The SharePoint 2013 Intranet:An evaluation of SharePoint 2013 as a platform for enterprise intranets

A report for DWG members onlyConfidential

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The SharePoint 2013 Intranet:An evaluation of SharePoint 2013 as a platform for enterprise intranets 2

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REPORTS

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Strategy and Governance: A good practice guideDWG’s in-depth research report “Strategy and Governance: A good practice guide” identifies some of the current trends in intranet strategy, governance and senior sponsorship. Drawing on DWG’s Strategy & Governance benchmarking model and a specially-commissioned survey of intranet managers, plus in-depth case studies, it highlights relevant examples of good practice. Download the executive summary or full report (DWG members only): www.digitalworkplacegroup.com/resources/download-reports/strategy-governance

All our research reports are available for download by DWG members in the Research section of the DWG extranet.

The world of work is experiencing an unprecedented transformation driven by technology. In this follow-up to The Digital Workplace: How technology is liberating work, Paul Miller,

CEO and founder of the Digital Workplace Group, is joined by co-author Elizabeth Marsh to pick up the story and help organizations create digital workplaces fit for the future.

A unique combination of thought leadership and practical advice, this book will bring the reader up to date with the latest developments, such as: no jobs but lots of work; the new digital work ethic; why “teamwork” needs a makeover; the human-centred digital workplace; what this means for physical workplaces; and why the revolution starts with education.

It also provides essential guidance on how to deliver a productive and engaging digital workplace in your organization, explaining how to: assess maturity; make the business case;

set up the programme; and measure progress.

See more about The Digital Renaissance of Work: Delivering digital workplaces fit for the future at:www.digitalworkplacegroup.com/the-digital-renaissance-of-work/#content

The Digital Renaissance of Work: Delivering digital workplaces fit for the future

Paul Miller and Elizabeth Marsh

The SharePoint 2013 Intranet:An evaluation of SharePoint 2013 as a platform for enterprise intranets

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Contents

Confidentiality

1 Executive summary 6

2 Introduction 9

3 An overview of SharePoint 2013 12

4 Collaboration and social networking 15

5 Publishing and internal communications 24

6 Search, metadata and analytics 28

7 Mobile SharePoint and apps 33

8 SharePoint’s digital workplace fit 36

9 Governance, adoption and organizational readiness 39

10 Planning a move to SharePoint 2013 42

11 Critical success factors 48

Appendix 1 – Resources 50

Acknowledgments 51

This report is the property of the Digital Workplace Group (DWG), which is wholly owned by The Empowerment Company Limited. It is protected by international copyright law and conventions. Users of the report have the right to use the report solely for their own internal information purposes. They may not disclose, copy, disseminate, redistribute, or publish the report, or any portion of or excerpts from it, to any other party. Reproduction of the report in any form or by any means is forbidden without DWG’s written permission. Copyright © 2013 Digital Workplace Group. All rights reserved.

The SharePoint 2013 Intranet:An evaluation of SharePoint 2013 as a platform for enterprise intranets

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Executive summary

The launch of SharePoint 2013 marked the ten-year evolution of Microsoft’s intranet and collaboration platform. In this time it had grown from a fairly simple document-centric tool to cover a range of uses:• as an intranet for published information, both corporate-wide and for

business units

• as a portal to glue together other systems such as employee services

• for team and project collaboration

• for storing and disseminating documents

• as a means of connecting employees through profiles and social media.

The purpose of this report is to brief decision-makers on SharePoint 2013 from a business perspective. Although DWG is vendor-neutral, we recognize that many intranet managers will be involved in discussions with their IT team about SharePoint. Our goal is to counterbalance a technology-driven perspective on SharePoint with a look at likely business drivers, risks and implementation demands.

