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The Art of User Management

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

Recently, while interacting with the CIOs of a large healthcare and a

manufacturing company, we came across an interesting fact. The healthcare CIO

stressed that the most demanding users in his organization were doctors. It was

nearly impossible to convince them to use technology. They were comfortable

writing their patient's prescriptions with pen and paper, and didn't want to

waste time doing the same on a computer or a tablet. Likewise, the CIO of the

manufacturing company pointed out that plant managers were the toughest to

convince on anything about IT. They were extremely finicky about their

production processes and schedules, and didn't want anything to disturb the

same. Looking at this trend, we decided to find out what other CIOs felt, and

therefore did a survey to find out who were the most demanding users in their

organization. Interestingly enough, their responses indicated a similar trend.

Business unit managers or mid-level managers were the most difficult to convince

according to them, and not without good reasons either. Take doctors in a

hospital for instance. They have to see so many patients in a day that they

don't really have time to type everything into a computer. The same logic goes

for a plant manager, or any other business unit manager for that matter. They're

so busy running their day to day businesses that it's extremely difficult to

convince them about using anything in IT.

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Strategies for managing the

most critical part of any IT infrastructure-the users

Our survey of course went far beyond that. Our actual objective was to find

out how CIOs manage the most critical part of their IT infrastructure-the users.

After all, no matter how great or expensive a technology you implement, it's

useless if your users are not able to use it. And they will use it only when

they're absolutely convinced. You might implement the best ERP solution in the

world, but if you've done it without involving your users, it will take a long

time to succeed, if it does at all. That's because doing things without getting

a buy-in from users results in resistance to change, thereby causing

de-motivation, lower productivity, and more calls to the helpdesk.

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Ultimately, users are the best judges for any technology, so it makes sense

for every CIO to ensure that they're convinced, happy, and satisfied. Only then

will they contribute their best, be more productive and keep the organization on

a strong growth path. But how do you do that? What measures should you take to

keep your users happy? And how do you measure user satisfaction levels? Are

there technologies available for effective user management? User management is a

crucial part of any CIOs job, and this story will provide insights into the

subject by answering these pressing questions and more. We'll look at

technologies for conducting user satisfaction/expectation audits, how to get a

buy-in from users, help desk management tips, and much more.

Remember, user management is a mix of technology and good HR skills. So the

CIO of any company has to be a good juggler of both.

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Challenges in Gaining User acceptance



Success of any IT implementation in an enterprise is largely dependent on

user acceptance. When we asked CIOs how difficult it was to convince users to

accept a new technology, almost half of them said it's 'moderately difficult,'

while a few of them felt it was relatively easy. Typically, the most difficult

project is to get a buy-in for are those that cause a significant change in

business processes, such as an ERP deployment. That's what a majority of the

CIOs said in our survey. But then again, you never know where surprises will

spring up from. For all you know, your users might resist giving up their

standard desktops for thin clients, or resist the roll out of a timesheet

system. At that point, you just need to know how to handle the situation.

But before you even reach the mass roll out stage, it's better to do a pilot

and perform user acceptance testing. Many organizations perform user acceptance

testing when projects are nearing their end. While this is a sensible practice,

but if at this point a major change in application is required, most

organizations would tend to ignore it as by then developers would have already

packed their bags. And organizations are not willing to pay them again to

redesign the application! This has been the case with those organizations that

hire developers from outside just for customizing their applications. While this

always results in cost savings, a better option would be to outsource, if

development is not the core business of your enterprise. As one of the

respondents in our survey pointed out, 'more budget' always results in higher

user satisfaction.

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During user acceptance tests, usually a particular set of users test the

application and have developers or software testers to help them with the

application. Since users are using application for the first time, they

definitely require assistance, but with too much assistance at this point

everything appears easy for users. However, later on when the project goes live,

users tend to feel differently. While rolling out an enterprise wide project,

the best practice is to enroll it module by module.

How to get a buy-in from users?



