reliable, then usable and finally delightful. Citing a series of examples inspired by movies from the eighties and nineties (and giving us a hint of Johns taste in movies!) Johns presentation was a salient reminder that to deliver a great user experience we need to focus on some digital workplace foundations such as performance and governance and that we need to have a deep understanding of users. But we can also add delightful touches such as using tasteful animations, and beautiful images.

Johns session echoed some of the other themes of the day. Yes, we need to worry about fundamentals like security and compliance, but the digital workplace is also about smaller, everyday things and about being human.

DAY 2

The digital workplace has outgrown the confines of the traditional intranet

While we all love intranets were also excited by the future possibilities of the digital workplace. Many companies are using the intranet as the front door to the digital workplace and the Office 365 universe, but several of the case studies at the Conference show how the digital workplace is starting to outgrow the confines of the traditional intranet.

Its also a trend which is reflected in the future developments of the Wizdom product, all of which reflect the feedback and request we receive from our clients. The opening session of the day, a joint keynote from Jess Lassen, Wizdoms CTO and Flemming Goldbach, our Vice President of Product, was titled The digital workplace of the future in a Microsoft universe and covered the principles which inform Wizdoms product roadmap. We also got to see sneak previews of some of the cool features in the pipeline.

While many of these new improvements and capabilities focus on the intranet such as better content targeting, support for multi-language intranets and even nudges and suggestions for content owners, there were a number which expanded access to the digital workplace beyond the intranet. One of these is a new Wizdom mobile app with a beautiful user experience and expansive capabilities, ensuring work can be done from anywhere. The app features access to news, the phonebook, links and has Yammer integration. There is also the ability to create mobile-specific pages which can be targeted, for example, to employees in the field.

There is also an exciting Power Panel which is a toolbar which can be accessed not only from within the Wizdom intranet but also other parts of SharePoint, the Office 365 and even potentially the wider Microsoft universe. The Power Panel can be configured by each client to meet their needs and allows you to access and create pages and content, get relevant links to critical services and navigate around. It is extremely powerful as it can be targeted to different users and even be contextual, based on where it is being accessed from. The Power Panel also has an in-built bot who can make suggestions and nudge users into actions. It was clear from the demo that it will be both a gateway and a digital assistant which surfaces the wider digital workplace from anywhere.

The best digital workplaces place the user at the centre

A principle which also informs everything that Wizdom builds is to put the user at the centre of the digital workplace. What is built must provide value or users will just simply go elsewhere and use a different tool. The best digital workplace implementations weve seen also follow this principle.

At the Conference we had a strong presentation from Mads Boldsen, Lead Business Consultant, Ørsted A/S. Ørsted is a Danish energy company committed to green energy that recently has gone through a period of intense change with a new name and identity. There is also a brand new digital workplace. What was very challenging for the project was that it was already underway once the decision to re-brand the company had been made, and the project team had to navigate the issue of keeping this confidential while also working closely with users to ensure the digital workplace met their needs.

Whats fantastic about Ørsteds digital workplace is that it is truly centred around user needs and daily work. This has been achieved through extensive user research and testing, delivering an intuitive information architecture and an approach to content migration with the deletion of many pages which were not delivering value to users.

The team also carried out a very detailed user satisfaction survey both before and after the new environment was delivered. Perhaps surprisingly the feedback was similar across both surveys but given the scale of changes in the company (and change can be difficult) it was actually a positive trend and gives insight into future improvements to make. At its heart the digital workplace implementation was community-driven project, and the result is a community-driven digital workplace.

Another organisation that created a highly user-centric digital workplace was GEA Group, a German technology company with 17,000 employees. In a joint session from Christian Larsen, Director of Internal Communication & Corporate Events, and Claus Ole Hasle, Wizdoms COO, we heard how

GEA has created a task-based intranet which is driven by a solid understanding of user and stakeholder needs. Successful approaches included taking time to truly understand the tasks employees need to complete and finding the right content to meet these needs. The team also conducted extensive user testing of their information architecture and refined it accordingly ensuring strong usability. Christians point that user testing creates buy-in, saves time, removes the emotion from decision-making and forges better results was spot on.

Successful digital workplaces focus on collaboration and productivity

Two of day twos case studies reminded us how the digital workplace must make collaborating that bit easier for employees and start to unlock productivity and efficiency.