Key changes in SharePoint 2013For business users, the most visible changes are the addition of new social features, improved search and easier content management. The key changes are:

• the introduction of new community features, making the social media experience in SharePoint closer to websites such as LinkedIn or Twitter

• a more powerful search engine with enhanced options to preview and refine search results

• SharePoint as a communication channel is enhanced with the ability to aggregate news from multiple sources into a single channel

• improved navigation, and an overall Windows 8 look and feel

• SkyDrive (similar to Dropbox) and a “share” button for sites and documents make it easier to do ad-hoc collaboration, while Office Web Apps provide lightweight versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint

• improved support for designing multiple mobile templates and dedicated mobile apps for social features

• an “App Store” approach, which makes it easier to add new functionality to a page

• the cloud-based version of SharePoint, available within Microsoft’s Office 365 service, now offers nearly all the features of an on-premises installation.

Behind the scenes, there are numerous improvements to the performance and scalability of SharePoint.

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ShortcomingsAlthough the improvements above are welcome, there are areas in which SharePoint still trails rival offerings. • There is some support for mobile devices, but most organizations will have

to start from basic building blocks to develop a satisfactory experience, or hope that Microsoft will release further apps for the main mobile platforms.

• The “newsfeed” social experience does not pick up on all activities within SharePoint, so it is a less complete dashboard of what is happening than it first appears. Microsoft has indicated that this will be replaced by the Yammer service it acquired in 2012, but details of how this will work are not available at the time of writing.

• The user experience is variable. Newer components are relatively well designed, but older features have barely been updated, leaving tools like blogs, wikis and surveys looking dated.

Governance and adoptionThe vision for what SharePoint is for is not well articulated, leaving companies to figure this out for themselves. In turn, this can leave stakeholders feeling overwhelmed by the options and deployments that get little traction with users.

SharePoint 2013 has improved controls for requesting new sites and tracking their usage but, in general, organizations deploying SharePoint need to establish a clear plan for how they intend each component to be used, and then put in place policies and support teams to follow this up. Without this, the decentralized control model inherent in SharePoint makes it likely that quality content will be hard to find and the potential efficiencies of a single platform are not realized.

Should you upgrade from an earlier version of SharePoint?Evidence so far is that SharePoint 2013 is a robust platform so, if there is genuine value to be had from the new features, then it would make sense to move to it sooner rather than later. Companies that are attracted by the social features, however, should consider the impact of moving to SharePoint 2013 and then Yammer carefully, as the roadmap for integration with SharePoint is not yet clear. Users of SharePoint 2007 may be prompted to move swiftly to 2013 by their IT department due to its coming to the end of its product lifecycle, but there is no technical imperative to move from 2010. Early reports from our members indicate that this can be achieved with third-party tools, but business stakeholders should resist the temptation to immediately launch all the new features at the same time.

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Should you consider moving to SharePoint 2013 at all?Few platforms can match SharePoint for the range of functionality offered or for its integration from desktop to enterprise-scale sharing. So, if this matches the breadth of your vision, then it should be considered. But SharePoint has gained a reputation for falling short of initial expectations, perhaps inevitably. Organizations should ask themselves honestly whether they are really in a position to exploit all that SharePoint can do. In particular, success requires substantial investment in the strategy, governance, people and adoption components. If this is not possible, there may be a better chance of success with simpler, more web-like (and hence more familiar) tools such as Google Enterprise; or tools that are less flexible, but simpler to deploy, such as Jive, Liferay or dedicated content management tools.

Overview Managing an intranet, collaboration platform or digital workplace programme for a large organization can be a lonely, thankless task and it’s growing more complex every year.

of servicesGet DWG on your side

MembershipLearning and industry best practice

BenchmarkingObjective data for making critical decisions

ConsultingIndependent expertise to guide strategy and plans

1 2 3

Sample members and clients

Real-world practitioners: Our benchmarkers and consultants have previously managed intranets and digital workplaces at major organizations. Our expertise is rooted in experience.

Large company experience: For over a decade we have worked with Fortune 1000/FT 500 and similar organizations. Our expertise and insights focus on the challenges and needs of that group.