So ultimately, how do you get a buy-in from users? From the survey results,

we discovered that there are mainly three tactics that should be followed. One

is to apply pressure, whereby the IT department takes the help of top management

to put pressure on users to start using the new application. The second is to

give awards and recognition for using new technology. And finally, the third and

most popular is to the explain benefits of a new technology in depth and show

the results through a pilot run or another implementation.

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Dealing with difficult or demanding users



Each organization has its own set of 'difficult users', and handling them is

an important skill for CIOs. As we said earlier, our survey indicated that

'middle managers/business unit heads.' were the most difficult to handle. They

were the most demanding. There are several reasons for this. Some felt it's

because they prefer using conventional methods and refuse to consider IT as an

integral part of business. So, even if a new process is going to make their work

easy, middle managers resist change. Others feared the transparency that IT

could bring to their way of working. A few CIOs felt that middle managers expect

too much from IT and want everything to work, without much effort. And when

results are not achieved, they are quick to blame IT. The best solution for such

kinds of problems is the same solution that solves most user related problems,

i.e. through consistent interaction and more discussions with the middle

management.

Coping with users who feel they know more



Similar is the case with users who always claim to know more than the IT

department; whether they do or not is a different story, but this is a set of

users that can be vexing at times.

Ensuring smooth user

experience with IT
There are many

things that would make a user happy-applications that are easy to learn, use

and access so that they cause minimum disruption to work; working machines

so that your users are always productive; fast Internet and network access

for obvious reasons; negligible security threats like spam and viruses; and

of course, excellent and quick support.

If you can read between lines,

you'll realize that all these things come under IT management. So user

satisfaction is directly linked to a well managed IT setup. And there are

several things you can do to ensure that your IT setup is well-managed.

Let's look at a few of them.

Automate: As your IT

infrastructure becomes more complex, it becomes more difficult to manage.

This is more so, because you have more management tasks to do in lesser

time. Since the time to manage doesn't increase with the number of tasks,

you have to find ways and means of automating as many tasks as possible. It

is a little difficult at first, but once done, it really makes life easier.



One way to automate is by using scripts.

Every operating system, be it

Windows at the desktop or server, Linux or Unix can perform many functions

automatically with the help of scripts. In Windows for instance, you can

easily create VB scripts for automating a number of tasks, right from

retrieving system information to scripts for monitoring operations of an

Active Directory.

In fact, Microsoft has a huge

script repository of sample scripts. You'll find it at

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/default.mspx?mfr=true.

Here, you'll find tons of sample scripts that you can immediately pick up

and start using.

Keep those replacements

ready:
The worst thing to happen to any user is a prolonged machine

downtime. The IT department takes away the machine for what seems like

eternity. You must keep some hot spares handy for such situa -tions, and by

that, we don't just mean the hardware. After all, what good is hardware if

it doesn't have applications requi- red by the user? Apart from spare

machines, you must also keep a few spare software licen- ses of the

applications that are most commonly used in your organization, so that a

user's work doesn't get disrupted.

Reduce calls to helpdesk:

There are many ways of doing this. One is to empower the users with enough

information to fix small problems themselves. For this, it's important to

compile a knowledge base of the most common problems faced by your users and

their solutions. Keep these handy on your intranet for users to access.

The second point to remember

is that prevention is better than cure. Keep a set of guidelines always

handy, which users should follow while using the IT infrastructure. Stuff

like how to distinguish a spam mail from a genuine one, the currently going

security threats and their symptoms, Internet access policy, etc. are all

things that can prevent security threats from entering your network. Provide

a list of dos and don'ts for your users. You must find a way to ensure that

users read all this information; otherwise it will be of no use. So maybe

you could put it as a 'tip of the day' on your intranet's home page. Or you

could put up some lively notices on the notice board. The key is to catch

the users' attention.

Reduce management

overheads:
There are numerous ways of doing this. One is to reduce the

number of physical trips your support staff has to make to users' machines.

For this, consider remote desktop access and management solutions. A user

doesn't have to wait forever for somebody to come and fix a problem.