We had a very interesting session from Ute Aggensteiner, Project Manager for Intranet & SharePoint at Stadtwerke Lübeck Holding GmbH and Torsten Schlueter, HanseVision, GmbH. Stadtwerke Lübeck Holdings award-winning digital workplace project has three main components Information & Communication, Collaboration and Workflow & Digitalization. With a complex organisational structure and many employees who dont sit at desks this is a considerable challenge. The team has made significant process in using workflow and forms to digitize 88 processes and integrate these into the intranet, resulting in significant ROI.

The team has also given employees the power to collaborate both internally and externally and has made this much easier by creating a compelling collaboration area which listed relevant sites for each user, as well as aggregating tasks and documents from each workspace. They also created site templates for different use cases such as sharing documents externally or running more complex projects. This was a true digital workplace which exposed employees to a range of different tools.

Ramboll, a global engineering and design consultancy headquartered in Denmark, is also bringing collaboration to the centre of its new digital workplace. Poul Hededal, Group Director, Knowledge & Innovation at Ramboll told us the story of the new digital workplace which includes several different components.

As well as compelling new global intranet (brilliantly named Rambla) there is also an expansive and ambitious project portal. Poul explained how Ramboll is a very project-orientated company and has a staggering 40,000 projects ongoing at any one time with a dedicated project space for both very small and absolutely massive projects and all in-between. The project portal aims to make these spaces more efficient and accessible for employees, integrate information from other systems, and will help to fulfil the teams vision:

to create an integrated digital environment, Digital Workspace, that allows employees to communicate, collaborate and deliver excellence, whenever and wherever they may be working.

From this the digital workplace aims to become a transformational lever and change the way people work.

Office 365 has a range of excellent collaboration, productivity and project management tools on offer, but sometimes a more engaging interface or approach is needed to help drive adoption and bring these tools into the everyday flow of work. Both these case studies show how integrating information from other systems and creating a central portal that aggregates data can provide real value for employees and organisations.

Digital workplaces must continuously improve

Everyone in the world of intranets and digital workplaces knows that they are never truly finished. There is always more work to do on then. Continuous improvement, working on driving adoption and change management are a must.

This is a theme which perhaps permeated almost every presentation on day two. Paul Linde, Founder, Mindfire AB, gave an interesting presentation about some of the trends he was seeing in the digital workplace. He talked us how intranets had evolved from being megaphones for management to take in formal collaboration and then more social capabilities. User needs have also evolved significantly, but a key to getting success out of the digital workplace is to ensure there is good adoption. Paul ran us through several approaches including the importance of continuous improvement.

Many of the case studies were also investing in driving adoption and improving just after launch and beyond. At GEA Group there was an organised programme of after-project governance and maintenance. At Stadtwerke Lübeck the team continue to add processes to their digitalization programme. Many of the features of Rambolls digital workplace are still very new and will continue to evolve. And Ørsted are finding out their views of their users to improve the digital workplace. Each had also invested heavily in communication and engagement, running road-shows, producing attractive marketing, making videos and using champions and gamification to inform and engage users as seen with Implement Consulting Group.

Of course, continuous improvement is also an important part of the way Wizdom works. We are always adding new features, listening to our clients and making the digital workplace work better.

Its been an excellent conference

This years Wizdom conference was excellent. The venue was great, the speakers were illuminating, and the attendees provided us with lively debate and feedback. Were already looking forward to next year. See you then!

Key themes Day 2, Wizdom Conference 2018

Day two of the Wizdom Conference saw another very sunny day at Copenhagens historic Tivoli Gardens. Delegates arrived energised and excited (despite the wine flowing freely on the previous evening), ready for another full day of presentations about the digital workplace.

Wizdoms CEO John Wainer opened the day by welcoming everybody and mentioning some of his takeaways from day one. He also reminded us that the conference was all about taking some inspiration home with you, so you could use it within your own digital workplace.

And it did prove to be inspiring with some interesting case studies, practical tips and insightful observations about the digital workplace. Here are some of the main themes from day two which stood out for us.

