For the enterprise organization, this is never truer. "Brand police" guide every element of public-facing design. People who visit your site are immediately aware of the professional and polished presentation and can tell the effort that it took.
Then someone becomes an employee and the whole experience changes.
Your new hire ventures from 3rd party to 3rd party of integrated applications that form the internal user experience and are jolted all over the place. There is usually a logo that ties it all together, but besides that, you're at the mercy of what others give you to work with. Most application vendors allow you a few cosmetic changes to try and keep things 'consistent'. You typically get a header/footer, some colors and fonts, but at the end of the day you are limited by a very few options.
Enter the power of the ServiceNow platform. More specifically, the power of the CMS.
As the Content Management System within ServiceNow, the CMS is more than just a way to skin your other applications. Now you can translate your brand guidelines to your internal customers and create a unified experience. Now you can extend your public-facing professionalism deep into the organization. There is power when your website is directly integrated with your application.
A common concern/issue that organizations have with internal applications is that nobody uses them. After all the work is done to put these tools in place, the user base still call or email. They might look at that site once during orientation then totally forget. So much work goes in to making sure everything is connected together, but that same work is not being done to make sure the front-end user experience is optimal.
Think about the power of being able to have a web intranet or portal that is managed like any other application within ServiceNow, yet has the power to extend your departments in a uniform, seamless user experience.
Think about the flexibility to align messaging and content based on user roles already configured to create a custom journey for your users.
Think about the scalability to deliver a high quality, modern web experience regardless of browser or device, allowing for responsive and mobile with ease.
Our internal customers expect a lot more today. Just because they log in doesn't mean we should downgrade the user experience.
Here are a few quick ways to see how you're doing:
- How many users actually visit your intranet/site more than once a week? Which pages are they going to primarily?
- When is the last time you did a survey to ask how the intranet site is working for your audience? Are there a few simple things that can be addressed to make the site more 'sticky'?
- If there are 10 primary things people use your portal for, how easy is it for those 10 items to be reached? How many clicks does it take?
- What if they are using an iPad or Android device? What is that experience like?
- Is the site set up to allow for dynamic changes or does it take more than necessary time to update?
There is not a shortage of great tools out there, but there is a need to elevate the user experience to make those tools grow deeper into the organization.
Photo credit: mollystevens
7 Comments