Instead, everything gets taken care of remotely.

Use the right set of

tools:
Compile and keep the right set of tools and utilities handy for a

variety of management tasks. Since there's a plethora of tools available for

just about every task, it's a matter of personal preference of what you want

to keep. Ideally, keep a good mix of tools handy, which can be used for

emergencies. Get notebooks for your support staff and install these tools on

them. Carry the notebooks around whenever you need to do any

troubleshooting.

Live CDs can be of great help

in such cases. You just have to boot from them, and you have an Operating

System with the right set of tools up and running in no time. For instance,

there are network security and auditing CDs which contain tools for

vulnerability assessment, forensics, etc. There are CDs for disaster

recovery, which have data recovery tools. There are firewalls, clustering,

and a whole range of other distros that can be used.

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Sometimes new employees also fall in this category as they always compare the

present enterprise to their old organizations and take a while to get used to

new rules, policies and environment. When we asked CIOs how they tackle such

users, we got some spirited replies. Apparently CIOs take feedback from such

users and see how they can improve themselves. At the time of deploying a new

project, such users are the first choice of CIOs as team leaders within their

departments. However, if such users prove to be pointless, then CIOs don't shy

away from telling them-leave it to the experts.

How to increase user satisfaction



It's an old saying that users are the best judge of IT, which is quite true

as they are the ones who use it every day, and at times they even know tricks

that are unknown to people who provide IT support, even vendors at times.

Theoretically, user satisfaction should be the top concern for each CIO, but in

reality it all comes down to how much businesses are benefiting from IT, which

obviously can't be without users. So we decided to find out how much CIOs care

about their users, what steps they take to ensure user happiness, whether user

problems are heard and how much they consider users' views and ideas.

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When we asked CIOs about how satisfied their users were with the IT

infrastructure of their enterprise, a major chunk of them replied, 'mostly

satisfied;' while a few claimed that their users were 'happy.' So the question

arises, 'How to increase user satisfaction level?' The first step in achieving

this is to collect as much user feedback as you can. One of the most common ways

to do this is by conducting in-house user satisfaction surveys. Ideally, this

should be done every quarter, since IT processes and even ways to conduct

businesses change very fast these days.

Many enterprises face the contentious issue of getting users to respond to

surveys. As end users frequently ignore such kind of surveys or sometimes give

the reason that they're 'too busy' to answer such kind of surveys. Often

throwing a bait helps in these situations. Further, when users have something

bad to say, they tend to keep it to themselves as they don't want to look evil.

This problem can be easily encountered by conducting anonymous surveys once a

while and assuring users that their response would be kept anonymous. We once

came across an instance where a survey had an anonymous disclaimer on its first

page and later on people responsible for the survey called up employees who

didn't respond to fill it up. Soon users became suspicious about the anonymity

of the survey and questioned how they figured out those who didn'toblige. The

point is, 'be extremely careful' while conducting anonymous survey.

Once survey results have come in, they must be studied carefully. Some CIOs

personally deal with users' complaints, which is an effective habit. This makes

user feel better and at the same time it gives CIOs a better understanding of

the problems faced by users.

Other way for increasing user satisfaction is by training users to use IT

effectively, and how to train them this we will discuss later in the story. So

the crux is, to enhance user satisfaction, you have to increase interaction with

all users. Some companies share yearly IT performance report to keep users

updated and also to collect their views on it.

In our survey we asked CIOs about the issues in which they get involved

directly. Most of them said that they consider all user-related issues

seriously, but in case of escalations they take matter directly in their hands.

While another set of CIOs said that to ensure that user problems are understood

correctly, they keep themselves fully involved during requirement analysis. Long

pending issues and policy breaches are also in the priority list of CIOs.

Online

surveys with LimeSurvey


LimeSurvey lets you create and roll out anonymous and non-anomyous

surveys instantly

LimeSurvey is an open source

application for performing Web-based surveys. You can run anonymous as well

as user-based unlimited surveys with any number of questions.