The digital workplace has outgrown the confines of the traditional intranet

At Wizdom we love intranets (and we always will!) but were also excited by the future possibilities of the digital workplace. Many companies are using the intranet as the front door to the digital workplace and the Office 365 universe, but several of the case studies at the Conference show how the digital workplace is starting to outgrow the confines of the traditional intranet.

Its also a trend which is reflected in the future developments of the Wizdom product, all of which reflect the feedback and request we receive from our clients. The opening session of the day, a joint keynote from Jess Lassen, Wizdoms CTO and Flemming Goldbach, our Vice President of Product, was titled The digital workplace of the future in a Microsoft universe and covered the principles which inform Wizdoms product roadmap. We also got to see sneak previews of some of the cool features in the pipeline.

While many of these new improvements and capabilities focus on the intranet such as better content targeting, support for multi-language intranets and even nudges and suggestions for content owners, there were a number which expanded access to the digital workplace beyond the intranet. One of these is a new Wizdom mobile app with a beautiful user experience and expansive capabilities, ensuring work can be done from anywhere. The app features access to news, the phonebook, links and has Yammer integration. There is also the ability to create mobile-specific pages which can be targeted, for example, to employees in the field.

There is also an exciting Power Panel which is a toolbar which can be accessed not only from within the Wizdom intranet but also other parts of SharePoint, the Office 365 and even potentially the wider Microsoft universe. The Power Panel can be configured by each client to meet their needs and allows you to access and create pages and content, get relevant links to critical services and navigate around. It is extremely powerful as it can be targeted to different users and even be contextual, based on where it is being accessed from. The Power Panel also has an in-built bot who can make suggestions and nudge users into actions. It was clear from the demo that it will be both a gateway and a digital assistant which surfaces the wider digital workplace from anywhere.

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The best digital workplaces place the user at the centre

A principle which also informs everything that Wizdom builds is to put the user at the centre of the digital workplace. We know what we build must provide value or users will just simply go elsewhere and use a different tool. The best digital workplace implementations weve seen also follow this principle.

At the Conference we had a strong presentation from Mads Boldsen, Lead Business Consultant, Ørsted A/S. Ørsted is a Danish energy company committed to green energy that recently has gone through a period of intense change with a new name and identity. There is also a brand new digital workplace. What was very challenging for the project was that it was already underway once the decision to re-brand the company had been made, and the project team had to navigate the issue of keeping this confidential while also working closely with users to ensure the digital workplace met their needs.

Whats fantastic about Ørsteds digital workplace is that it is truly centred around user needs and daily work. This has been achieved through extensive user research and testing, delivering an intuitive information architecture and an approach to content migration with the deletion of many pages which were not delivering value to users.

The team also carried out a very detailed user satisfaction survey both before and after the new environment was delivered. Perhaps surprisingly the feedback was similar across both surveys but given the scale of changes in the company (and change can be difficult) it was actually a positive trend and gives insight into future improvements to make. At its heart the digital workplace implementation was community-driven project, and the result is a community-driven digital workplace.

Another organisation that created a highly user-centric digital workplace was GEA Group, a German technology company with 17,000 employees. In a joint session from Christian Larsen, Director of Internal Communication & Corporate Events, and Claus Ole Hasle, Wizdoms COO, we heard how GEA has created a task-based intranet which is driven by a solid understanding of user and stakeholder needs. Successful approaches included taking time to truly understand the tasks employees need to complete and finding the right content to meet these needs. The team also conducted extensive user testing of their information architecture and refined it accordingly ensuring strong usability. Christians point that user testing creates buy-in, saves time, removes the emotion from decision-making and forges better results was spot on.

Successful digital workplaces focus on collaboration and productivity

Two of day twos case studies reminded us how the digital workplace must make collaborating that bit easier for employees and start to unlock productivity and efficiency.

We had a very interesting session from Ute Aggensteiner, Project Manager for Intranet & SharePoint at Stadtwerke Lübeck Holding GmbH and Torsten Schlueter, HanseVision, GmbH. Stadtwerke Lübeck Holdings award-winning digital workplace project has three main components Information & Communication, Collaboration and Workflow & Digitalization. With a complex organisational structure and many employees who dont sit at desks this is a considerable challenge. The team has made significant process in using workflow and forms to digitize 88 processes and integrate these into the intranet, resulting in significant ROI.

