Blog - 3 ways to improve efficiency with AI in your intranet

Summary

Thinking about what an intranet should be? And how to make yours both useful and engaging for employees? Experts from LumApps presented this talk about Gartner Digital Workplace 2024 about how a well-designed intranet can help employees understand what they need to do, how to act on their work, and grow within the organization.

Presenters:
Sean Winter, GM of North America at LumApps
Mary Kaplan, Head of Product Marketing at LumApps

Now, let’s jump into the presentation about how we are making intranets useful for employees…

Sean Winter:
At LumApps, we spend a lot of time thinking about the impact of what the pandemic did to ways of working and workplace culture. It's very challenging for companies to be clear on what they are trying to do from a top-down perspective since there are so many ways of communicating. I'm sure you've seen plenty of demos on what's important in terms of communication best practices, how to measure, and how to get better over time … but it's certainly not an easy time for communicators to actively and accurately connect with their employees.

Mary Kaplan:
Not only are there 7 ways for you to get a hold of me during the workday, but we’re also distributed teams – we might not be in the same office, state, or even country. It's hard to know how to get your message in front of people at the right time, and in a way that makes sense to them, right?

Sean Winter:
Absolutely. I think during the pandemic, we may have oversteered into an era of ‘let's put tech on top of tech, on top of tech.’ Let's add things like notification aggregators, context-switching apps … and then suddenly you have 60 apps on your phone to get your work done on any given day. So at LumApps, we've taken an opposite approach to that, to say – How can we actually make an intranet mean more than maybe what you think it can mean?

Mary Kaplan:
Initially, application sprawl is so well-intentioned. But, if there’s a problem, we think we can solve it with an app. For example, let’s say you want to send virtual kudos to an employee to recognize a job well done, but you have to log in to a separate app. Maybe once I'm done posting here, I have to copy and paste to post it somewhere else. That kudos I wanted to give now turned into 20 minutes of work, which is just kind of a drag. It's a wonderful initiative and very well-intentioned, but the functionality is cumbersome and takes time away from doing my day job.

Sean Winter:
Absolutely. I think that hybrid work has brought a lot of positives. Personally, I’ve been a remote or hybrid worker for about 20-25 years now so I don’t know anything different, but I see a lot of people that really struggle. Especially if they're new to a company, employees struggle to understand what they're supposed to do, who they're supposed to do it with, and how they're supposed to do it. I think a true modern intranet can play a key role there, not just in explaining what you need to do or who you need to do it with, but here's how you can actually get it done. This is where we are heavily focused as a company, and we'll try walk you through that journey today.

In the past, we at LumApps, like many others, have considered renaming an intranet to an employee experience platform or something similar. However, we realized that may not be the solution. Instead, we should focus on raising our expectations for these platforms. Is the problem really with the name of the intranet, or are we simply not utilizing its full potential?

Mary Kaplan:
I like to make a joke about how your parents' intranet is no longer the norm. The intranet of even 10 years ago, which is around the time of my college graduation, may not be what your employees are looking for today. In a session yesterday, someone said their intranet looked like it was from the 80’s even though it was from the early 2000’s. That resonated with me because if you're using outdated systems or intranets, they might not be meeting your current needs. Unfortunately, some customers have told us that their legacy intranets are content graveyards where content goes to die. It's no wonder people think the intranet is not a solution to their problems.

Sean Winter:
Absolutely. So we've taken a very strategic view on this to think about it differently to determine how can we create platforms that are enjoyable, inspiring, that create modern empathetic experiences that allow people to gracefully move between different technology, as opposed to just layering tech on top of tech.

Mary Kaplan:
So, let’s talk about what an intranet of today can be and how it can help your employees.

When thinking about how to build technology to improve a process, it's important to first understand the world in which you exist. This is especially true if you're a new employee or in a new role. You need to know what you're doing and understand the practical, tangible things like accessing news and updates, getting notifications, and knowing how to ask questions and find things.

To achieve this, you need a system that is smart, personal, and easy to use. However, that's not enough. You also need to be able to take action based on the information you receive. For example, if you receive a notification about benefits enrollment, you should be able to jump in and complete the enrollment process quickly and easily.

