Learning Portals: Supporting Corporate Objectives

Ted Forbes and Brian Gruber - 6/22/07

In today's Web-savvy world, the technology to develop user control offers the best opportunity for improved learning and productivity. That's a far cry from the prevailing approach of only a few years ago, and it says much about how we have evolved from i

“You control the information age,” heralded Time magazine with its controversial decision in January to name every Internet user its “Person of the Year.” Although some might argue with Time’s choice, there is no denying the revolutionary change the magazine acknowledged — users are in control when it comes to the Internet.

It’s a change chief learning officers ignore at their peril because the same applies to their intranets, as well.

CLOs now face the most crucial challenge to corporate intranets since their initial development in the 1990s: How will you adapt your intranet site to the dynamic environment of today’s Internet — the same Internet that is setting the expectations of corporate users?

Admittedly, it is a time of rampant evolution, a period of exhausting and seemingly endless change because of the newest functionalities users discover on Web sites. Imagine this: One night, an associate surfs the Internet at home, discovers a great feature and expects to find it the next day on the portal at work.

This scenario is not far-fetched. Company associates (your “customers”) will demand a mirror image of the Internet with all the options associated with what is commonly called Web 2.0. When they don’t find it, they might ignore you, placing your intranet on the path to extinction.

New and effective portals are the death knell for the electronic newsletter-style approach still in use on too many intranets. The new philosophical foundation for creating the best portals to meet corporate and user needs is recognizing that the user — not the company — must control the portal at the personal level. That recognition is not always welcomed, but it should be.

In today’s Web-savvy world, the technology to develop user control offers the best opportunity for improved learning and productivity. That’s a far cry from the prevailing approach of only a few years ago, and it says much about how we have evolved from the intranet to portals.

Corporate Intranet 1.0
In the 1990s, intranets were developed to provide a channel to communicate and share company information — they were simply a technological replacement for the company newsletter, containing the same published material and offering little or no interactivity. Back then, technology allowed companies to update the information, create greater access to it and even include work tools. Any thoughts of productivity centered on management’s ability to efficiently disseminate in a timely manner material it deemed important to all levels of the hierarchy.