The team has also given employees the power to collaborate both internally and externally and has made this much easier by creating a compelling collaboration area which listed relevant sites for each user, as well as aggregating tasks and documents from each workspace. They also created site templates for different use cases such as sharing documents externally or running more complex projects. This was a true digital workplace which exposed employees to a range of different tools.

Ramboll, a global engineering and design consultancy headquartered in Denmark, is also bringing collaboration to the centre of its new digital workplace. Poul Hededal, Group Director, Knowledge & Innovation at Ramboll told us the story of the new digital workplace which includes several different components.

As well as compelling new global intranet (brilliantly named Rambla) there is also an expansive and ambitious project portal. Poul explained how Ramboll is a very project-orientated company and has a staggering 40,000 projects ongoing at any one time with a dedicated project space for both very small and absolutely massive projects and all in-between. The project portal aims to make these spaces more efficient and accessible for employees, integrate information from other systems, and will help to fulfil the teams vision:

to create an integrated digital environment, Digital Workspace, that allows employees to communicate, collaborate and deliver excellence, whenever and wherever they may be working.

From this the digital workplace aims to become a transformational lever and change the way people work.

Office 365 has a range of excellent collaboration, productivity and project management tools on offer, but sometimes a more engaging interface or approach is needed to help drive adoption and bring these tools into the everyday flow of work. Both these case studies show how integrating information from other systems and creating a central portal that aggregates data can provide real value for employees and organisations.

Digital workplaces must continuously improve

Everyone in the world of intranets and digital workplaces knows that they are never truly finished. There is always more work to do on then. Continuous improvement, working on driving adoption and change management are a must.

This is a theme which perhaps permeated almost every presentation on day two. Paul Linde, Founder, Mindfire AB, gave an interesting presentation about some of the trends he was seeing in the digital workplace. He talked us how intranets had evolved from being megaphones for management to take in formal collaboration and then more social capabilities. User needs have also evolved significantly, but a key to getting success out of the digital workplace is to ensure there is good adoption. Paul ran us through several approaches including the importance of continuous improvement.

Many of the case studies were also investing in driving adoption and improving just after launch and beyond. At GEA Group there was an organised programme of after-project governance and maintenance. At Stadtwerke Lübeck the team continue to add processes to their digitalization programme. Many of the features of Rambolls digital workplace are still very new and will continue to evolve. And Ørsted are finding out their views of their users to improve the digital workplace. Each had also invested heavily in communication and engagement, running road-shows, producing attractive marketing, making videos and using champions and gamification to inform and engage users as seen with Implement Consulting Group.

Of course, continuous improvement is also an important part of the way Wizdom works. We are always adding new features, listening to our clients and making the digital workplace work better.

Its been an excellent conference

Weve had a truly excellent conference. The venue was great, the speakers were illuminating, and the attendees provided us with lively debate and feedback. We hope everybody learnt something, made new connections and friends and also thoroughly enjoyed the two days. We know we did and were already looking forward to next year. See you then!

The original article was published here

Key themes Day 1, Wizdom Conference 2018

Four digital workplace themes from day one of the Wizdom Conference

The 2018 Wizdom Conference on The value of the digital workplace is being held in the beautiful setting of Copenhagens Tivoli Gardens. With some incredible sunshine and a friendly crowd of 140 digital workplace professionals, our opening day was both inspiring and highly enjoyable.

This year we have many international speakers and visitors, and the whole conference has been conducted in English rather than Danish. Here are some of the key themes from the day.

On the stage Rory Fitzpatrick (Acino) and Mümin Ivgen (Infocentric AG)
On the stage Rory Fitzpatrick (Acino) and Mümin Ivgen (Infocentric AG)

The digital workplace is all about human to human

The day started with a warm welcome from Wizdoms CEO, John Wainer. John reflected on how the digital workplace should be about making the working day easier, making employees more productive and making our colleagues happier. If the digital workplace can deliver this even just a little then we have succeeded.

This idea about the digital workplace being focused on people rather than technology was also touched upon in a fascinating and lively opening keynote session from Morten Albæk, Creator and Executive Director of Voluntas A/S.