This is where an intranet can be incredibly helpful. Many of our customers use their intranet for knowledge management and enablement. They provide microlearning opportunities, such as quick quizzes or short videos, to help employees learn and grow in their roles. By delivering information in a way that is easy to access and understand, an intranet can be an invaluable tool for anyone looking to improve their skills and knowledge.

In summary, an intranet can be all of these things: smart, personal, easy to use, and a valuable resource for learning and growth. By providing the right information, at the right time, and through the right channels, an intranet can help employees thrive in their roles.

Sean Winter:

So if you're a customer of ours and we're talking to you about our roadmap, you'll see everything built around these three pillars – understand, act, grow.

1. Understand - An employee understands the mission, strategies, and goals of their position

The first concept we'll discuss is understanding, which is a common communication scenario. The idea is to ensure that your workforce, which is now global, hybrid, or remote, with different generations, interests, and tenure, truly comprehends the company's objectives, as well as their own and their team's goals, and how to achieve them. Furthermore, it's vital to understand how one's work contributes to the company's bottom line or other key performance indicators.

We are super passionate about translating communications into something that has a clear outcome for the company so that everyone knows exactly how their work impacts whatever is important for the company.

— Sean Winter, GM of North America, LumApps

Mary Kaplan:
I love this one because it's our backbone, and it's the backbone of almost every intranet CMS in the world. Right? So, like we said, understanding where do I fit? What do I need to know? That's all your personalized communications. We think we do that pretty well. It's something we've always invested in. But, there's a certain two-letter moniker that we've all heard a lot about these last two days that we're leveraging even more to get, like I said, the right information to the right people via smart experiences, via AI.

Your comms team will love LumApps because they can create media-rich messages, campaigns, and broadcasts, and we can streamline them to the right channel. But even more than that, where it really shines is in providing recommendations and governance for content management systems and communications. The goal is to make these systems smarter and more efficient to handle the needs of large customers.

For example, let’s say it’s the end of Q1 and you can want to publish news to the sales team in North America and EMEA. The intranet could make a suggestion, such as – Would you like to add these audiences to your publication? Or, "Hey Sean, most of the sales team is using Slack. Make sure you publish this particular news to Slack.

Or, perhaps something like, "Sean, did you know that Mary wrote something similar a month ago? Would you like to review that before you proceed with publishing it?" The objective is to enhance the backend of our content management system by making it smarter. When you’re trying to figure out the best governance and metadata strategy for a company with more than 10,000 employees, incorporating intelligent experiences into our communication system is, in my opinion, a way to make a significant impact.

2. Act - An employee can get work done within the intranet

The "Act" stage is where we are investing heavily to differentiate ourselves at LumApps because we believe that the intranet needs to be reimagined. Intranets have always promised this, but have failed to deliver the ability to get work done. Previously, people could only talk about work, but now we have reached a point where intranet systems can help us with actual work processes.

For example, let's say I want to take a vacation day. First, I need to know where to find the transaction. It could be in an HR or finance system, and we might have multiple HR systems. Once I find the right application, I need to find the actual transaction. It could be as simple as requesting Monday through Friday off. Then, I need to work with my manager to see if my request makes sense.

The problem is that each of these steps requires a different application. Our goal is to combine all of these steps into one experience. Whether you’re browsing the intranet, searching for something, or looking at a digital assistant like a chatbot, you should be able to read the policy and take action in one place.

We have integrated this with our new product called Companion, which is geared towards creating a seamless experience for employees to learn how to complete tasks and do them in one place without having to switch between different platforms. This is an added advantage for IT teams who are always on the lookout for streamlined processes. At LumApps, our goal is to leverage the best parts of your business apps and present them in a clean dashboard that offers users a clear picture of what's happening at any given time. This way, users can interact with the dashboard and move deals from one stage to the next with ease, all within the intranet.

Sean Winter:
There are two ways employees can access the transactions available within the application. The first is through a portal page that shows all the transactions an employee can access. We can customize the page based on an employee's role in the company. The second way is through a digital assistant, which can be accessed either within or outside of the LumApps system.

This assistant allows users to interact with the application in a conversational way. For example, an employee can ask, "What's my PTO policy?" and get an immediate response. This option is ideal for those who prefer a chatbot experience.