You can also send survey

invitations through email. In this application you have open and closed

group of participants, which could be easily managed through Web

administration console.

Statistics from the user

responses can be generated; it makes responses easier to understand. It also

lets you export surveys and results to the MS Excel, CSV or text format.

With the new version of Lime

Survey you can also see saved responses that are not yet submitted by the

users. LimeSurvey uses token feature to invite users to participate in

survey and ensures that every user participates only once.

It supports 25 types of

questions such as list, multiple options, free text, and array etc.

As per the answers given by

the users, you can also define conditions for the next questions.

Configuring LimeSurvey



For installing LimeSurvey you need at least 10 MB of free disk space on

your Web server, support for PHP 4.2.0 or later, and MySQL 4.1.0 or above

versions. It also requires mysql4 or mysql5 PHP, and mbstring library

installed. You can download it from http://sourceforge.net/projects/limesurvey/.

Download the package, unzip it, locate config.php file in /limesurvey

directory, and then open it in text editor. Now, locate the arguments '$databasename',

'$databaseuser' and '$databasepass', and then provide the name of the

database, which will be used by LimeSurvey. You also have to provide

database server username and password. Similarly, locate '$rooturl' and '$rootdir',

and provide the URL location and directory location of LimeSurvey scripts.

You might need to customize other arguments according to server

configuration. Upload all the files to the Web server and make sure to keep

the directory structure the same as was in the downloaded package.

For this, simply go to

http://your.domain.com/limesurvey/admin/install/index.php . If everything is

correctly configured, then the page will ask you to create a table inside

the database.

Creating Surveys



For this, go to the main administration console and click on the “Create

or Import New Survey" button present on the top left. This will open the

'Create Survey' page. Here, provide the title for the survey, survey's

description, and the welcome message. Then, you have to provide the

administrator's name and email address. Further, define the format in which

you want the users to see the survey. You have three options: Question by

Question, Group by Group, and All in one. The first option displays all

questions one by one to users. The second option displays questions in

groups.

While you create survey

questions, remember to divide questions into groups or certain topics for

using this option. The All in one option will display all the questions on

one page. This option must be avoided if you are creating a long survey

having more than 30 questions, users might probably get scared in the very

beginning and avoid giving his response. You can also customize the text of

Invitation and reminder mails, and you can even set up the custom URL for

the survey else LimeSurvey will generate it automatically. Finally, define

the expiry date for the survey and click on Create Survey.

The next step is to add

questions to the created survey, but before adding questions you need to add

groups. To do this, just click on 'Add New Group to Survey' button. On the

next page that appears, provide the title and description for the group, and

click on 'Add group' button. Once the group has been created, you can see it

on the main survey administration screen. You will see a new 'Add New

Question to Group' button on extreme right of the menu bar. Click on this

button to add questions. In the new window provide the Code, which is meant

for quickly identifying the question (it can be either a number or code). In

the question field enter the text of the question. Then choose the question

type, define whether the question is mandatory or not, and then add the

question by clicking on the 'Add question' button. Depending on the type of

question that you have selected, you need to add answers. Proceeding in the

same fashion you can add all the questions and groups for the survey. To

activate your survey, click on the 'Activate this Survey' option present on

the survey menu bar. You can't add or delete groups and questions, once your

survey has been activated.

Next step is to enable

tokens, which are unique for every user. For this, go to the main

administration window and click on the 'Activate/Edit Tokens for this

Survey' option. Select the 'Initialize Tokens' on the next page and upload

the contact details of users whose participation you want in your survey. To

import users from a CSV file, click on the 'Import Tokens from CSV File'

option and upload names and email addresses of the users. Now, generate

tokens for these users. For this, click on the 'generate tokens' button on

the tokens page. LimeSurvey will automatically generate unique tokens for

all the users in the database. You can send survey invitations to all these

users using the 'Send invitation' feature on the tokens page itself. Once

users start responding to your survey, you can view their responses by

selecting the ' Browse responses from this Survey' option. For generating

statistics from these responses, click on the option 'Get statistics from

these responses' option, select the fields for which you want to see the

stats, and click on the 'View Stats' option. LimeSurvey will create stats in

an easy to understand, presentable manner.

