Internal agency communication comes of age
August 4, 2011 | Author: Tim Williams
Some industry observers find it incredulous that in an age of sophisticated software and cloud-based computing a majority of agencies still rely on archaic systems to communicate and collaborate. Paper job jackets? Really? The most advanced use of technology many firms use to get their work done, share information, and keep staffers informed is email (which, by the way, has been around over 20 years now).
But there are some notable – and impressive – exceptions. Like the approach taken by Austin-based LatinWorks, named this year as one of the top 10 agencies on Advertising Age’s “A List.” LatinWorks CFO Hector Silva has brought internal agency communication and collaboration into the 21st century through the introduction of “LatinWorker,” an internal digital platform that goes well beyond the concept of an intranet.
Before designing the site, Hector and his team held over 30 interviews with employees and asked them to contribute to its development. They were asked to share their worst gripes about working and collaborating at the agency. “Their answer wasn’t surprising,” says Hector. “They said we don’t share enough, don’t feel connected enough, don’t learn enough. They said that if we launched an intranet, it better not cost me time, it better help us collaborate, be easy to learn and fun
to use.”
Another obvious truth learned from the interviews: employees live on-line and are completely socially networked, so the development team emphasized the social networking features of SharePoint 2010 when building the tool. “We designed the site to be a ‘window into our agency culture,’ says Hector. “Basically, it had to look like the agency. It couldn’t look like a boring place to go.”
“LatinWorker” meets this challenge by providing a visually-rich, easy-to-navigate portal to things most agency people need and care about, including not just the latest agency news, but a constantly-updated archive of the latest work by client, lists of client teams, and most of the internal information and resources agency staffers need to do their jobs.
This platform is designed to be the one place agency people need to go to open jobs, manage projects, submit expenses, issue purchase orders, enter timesheets, review a client profitability dashboard, look up contact information, or link to outside resources. One of the truly slick features is a document approval system that routes work through the system and keeps track of who sees and approves it. Combined with a tool called On Base, the goal is to leverage “LatinWorker” to make the agency truly paperless – a noble goal few firms are even close to.
The proof is in the adoption
Developing “LatinWorker” was obviously a fair amount of work, but the real work comes in gaining user adoption. To that end, the agency provides 90 minutes of introductory training and promotes awareness of the platform with things like LatinWorker-branded phone holders and promos that run on the internal agency TV channel.
Following this initial launch – essentially a 1.0 beta – the agency will collect user feedback and decide which features to add or improve. Just like any good online property, this is a project that is never done.