The third way is to use the search bar. Employees can simply type in what they are looking for, such as "What's my PTO policy?", and the system will show them the relevant transaction from Workday or any other system that we use. The search results are synced back to LumApps, so there's no need for employees to leave the system.

Mary Kaplan:

I believe there’s tremendous value in creating an employee experience that caters to employees who are not stationed at their desk all day. For instance, if they need to find something quickly, they can access an application portal to see all their relevant information, including new updates. It could be something as simple as the lunch menu – which is quite popular among many customers – or as complex as the number of outstanding tickets in ServiceNow.

These experiences can be customized and tailored to individual preferences. Additionally, chatbots (or conversational AI) play a crucial role in serving up these experiences because we're not trying to change the way people work. We don't want to be like Sisyphus, rolling that boulder up the hill. Instead, we're looking to integrate our system into existing platforms like Teams or Slack, where employees already spend most of their time.

For example, we can publish our town hall recap on Slack, so people can easily access it where they work. Or, we can make our chatbot experience persistent in platforms like Slack, so employees can still use it even if they don't have access the intranet for some reason. They can log a support ticket, request time off, and perform other tasks with ease. Ultimately, the goal is to provide employees with an experience that helps them get their work done efficiently.

3. Grow - Employees can learn and improve skills to grow within the company

The third pillar is the concept of growth, which emerged when we talked to many of our HR contacts. We discovered they may have four learning management systems (LMS) and three LXP (Learning Experience Platforms). These systems have all become places of compliance and audit, which are necessary, but not very interesting. The era of reskilling and upskilling has passed, and now we're back to using these old, bulky learning management systems.

We asked ourselves, how can the intranet play a role in modernizing this process? Can we use the intranet to help people improve over time? That's where the idea of learning pathways comes in. You've probably heard the term micro-learning or nano-learning. This is the beginning of our journey to serve up content that helps you get better at something or get unstuck. What's really interesting, however, is that this is leading us to a more modern approach to communication – get the right message, to the right people, at the right time.

The idea behind microlearning is to deliver a short message that can be easily consumed and understood by the employee. This could be a course to help someone with a work-related issue, or it could be information about the latest promotions or displays in a store. The goal is not only to read and absorb the information but also to demonstrate understanding.

Many communication professionals are moving away from traditional written communication and towards a more experiential and modern approach. This could involve creating a 32-second experience that includes a quiz to ensure that the user has fully absorbed the information. This approach allows for better metrics and feedback on what the user has learned and understood.

This is the third investment in the notion of micro and nano learning, which aims to create a new form of communication that is more engaging and effective.

These mobile-first microlearning experiences are focused on the employee journey, serving up content in a way that is quick, engaging, and actionable. It allows employees to take a quiz, learn something, and move on. This isn't replacing your LMS, but can be helpful in use cases like sales enablement where you could inform the sales team about the top five values of a product before launch. Comms teams love it because it’s a fun, new way to serve up content and make it engaging.

Sean Winter:
We have a specific perspective on how AI can add value to the intranet, which is backed by our customers. About a year ago, we discussed our AI ideas with our Customer Advisory Board. They wanted to focus on parts of their job that they no longer wanted to do. We aim to find solutions for issues such as misplaced content or outdated versions of content. We also have GenAI and other conversational AI interfaces. However, our primary focus is on our enterprise-grade content management system and we know that a human component to governance is necessary.

We've seen different enterprise search companies try to reinvent that space over and over again and continue to come up with that garbage in, garbage out problem. So we're seeing AI as a powerful means to remind our content creators, contributors, and communicators to make the content as current, as effective, and as in the right place as possible.

Mary Kaplan:
So we don't get a content graveyard.

Sean Winter:
Certainly. There is something else I wanted to discuss which is pixel-perfect design. This is an area we are very passionate about. We have many customers who own multiple brands and companies. LumApps is capable of providing multi-site intranets where content can be distributed across different branded experiences and across multiple tenants.

We can adapt to different platforms as per your requirement, whether you use Microsoft or Google. In short, we can divide and conquer and integrate with any platform as per your needs.

I think if there's anything to remember, it's that an intranet is not a bad word. An intranet can be something different and more than what you think. And for us, that's the notion of understanding what I need to do, acting on my work, and getting better and growing with the organization over time.

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