In a growing number of companies, IT is failing to market these cool, new IT applications and capabilities to their internal customers--the employees of the company.
IT staffs in countless organizations develop sound business-technology strategies, execute the implementations nearly flawlessly, and understand the relationship between IT prowess and company success. The goal is to provide employees with the IT tools they need to do their job and serve their customers.
But there is a big disconnect in what employees actually know and what the IT staff thinks they know.
In a growing number of companies, IT is failing to market these cool, new IT applications and capabilities to their internal customers--the employees of the company. And it’s no huge surprise. After all, IT staff members aren't bred to have marketing expertise, nor are they known to be extroverts who proactively reach out to scores of employees to show them the latest and greatest.
Though this problem exists in companies of all sizes, it's most pronounced among large, distributed companies. Often, these companies have both centralized IT staffs, as well distributed IT teams that align with business units. Consequently, employees can obtain IT capabilities from two places--their business-unit IT teams or central IT. They become confused about where to get the information they need.
What's more, in the majority of companies, business units don't view IT as strategic. It's typically more of a cost center that tactically resolves IT issues. (This is changing, as Nemertes is working with a growing number of organizations in which assertive CIOs demand seats at the executive table and business executives better understand the integral role IT has in every facet of operations.) The drawback of IT's posture in many companies is that employees ignore emails announcing new capabilities, blow off training sessions on their calendars, and don’t follow IT rules and policies. They're too busy doing their job, and haven’t yet come to understand that IT is an integral part of their jobs and can help them do it faster and better.
It's important for IT and business leaders to recognize that few non-technical employees "get it" in the same way an IT person does when it comes to a fascinating new application. IT must always figure out (typically with the help of business-technology liaisons) what will pique the interest of non-technical employees.
When working on the marketing program, market what will resonate with the employees. If it's unified messaging, perhaps an image of driving between sales calls with a headset on, listening to an email that helps close the next sales call would appeal to the sales team. If the new application is a wiki, perhaps the image of searching through thousands of emails to find that one note from a meeting 3 months ago will resonate with a collaborative product development team, which would see notes organized by topic and date on a wiki.
Nemertes recommends the following general guidelines for IT staffs trying to improve their internal marketing. Naturally, every company is different, but these are consistent best practices I have found as I work with enterprises.
* Acknowledge you have an issue. In many companies, IT staffers think they have properly informed and trained employees. But if employees still don't know what's available, where to get information about new applications, or how to use them, they have not succeeded.
* Engage the corporate communications, HR, marketing, or even product marketing teams. They have the training and skills to most effectively get the word out to employees.
* Carefully select how employees can receive information electronically. Don't have multiple intranets, even if various business units employ specialized IT staffs. Assign one person (or an explicit team) control of a single intranet and mandate regular updates to the content. Consider features such as RSS feeds that push content to employees in their areas of interest.
* Recognize that employees get their information in different ways. For example, younger employees may opt for wikis, internal blogs, access-controlled Facebook sites, or even text messaging. Utilize these tools to build communities, raise awareness, and announce new capabilities. But always refer them back to the central intranet to get the details.
* Don't ignore the more traditional marketing methods. Place signs or posters that announce new IT capabilities, training programs, business value, or policies in lunchrooms, bathrooms, and entryways. By engaging marketing, these posters can be catchy and creative.
* Engage tech-savvy employees within business units to help with grassroots marketing. These employees will enjoy being the first to try out new applications, features, devices, etc., and they will "show them off" to their colleagues. Before long, these other colleagues will be visiting the intranet to sign up for training or asking their managers for access to the new tool.
* Similarly, engage business-unit leaders who can evangelize the new applications or capabilities from a top-down perspective. If the head of the business unit is using the application, employees likely will want the same.
* Use good, old-fashioned in-person discussions. Identify the IT folks who have that enviable personality. You know the ones: Everyone wants to talk to them. They're at people’s desks, in the break room, at the water cooler, and they're always sharing some good advice on IT capabilities with people.
* Conduct regular weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly lunch showcases or training sessions. What could be better than a nice lunch with a demonstration of a cool new IT capability?
