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ARMONK, NY
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26 Jan 2006:
IBM's intranet -- known inside the company as the "w3 On Demand Workplace," -- has been selected as one of "The Year's 10 Best Intranets" by the Nielsen Norman Group, a user experience research firm that advises companies on human-centered product and service design. IBM is the only information technology company recognized in this year's report.
Commenting on IBM's intranet, usability expert Jakob Nielsen, principal, Nielsen Norman Group, said: "Designers took an aggressive yet realistic approach, creating and enforcing meticulous intranet design standards to maintain a consistent design, and using personalization to ensure the right information reaches the right people."
"The w3 On Demand Workplace is a powerful productivity and collaboration tool for 329,000 IBM employees in 75 countries," said Brian Truskowski, vice president and chief information officer, IBM. "Our intranet has evolved into an integrating platform that accelerates the speed with which we can find resources and knowledge to help our clients innovate and succeed."
Among the features Nielsen Norman recognized:
- Personalization of news -- Based on self-created profiles, employees receive internal and external news tailored to their jobs and interests.
- Role-specific portlets -- Job-specific portlets are available for employees in finance, sales, and management. This means all the tools and applications these employees need for their particular function are available directly from their IBM intranet home page.
- Employee directory -- "If the average employee directory is a hill, the IBM BluePages would be the Matterhorn... with a plethora of features and pertinent information, the IBM BluePages is probably the most robust intranet employee directory we have ever encountered," Nielsen Norman's report says. BluePages facilitates collaboration by allowing IBMers to find each other more easily. Using this tool, IBMers can even search for other employees based on their areas of expertise.
- Blogging -- Through BlogCentral, IBM Employees can share their ideas by creating their own blogs, or subscribe to each other's blogs via RSS.
- Accessibility -- The site is designed to be easy to use for people with disabilities, including older users, users with motor-related disabilities, memory or literacy issues, or low vision.
Other Nielsen Norman Group award-winners this year include Allianz Australia Insurance Ltd. (Australia), ALTANA Pharma AG (Germany), Bank of Ireland (Ireland), Capital One (US), Merrill Lynch (US), METRO Group (Germany), O2 (UK), Staples Inc. (US), and Vodafone Group plc (Germany).
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