Many talk about having a portal or hub, but then in the same breath complain that so much work is done and nobody uses it. There is a "stickiness" factor that eludes many and so this tool that you are trying to serve up ends up being an afterthought to picking up the phone or sending an email.
Unfortunately the problem is going to grow unless efforts are made now towards a larger vision. Long gone are the days that you can buy something "off the shelf" and spin it up for your user and that's that. This way of thinking is a "manufactured home" mindset. Sure, you can throw some paint on or swap out some windows, but in the end, the internal structure is firmly in place. Many organizations are facing the same challenges with looking for a template to just slap in place that will do the job. The issue for ESM is that the job is not that easy anymore.
What we need to explore is how to build towards a "modular home" concept. This home is a shell of four walls and a roof that may be custom built, but the rooms within are easy to move around, stretch, rotate, extend or shape. I can easily deploy new sections that are being used in other organizations in more of a plug-n-play approach to ESM. I don't have to waste my time on repeatable efforts since the heavy lifting was done once and is now ready for me to utilize. Incorporating new departments or groups is much more efficient and scalable in this approach as you're not building a completely new entity for each, you're just utilizing what has already been created. Sure, this new group can paint their walls their own color or decorate their part of the house however they want, but the overall structure and familiarity will create a much more uniform user experience and accelerate adoption.
The difference between building a modular home and a manufactured one comes down to one very important thing: time. Time is money. Time is resource. Time is something that none of us seem to have, let alone extra. It takes some to think through how to build something to scale and not just build something to get it done.
Here are some questions to ask as you begin to build your new ESM house:
- Are there functional areas that can extend to all groups within the organization?
Building out the way a form is served up or the way your content can be accessed or how the search results appear or even the ways alerts are handled are all examples of functionality that can be shared. Build those experiences out and then extend them as options available throughout the various groups. The custom functionality requests that pop up here and there are much easier to handle when you have the easier and repeatable elements already dialed in and ready to go. - How can you use brand to speed up the design process?
Your brand extends beyond the public facing assets and can be used to elevate the end user experience. If you design the house and modular areas or rooms to adopt the same look and feel while allowing for specific swappable sections you will win. For instance, build out a number of color schemes that are approved for us (rather than just one) and allow the group owner to just pick one for their part of the site. The layout and structure stays the same, but that group feels unique as they get a slightly different "look". Or maybe there is a specific logo that identifies a department. Allow for that logo to be served up to that group. Whatever you can do to make it simple to customize from the beginning will ensure greater adoption and utilization. - How can you plan to scale from the beginning?
If you really want a site to launch and be utilized within the organization, it has to be able to grow. How to add in new departments or groups needs to be at the very start of the discussion. If the design you are currently thinking about are going to take a lot of static or one-off items, take a step back and see how things could be more dynamically delivered. Can the architecture of the portal or hub be set up in a way that 90% of what every single group needs is already ready? If so, you have scale.
Imagine a world within your organization where a new group wants to join your ESM ecosystem and they can simply fill out a request, supply their content, determine their own customizations and within a few clicks their pages are ready for review? This is possible now and should be more of the standard.
So much work goes in to integrating systems, developing workflows and process, establishing roles and groups, and elevating the ESM function in more of a back-office effort. The ability to create a unique front-end experience while staying within a modular, scalable paradigm is going to take just as much (if not more!) time, but the value will be long-lasting and ultimately make your job much easier and the utility more effective.
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