29.8.2022
Customizable tool links, improved search and people search functions – these features don´t come standard with the modern SharePoint Online intranet, but are all small customizations which took the intranet of Metsähallitus to a whole new level.
Continue reading “Case Metsähallitus: Small customizations ensured a better than expected intranet”
6.6.2022
Finnish knowledge workers have done more remote work in the last two years than ever before. From the exceptional conditions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, we are returning to the so-called new normal, i.e. hybrid work. The importance of digital tools has grown and new tools have been introduced diligently.
In our Digital Work Environment 2022 report, we looked into the digital work environments and work tools of Finnish organizations already for the fifth time. We researched what the role of a communication intranet is, what other tools are in use in organizations and for which tasks different tools are being used. We also asked what kind of challenges remote and hybrid work causes in organizations and what has been done to solve these challenges.
Continue reading “Data review: Digital work environment 2022 survey”
26.8.2021
In what direction is the intranet and digital work environment going? The world has been wrestling in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic for a year and a half and a large proportion of knowledge workers have been working more or less remotely during this time. Although the pandemic and remote work are not directly responsible for the development of the digital work environment, it has accelerated a change in both mindsets and practices. We picked five themes which can be seen in the current time.
Continue reading “Digital Work Environment Trends in 2021”
25.6.2020
We conducted a survey about digital work environments, which surprisingly showed how much WhatsApp is used for work communication. A staggering 37% of the 111 organizations who took part in the survey mentioned WhatsApp as one of the tools for information management and teamwork in their organizations. In previous years, WhatsApp has not even been mentioned as a major work communication tool. Although the question was not asked as directly in the past, almost 40% is still a noticeable result.
Continue reading “37% of large organizations use WhatsApp – and that’s a problem”
24.4.2020
Intranets have been a hot topic for universities recently. When the technical platforms of intranets come to the end of their life cycle, it’s time to reassess the whole concept. This was done by The University of Helsinki with their Liferay Intranet which we wrote about earlier.
Where the University of Helsinki decided to differentiate between the intranets of employees and students, the Swedish-language Åbo Akademi University, situated in Turku and Vaasa, took a different approach. Åbo Akademi University’s new intranet is for both staff and students, and it was implemented on Finland’s most popular intranet platform, O365.
Continue reading “Case: Åbo Akademi implemented a bilingual intranet with O365”
5.3.2020
2017 was a year of change for the University of Helsinki. The University was undergoing a big organizational change and at the same time a new student platform was taken into use. The intranet called Flamma was a joint intranet for both staff and students. Now, some of its content would be transferred to the new student platform called My Studies, giving an opportunity to reorganize the content of the intranet. In addition, the technical platform was coming to the end of its life cycle and adding the fact that the intranet was not responsive, a renewal was more than called for.
Continue reading “Case: The new intranet of the University of Helsinki is a result of close-knit collaboration”
27.2.2019
What does intranets and digital workspaces look like in Finland in 2018? We conducted a survey, in order to find out roles, functionalities and technologies of the digital workplace as well as to see how organizations develop and lead their intranets and digital workplaces.
Continue reading “Survey results: The roles and functions of digital workplaces in Finland”
As concluded in my previous post, there are many alternatives for building a communicative intranet. However, when we take a closer look at document-centric teamwork solutions, it seems as if O365 has won the game already. For instance, in the article written by the online security firm Bitglass a couple of years ago, it is mentioned that Office 365 had already overtaken Google Apps when comparing enterprise adoption of cloud applications. And they certainly have kept up the pace in the past years. So, are the other alternatives even worth considering? Sure they are. Continue reading “Are there any teamwork solution alternatives for Office 365?”
Here in Finland, we have seen venerable marketing efforts by Microsoft and its partners for quite some time already, and the results are clearly visible in intranet project request for proposals responses. At times it feels like companies have purchased Office 365 licenses first, and only then started thinking about the fun things that could be done with them. Sure enough, O365 tools are perfectly fine for a lot of things, but it is recommended to take a closer look at the other alternatives as well before deciding on the technology platform. Continue reading “Are there any alternatives for Office 365 intranet?”
6.9.2017
Lately there has been a lot of talk about the competetiveness of the Finnish economy. One thing is for sure: in the intranet market we aren’t doing badly at all! Two Finnish products designed for intranet and digital work – Valo and Universe – are churning out outstanding sales figures around the world. In the spirit of our centenary year of independence, we decided to introduce these two top export products.
We interviewed representatives from both Universe and Valo, giving them the freedom to praise their own products as they see fit, but we also asked them to evaluate the competition and describe their product development philosophy. So, in this article we shall focus on Valo.
Continue reading “Finnish intranet products are conquering the world – introducing Valo”
6.9.2017
Lately there has been a lot of talk about the competetiveness of the Finnish economy. One thing is for sure: in the intranet market we aren’t doing badly at all! Two Finnish products designed for intranet and digital work – Valo and Universe – are churning out outstanding sales figures around the world. In the spirit of our centenary year of independence, we decided to introduce these two top export products.
We interviewed representatives from both Universe and Valo, giving them the freedom to praise their own products as they see fit, but we also asked them to evaluate the competition and describe their product development philosophy. So, in this article we shall focus on Universe.
Continue reading “Finnish intranet products are conquering the world – introducing Universe”
13.6.2017
Intranets in Finland are used for organizational, HR, and strategic communications, and to communicate company policies and guidelines. On top of these two traditional roles, most of the intranets are also tools to facilitate the forming of a common organizational culture and sense of community, our latest study on Finnish intranets reports.
Mar 7, 2016
I held a two-part presentation at a conference in Oslo last year, the first part of which discussed typical intranet concepts and technologies in the Nordic countries. The second part was about intranet conceptualization methods and things like various workshop techniques. In this story, I’ll summarize the topics of the first presentation through five assertions.
Continue reading “Office 365, Slack and other intranet technology trends”
Nov 4, 2014
Finland and Sweden often arrange playful competitions between each other. We challenged both countries to an “intranet open” comparing the freshly published results of the Intranets in Finland 2014 survey with the corresponding survey in Sweden. The topics include intranet platforms, access to intranets, usage activity, content and functionality, and intranet governance models.
Continue reading “International intranet competition—What are the differences between Finland and Sweden?”
Sep 17, 2014
Intranets are rising in importance but still lack strategic management, the first comprehensive study on Finnish intranets finds.
The study, Intranets in Finland 2014, gathered responses from Finnish intranet managers. In addition to mapping the intranet technology, the survey studied the role and use of intranets and how intranets are managed, the typical content and features, as well as the role of the intranet managers and the emerging trends in the field.
The study found six emerging megatrends in Finnish intranets: Continue reading “First-ever intranet study in Finland reveals six megatrends”
Buyer's Guide to Intranet Projects 
Confluence Challenges SharePoint as an Intranet Platform
Sep 8, 2014
It’s cheaper, it’s simpler, it’s more user-friendly. And its content editor might be the best on the market. It’s Atlassian Confluence.
Confluence is truly challenging Microsoft SharePoint, the market leader, as an intranet platform in Finland. SharePoint is still the king of the hill based on our latest survey on Finnish intranets: 51 % of intranets are running on SharePoint (version 2007 or greater), and only 7 % on Atlassian Confluence. Continue reading “Confluence Challenges SharePoint as an Intranet Platform” →