User Training



Training users play a significant role in user satisfaction: be it training

users for a new application deployment or training new users. In our survey,

CIOs claimed that they have been able to solve many problems such as getting

buy-in from users etc. through training. For this, they encounter two problems

mainly: getting users to show up for training and training remote users.

Solution for getting users to show up is same as mentioned previously; just

explain the benefits of IT to users. One can also use the pressure tactics,

however this tactic can't ensure that interest of the user is there. So, one

must avoid using this tactic. Many enterprises have days dedicated to training

such as ' IT day' or 'Security Day'. On such days whole organization is provided

training and various events are organized to enhance knowledge of users about

IT.

For training remote users, most of the enterprises send a trainer to remote

locations, but this doesn't solve the problem always, especially for enterprises

having highly distributed workforce. Such organizations are increasingly

adopting online technologies for user training.

Online technologies for user training



The most popular way of training remote users these days is through Web

conferencing. Initially Web conferencing became popular for online meetings and

collaboration. But now enterprises with distributed workforce are increasingly

adopting it for training remote users. With Web conferencing features such as

desktop sharing, video and audio streaming, instant polling, and feedback,

trainers can ensure that users are paying attention and hence, provide in-person

instructor-led training experience.

Another commonly used way of training users is through simulation, though

success rate of this technique is quite low. This is a non-instructor based

training, where users are usually trained through presentations, and flash

movies. The hands on process of using a new application for daily usage are

explained in a simulated manner. While this kind of training is good enough to

give an overview to users, users don't tend to take it seriously.

Remote technical

support with Citrix GoToAssist Express
With Citrix

GoToAssist Express, you can create live Web-based remote desktop sessions.

Currently, in its beta version, GotoAssist can be used for providing

technical support and training remote users. It has a unique feature called

'Unattended Support' through which you can connect to end user's machine

without users being present there. It comes with two modules Citrix

GoToAssist Express Expert and Citrix GoToAssist Express Customer. The Expert

module is the main console through which you can perform all administration

tasks. When this module is launched, it creates a support key, which is

required by the users to begin the session. Either users have to go to

www.fastsupport.com and enter the support key to start the session. Else

administrators can send the complete URL created by the Expert module to its

users. Before starting the session, the website will automatically install

the Customer module into the end users' machine. The solution allows eight

customers to be connected to a single Express console simultaneously.


In GoToAssist Express

you can communicate with users through instant messaging

Once the session is in place,

you have the shared control of remote users' keyboard and mouse. You can

also communicate with the customer through instant messaging and send as

well as receive files. It comes with a 'Remote Diagnostics' tool as well

through which you can collect basic information about remote users' machine.

According to Citrix the solution uses 128-bit Advanced Encrypt- ion Standard

and SSL to provide secure communication. The solution can be found at

https://express.gotoassist.com.

Role of Helpdesk



Helpdesk plays an important role in overall user satisfaction of an

enterprise. An important factor is how easily a user gets hold of the helpdesk

staff; it largely depends on the helpdesk staff to users' ratio. While the ratio

might vary according to the business, the ideal ratio for this usually is 1 to

50. Incidentally this is what most companies follow as found in our survey.

User training with

Adobe Connect Professional
Acrobat Connect

Professional is a new training and Web conferencing solution from Adobe. It

lets you instantly create and track online meetings, and on-demand

presentations etc. Using the 'Rapid training' feature of Connect

Professional you can instantly create content and train anyone, anywhere,

through virtual classrooms. This solution lets you record online meetings,

which could be later on used for compliance purposes, giving demonstrations

and for reoccurring meetings.

Other features include

multipoint video conferencing, multiple presenters, moderated Q&A



session, and instant polling between the participants.