Morten is a frequent and well-known international speaker and author. His powerful presentation delivered a strong message about how work must be meaningful. So many people say they regret spending too much time on work, but Mortens personal management KPI is to make sure that anybody who works under his leadership does not regret their time working. Morten also reminded us that too many people are feeling stressed or anxious from work and this is on the increase.

Morten dwelled on the importance of meaningfulness and how organisations can help employees find meaning in their work. Delivering a sense of purpose, receiving guidance from strong leadership and a strong sense of community can all support employees feeling differently about their work. In turn, having more meaningful work can lead to a more innovative, creative, loyal and productive workforce. Mortens observation that B2B and B2C approaches were in the past, and it was all about H2H Human to Human resonated with the audience.

Security and compliance are critical in the digital workplace

One of the great things about this years conference agenda is the variety of different topics being covered. One key theme was the importance of security and compliance in the digital workplace.

Rory Fitzpatrick, Senior Communications Manager at pharmaceutical company Acino International, told us how a virus attack had impacted virtually all the companys computers, temporarily preventing access to operational files. Although the business recovered quickly due to our excellent IT team, this incident was the catalyst for the companys move to Office 365 and the cloud where all the files would be backed up and accessible. It also kick-started an intense twelve-week project to build a new intranet.

It was great that Acino International now has a robust, secure and compliant digital workplace, but it was also inspiring to hear how the new intranet is also helping employees to communicate and collaborate and feel part of one company. This is extremely important for a company where there are often acquisitions.

We also had another excellent (and very timely) presentation from Ole Kjeldsen, Director of Technology and Security for Microsoft in Denmark. Ole gave us a very level-headed view of GDPR which comes into full effect in a few days time. While explaining we dont need to panic, organisations do need to do some work to achieve compliance, and Oles presentation was full of resources and useful tips. It was also a warning not to be complacent. No product can deliver GDPR compliance, but platforms like Office 365 can help you get closer to it. Another interesting observation was that GDPR was all about good data governance something which we all should have been doing for years anyway!

Were moving from the digital workplace to the integrated, intelligent workplace

Another key theme of the conference was the digital workplaces potential to become a truly intelligent workplace, with data and insights which help employees find things, get things done and make decisions.

Implement Consulting Group is already on that journey. We heard from Morten Rye Christensen, CIO, about how the company has built a data-driven, integrated digital workplace with different elements including Office 365, a Wizdom-based intranet and a learning portal. Perhaps most impressive was a project portal where critical client and project information from the companys ERP systems is readily available. Whenever a new project is set up a project site or an MS Teams site can be created to drive collaboration and document sharing. Bringing all this information and content together through the digital workplace and via a mobile app was helping consultants to deliver great outcomes for clients.

The integrated digital workplace is also set to become ever-more intelligent. Jess Lassen, Wizdoms CTO, delivered an exciting presentation on AI and bots. Jess established that AI is already a big part of our lives through using Amazon and Netflix. He also admitted that when he says good night to Siri on his iPhone it turns all the lights off in his house! Jess also painted a brighter picture of the impact of AI than some believe, arguing it will create more jobs than losses and will transform every aspect of our lives.

Organisations need to start acting now to gain advantage from AI. Jess gave the audience some tips including the importance of having the data to power AI, thinking about security and assembling the right team. The potential for AI is huge and could be a secret weapon to success, truly disrupting businesses and allowing smaller players to compete with much bigger companies.

The digital workplace needs both robust foundations and delightful touches

In the last presentation of the day John Scott, User Experience Director at Content Formula, walked us through some of the ways you can delight users of your digital workplace. John introduced concepts such as Surface Delight (smaller flourishes and design touches which impress users), and Deep Delight where more fundamental user needs are met.

John also talked about a hierarchy of user experience needs where functional needs sit at the base of a pyramid, with further layers ensuring the digital workplace is reliable, then usable and finally delightful. Citing a series of examples inspired by movies from the eighties and nineties (and giving us a hint of Johns taste in movies!) Johns presentation was a salient reminder that to deliver a great user experience we need to focus on some digital workplace foundations such as performance and governance and that we need to have a deep understanding of users. But we can also add delightful touches such as using tasteful animations, and beautiful images.

Johns session echoed some of the other themes of the day. Yes, we need to worry about fundamentals like security and compliance, but the digital workplace is also about smaller, everyday things and about being human.

The original article was published here

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