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RUNNING AN INTRANET FOR THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE IN A LARGE COMPANY,
ORGANIZATION OR GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT?
Hear Gerry McGovern speak live on how you can increase
productivity and reduce costs by identifying and better managing
your employees' top tasks. Join our FREE webinar on Tuesday, May
27, 2008 @ 15:00 (GMT, Dublin). SIGN UP TODAY:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/909567396

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Rome: May 23-24 two-day masterclass (PDF)
http://www.technologytransfer.it/docs/deplEng/BP8-McGOVERN%20ING.pdf

Stockholm: June 11: Intranet keynote (PDF)
http://www.abilitypartner.se/Texter/Intranatdagarna%202008.pdf"

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FIXING APPALLING INTRANET SEARCH

Intranet search is appalling because people don't want their
content to get found, and the organization does not value the
importance of finding.

Why do so many of the best organizations in the world have
ass-and-cart search engines? The quality of search is
astonishingly bad within most organizations. And what's even
more astonishing, nobody's in charge and nobody really cares.

I know of organizations that have 20,000, 40,000, 60,000 people,
that don't have a single fulltime resource allocated to helping
staff find stuff on their intranets. In 2008, how can we still
have such management oversight and negligence?

Search is important. Really important. Google continues to be
voted the world's most valuable brand. Why? It's just a search
engine! All it does is help us find stuff quickly. But we know,
don't we, that finding stuff quickly in this information
saturated world, is the critical first step in getting stuff
done.

"Nowadays when "search rules" on the internet, it is
disappointing that nearly 3 out of 5 organisations are "not
really satisfied" or "not satisfied at all" with their intranet
search. However, well over half have "less than one person" who
works on supporting and optimizing search. Very few have
taxonomies, and not nearly enough do analysis on the search
logs." (Second annual Global Intranet & Portal Strategies
Survey.)

Time to get real about search. Time to grab the nettle. But it's
not search we need to manage. What we need to manage is
findability? And how to we do that? We identify the most popular
searches on our intranets and measure how findable they
currently are.

It's very important to note here that I'm not talking about
finding any old stuff. Focus on how your intranet can help staff
find stuff that is critical to doing their jobs. Do sales
representatives and marketers need to find images, and proposals
and sales presentation templates?

What is it that makes your organization run more efficiently and
how findable are these things on your intranet? How much of
sales time is being wasted looking for stuff, when it could be
spent selling? Have your sales people ever lost a contract
because they used the wrong proposal template. (And they chose
this template because it was the first one they found in the
search results page.)

At the heart of the intranet lies a very challenging problem.
The people who create the content don't really care if it is
found or not. There is no competition to get found like there is
on the Web. (Do you think that the first result in Google got
there by accident?)

Organizations say to people: Your job is to write this. Your job
is to put this up on the intranet. Once the content is written
and published on the intranet, then the job is over. Except that
it's not. Because if the content can't be quickly found then it
was a total waste of time to publish it in the first place.

Stop measuring people on the amount of content they publish.
Measure them on the findability of that content. Better still,
once found measure them on the usefulness of the content. So,
you published all these marketing images. Are sales reps
actually using any of them in their sales presentations?

To find out more about the Global Intranet Trends survey,
contact Jane McConnell: mailto:jane@netjmc.com
http://netjmc.com/survey/index.html

Gerry McGovern
mailto:gerry@gerrymcgovern.com

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RUNNING AN INTRANET FOR THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE IN A LARGE COMPANY,
ORGANIZATION OR GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENT?
Hear Gerry McGovern speak live on how you can increase
productivity and reduce costs by identifying and better managing
your employees' top tasks. Join our FREE webinar on Tuesday, May
27, 2008 @ 15:00 (GMT, Dublin). SIGN UP TODAY:
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/909567396
*****************************************************************

Comment on this post at our Giraffe Forum Blog
http://giraffeforum.com/wordpress/2008/05/16/fixing-appalling-intranet-search/#comments

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PIONEER, BBC, TETRA PAK, IKEA AND ROLLS-ROYCE USE CUSTOMER
CAREWORDS. SEE WHAT IT CAN DO FOR YOU
http://www.customercarewords.com/
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RELATED LINKS

Intranets
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/class/intranet.htm

New Thinking Subject Classification
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/class/index.htm

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NEW THINKING NEW THINKING NEW THINKING NEW THINKING
By Gerry McGovern - http://www.gerrymcgovern.com
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May 19, 2008 - Volume 13 Number 20
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You may quote freely from this issue once you give proper
attribution. (A link to www.gerrymcgovern.com would be
appreciated.)

Permission to re-publish an individual issue is given, once the

following conditions are met:
* Gerry McGovern is given proper recognition as author
* A link to Gerry McGovern's website is published with the
following text and URL:

Content management solutions: Gerry McGovern
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com

* The piece is not modified in any way
* Subscription details for New Thinking are provided
* Gerry McGovern is informed of the re-publication

mailto:gerry@gerrymcgovern.com

WEBSITE LINK FOR THIS ISSUE:
http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/nt/2008/nt-2008-05-19-intranet-search.htm

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HAVE YOU ENJOYED NEW THINKING?

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Thank you

Gerry McGovern

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PUBLICATION SCHEDULE
New Thinking is published every Monday, 48 weeks a year (two
week break during August and December).
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_________________________________________________________________
Published by Gerry McGovern (mailto:gerry@gerrymcgovern.com)
Copyright (C) 2008 Gerry McGovern. All rights reserved.




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