Since it is a Web-hosted

solution, you can access it from anywhere; the only requirement is a Web

browser with Adobe Flash player installed. It is quite easy to configure and

use, and has a neat flash-based interface. For using this solution you have

to pay USD39.95 per month for unlimited meetings with 15 participants at the

same time.



Adobe Connect lets you

schedule start and end time of trainings and remind users about training

schedules

How to use?



Creating training module for the users in Adobe Connect Professional is

simple. Once you have logged onto the console, first you need to create

users whom you want to train. For this, go to the main console, click on

'Administration' option and then select the 'User and Groups' option. Here,

click on 'New User' and provide all the necessary information. In the next

step, define the 'Group Membership' for this user. By default it has five

groups: Administrators, Authors, Training Managers, Learners and Meeting

Hosts. Select the group and click on finish. Now, upload the training

content; this content could be in the following file formats: ppt, pdf, flv,

mp3, html, SWF, JPEG, PNG or GIF etc. For uploading your files, go to the

'Content' option and in the new window click on the 'New Content' tab.

Browse the files you want to upload. Then provide the title, summary and

custom URL and click on Save.

To create your training

course, go to the training option present on the main menu bar and click on

'New course'. This will launch course wizard.

It will first ask you to

provide name for the course, a unique id, summary, and define custom URL.

Then define the start and end date for the course, and choose the course

content. Next, the wizard will ask you to enroll users who are going to take

this course and lastly you've to define when the users should be notified

about training.

When the user receives the

email, it contains the link to the training. User need to follow that link

for logging in. Once logged in, the user can see available trainings for

which he has been enrolled under 'My Trainings' section. Similar to the

procedure above you can also configure Course curriculum and organize Web

conferencing based trainings.

When we asked CIOs how satisfied they are with their helpdesk, half of them

said just satisfied. Some queries take longer than others, but that is perfectly

fine with them. So it's important that you frequently assess the strength of

your helpdesk team against the users in your organization.

Similarly, it's also important that you train your helpdesk staff from time

to time. Soft skills training should be a must for the whole helpdesk team.

Helpdesk personnel with topnotch customer service skills find it hard to become

technical experts and vice versa at times. So, do ensure that your helpdesk team

has got the right mix of skills.

Another way of improving helpdesk support is to frequently analyze current

practices and performing self-evaluation of helpdesk team every quarter.

Identify mistakes of the past, perform a root cause analysis of major incidents

encountered, and learn from the mistakes made in the past. Keep your online

knowledge base and policies updated at all times. This is beneficial not only

for helpdesk personnels, but end users also. Remember first priority of helpdesk

should be users and all users should be treated equally.

Managing Policies and their breaches



Each of us has experienced that whenever a new IT policy is introduced,

users are hardly happy with it. But well-defined IT policies or processes always

help in avoiding conflicts with users as it's already documented that what users

can do and what they cannot. It is very important for enterprises to keep the IT

access policies in places such as disk quotas, Internet access etc.

Me @ HP
HP's strategy of

leveraging technology to connect with and engage employees is called Me@HP-a

one stop shop for all HP employees to do everything from booking conference

room to managing the exit process from the company-through an online portal.

The idea is to reduce paperwork and save time in running around, getting

signatures-essentially ensuring that you don't have to budge from your seat.

Each member of Me@HP gets to

create a personal homepage, with a brief biography, and allows tagging

friends across the HP global employee spectrum. One can find out about the

likes & dislikes, areas of interest, etc, which helps make both formal and

informal meetings more productive. Similarly, blogs are also used to connect

with employees. Some of HP's business leaders' blogs are extremely popular.

They share their thoughts on business and non-business topics close to their

hearts-inclusive of extensive photo galleries. The discussion boards also

ensure that email exchange is reduced and whatever exchange does happen,

it's more productive and focused. The aim ultimately is to reduce formal and

encourage informal channels of communication.

Wipro's Channel
Wipro's intranet

portal called Channel has a separate team of about five people to manage

the portal from Bangalore, which organizes infotainment events like film

festivals and dance workshops, besides maintaining the portal that has

numerous discussion boards which are heavily populated.