Measurement and research focus: Our consulting and evaluations are underpinned by measurement and our rich research programme. Our mantra is “data and metrics in a world of opinion”.

Independence: All our work is vendor neutral and our evaluation framework is technology agnostic.

An expert partner to drive change and success

We provide independent expertise to large organizations to help them advance their intranets and broader digital workplaces through three distinct services:

1 Confidential member forum

2 Sophisticated benchmarking

3 Bespoke consulting projects

Strengths of the Digital Workplace Group

• Benchmarking evaluations

• Content management

• Collaboration platforms and social business

• Digital workplace roadmaps

• Enterprise mobile

• External insights and research

• Facilitated workshops and innovation labs

• HRIS and other self-service applications

• Metrics and measurement

• Search and findability

• Strategy and governance

• Stakeholder engagement

• Usability, navigation and design

• User research

Confidential learning, ongoing improvement

The DWG Member Forum is a confidential, members-only benchmarking group. Since 2002, we have carried out more than 500 evaluations in major organizations, giving us a rich background of knowledge and unrivalled insight into current best practice. Membership combines extensive evaluations with peer learning and expert research.

Three elements of membership:

• Peer learning: Rich interaction and sharing with teams from other major organizations

• Expert research: New members-only reports every year and an enormous archive of papers and videos

• Benchmarking evaluations: In-depth analysis of your sites/environment and comparison with other members

Strategic interventions, bespoke projects

Separate from the DWG Member Forum, DWG Consulting Services provides vendor-neutral, unbiased and high-quality advice, and practical hands-on support for digital workplace and intranet programmes. This work is rooted in our decade of providing measurement and research-driven services and our team’s experience of working within large organizations.

Sample consulting projects:

• What does “good” look like? – External insight of industry best practice to inform strategies and plans

• Define vision, strategy & roadmap – Methodology and expertise to set your forward path

• Facilitated workshops – Engage stakeholders across a global organization or within a function

DWG Member Forum DWG Consulting Services

The most valuable thing about DWG is being able to meet your peers. If you work in intranets, it’s normally a closed community… But in this forum, you know you’re going to get honest answers and honest opinions.

We needed a resource. We felt lost. DWG provides resources in one place. It became clear to us that DWG is the one-stop-shop for everything we need.

Two lines of service

Areas of focus

Email: nancy.goebel@digitalworkplacegroup.comTwitter: @nancyatdwg Call: +1 973.978.1072

Nancy M. Goebel, Managing Director London

30 City RoadLondon EC1Y 2ABTel: +44 (20) 7722 8726

New York230 West, 41st Street, 15th FloorNew York, NY 10036Tel: +1 (865) 903 0232

Main offices:

How to contact DWG

Mark Mazza Senior Manager, Digital Projects Lloyds Banking Group

Laura Pierce Director, Corporate Intranet ADP

How to access

the full reportConfidential research for DWG members

This executive summary is an extract from a full research report created for members of the Digital Workplace Group (DWG) Member Forum.

DWG membership is governed by rigorous confidentiality agreements. Most members are very large organizations and face strict guidelines around sharing internal information with others. Our blanket confidentiality policy ensures that the intranet and digital workplace teams from member companies can share honestly and openly with other members.

Additionally, the companies highlighted in our research case studies can breathe easily knowing that their stories will be shared within a confidential environment, not publicly.

Part of the DWG resource library

The full version of this report is part of the DWG Member Forum’s extensive resource library, which includes:

• all DWG research from the past decade

• a curated collection of external research

• a massive video library of intranet tours

• a video library of member knowledge exchanges on focused topics

• a benchmarking database of intranet best practices from large organizations

This is the most extensive library of intranet and digital workplace resources in the world and is available privately to all DWG members.

For more detailed information you can see a complete list of DWG research reports on our website.

All DWG research reports, including the full version of this one, as well as thecomplete DWG resource library are part of our Member Forum package. If you would like to access this and our other research reports, please consider joining the DWG Member Forum. You can find more information about membership on the following pages.

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