IBM's Own Intranet: Saving Big Blue Millions

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• Persona Page
  IBM's Persona Page is another vehicle for providing and obtaining information on employees. Each employee completes a profile, including name, email, phone number, and project information. From that point, every persona page can be personalized to reflect the role and interests of the employee. Managers can view a snapshot of employee activities and expenses, and can monitor skill development according to a set of predefined metrices.
  
  
• My News
  My News can be personalized so that each user sees the news that is pertinent to their position and interests. Users choose from 300 channels, both within their respective organizations and across industries or area of specialization. Automated news feeds then provide information from varied news sources. The portal is built on IBM's WebSphereŽ, infrastructure software that provides the tools necessary to build, deploy, and integrate an e-business.
  
  
• Scorecard
  The Scorecard keeps employees up-to-date on key performance measures, including employee status, performance by business unit, and stock turns.
  
  
• e-HR
  IBM's e-HR function provides employees complete access to financial health benefits, as well as life, career and expense applications. The service offers dedicated call center support. In fact, using Sametime, experts can be available to answer questions at any time. Direct links to many financial service providers are also provided.

  The savings reaped by IBM using e-HR have been recognized on a national scale. USA Today stated, "The move by traditional companies such as Big Blue to paperless benefits enrollment reflects the way e-commerce is reinventing conventional human-resource functions. More than 55% of employers are using technology for benefits enrollments, according to a survey by Watson Wyatt. 'It's a huge trend,' says Steve McCormick, a senior consultant at Watson Wyatt in Washington, DC"
  
  

• e-Learning
  More than 200,000 IBM employees have benefited from education and training online through IBM's "Global Campus". This e-Learning capability offers access to thousands of courses. Users can browse an integrated course catalog and select functions for over 38,000 learning events. The Global Campus also enables the use of video, audio and multimedia technologies to enhance the learning experience.

Throughout these applications, users leverage IBM's Lotus Sametime, a real-time collaborative tool that indicates when other users are online simultaneously, further facilitating communication. "Sametime has fundamentally changed the way our company works together," said Barlow. "It's essential to be able to collaborate in real-time, and Sametime provides that ability to gain instant access to experts and their knowledge." Lotus Sametime provides instant secure messaging, web conferencing, screen sharing, audio and video conferencing and instant multilingual translations, that can be rolled out to employees, as well as individuals outside the company.

But the technology itself isn't the only key to W3's success. "To implement a successful workplace," Gregg Cherbonneau, IBM e-Workplace Marketing Manager, cautioned, "you first need a clear picture of what the company wants and needs. Next, integration is critical - the workplace must be embedded into the big picture for the organization. In fact, the workplace becomes a digital representation of the company. Finally, governance is key. When we talk to customers about their intranets, we ask who owns the intranet? The IT organization is responsible for delivery, but who owns the strategy? Sales? Marketing? We talk to customers about how to wrestle your arms around the content. It's not just about finding the information, it's about finding the right information - information that's timely, consistent, and focuses on common messages throughout the organization." IBM has done so successfully, both in terms of employee satisfaction and increased savings.

Click HERE to see a summary of savings and features of IBM's intranet apps

While IBM has experienced dramatic savings due to the implementation of the Dynamic Workplace, there have been numerous other benefits as well. "The e-Workplace empowers employees," says Barlow, "enabling us to find the right people, and form effective teams that can securely share critical, timely information. With W3, it's easy to set up project management capabilities, share information and coordinate calendars."

But, most people at IBM agree the greatest benefit of W3 has been in turning the company into a place where you can easily increase your knowledge by leveraging every employee's expertise. "At IBM," Barlow concluded, "we're not only studying e-Workplaces in our labs, we're living it, in our e-business enabled work lives."