Positioned as a connection point

for Wiproites on the Web, Channel has sections dedicated to literature

(called Odyssey, where news, news and responses on literary happenings are

discussed). But the real use of an intranet of this nature, which connects

about 50,000 Wiproites can be seen in sections where members are allowed to

buy and sell stuff when they have to go onsite, and find room mates if they

happened to stay alone.

There is even a matrimonial

section within the discussion boards where employees can surf through

profiles.

The idea is to create a

virtual world where employees creatively use their restricted online space,

and exchange information beyond their work, spilling over to hobbies and

then some more.

These policies not only help in smooth running of IT infrastructure, they

also make user management an easier and transparent job. Similarly, compliance

plays an important role ensuring smooth running of business and healthy

environment for users to work in. (To know more about compliance refer to Jan2k8

issue of PCQuest.)

In our survey when we asked CIOs what action they take if somebody has

breached a critical IT policy, most of the CIOs believe one-on-one meet with the

wrongdoer is enough to deal with the situation. If the same user breaches the

policy again, the matter is escalated to respective department head, and in case

of critical breach like a severe data theft, users are even fired. So you should

have a clear and well documented policy of what actions to take when a critical

policy is breached and users must be made aware of critical policies as soon as

they join the company.

Adding socializing features in Intranets



Social networking within an intranet is being taken seriously by companies,

who wish to bind their employees together and keep them happy. More importantly,

they ensure that there is reduction in the number of email exchange, and a

plausible reduction in paper transactions. Intranet portals of this nature also

give the employee his/her share of private space that includes blogs, discussion

boards on topics ranging from football to George Bush to cuisines, besides other

forms of personal expression.

Some companies that have the vision of the 'paperless office' go an extra

mile and upload online forms, registers, booking sheets and other

permission-related material on the intranet portals.



In most cases, the HR department has an interesting role to play in the
maintenance of these portals. Moderators of intranet portals often keep a close

eye on the blogs and forums, to try and understand 'user behavior' - in other

words, trying to get hints about a possibly disinterested or unhappy employee.

Some companies even go to the length of advocating informal counseling session

for 'check-listed'employees.

The bottom line is to ensure high user satisfaction in an enterprise, whole

of the IT department has to work proactively. Other than regular IT deployments

and process, constant interaction with the users and considering their feedbacks

is the mantra to keep users happy.

Cisco's Employee

Connection
Cisco's intranet

'starting point' follows the aim of providing cost-effective processes and

tools for creating successful, user-centric sites, besides creating a

template to integrate users and processes. Some of the ideals that have gone

behind the creation of CEC are:



- Providing fast, intuitive, personalized and secure access to internal
information worldwide.



- Promoting effective enterprise communications and messaging.


- Enabling efficient, integrated business processes.


- Fostering seamless, cross-functional collaboration.


Cisco's intranet architecture

enables key business processes, which include Communication, Management,

Collaboration, Delivery of employee services and Innovation. These have been

made possible due to a number of reasons. One is that it's easier and more

intuitive to find content and applications. Functionality looks and works

consistently, making sites easier to use. All information about a specific

topic is located in one place, avoiding redundant, overlapping, or

out-of-sync information. Self-help answers are easier to find, speeding

business processes and reducing internal support needs. Related tools and

data are easier to find, strengthening business processes and program reach.

News and other messages can be communicated more coherently, and to the

right audiences. It enables enterprise, cross-functional capabilities that

have more impact by leveraging a common framework. Sites can be developed

faster, and with higher degree of user success.

Cisco also admits that after

the CEC has come into effect, there has been a plausible relief for the

email server, which processes only very vital, classified information.

According to Cisco, CEC encourages and enables employees to make use of a

host of web based tools and applications to access employee services,

content, and to share information, views and opinions.

With employee services being

provided over the intranet, employee needs are handled through the online

portal, thereby eliminating the need for e-mails, in these specific

situations.

Anil Chopra, Swapnil Arora and Vishnu Anand

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