New Looks for Intranets and Dashboards
The similarity between intranets and dashboards is as enduring as their enterprise purpose. Both tools consolidate information into a single locus for what is increasingly becoming an immediacy of access and, oftentimes, action.
The complementary nature of these facets of KM is underscored by the fact that most credible intranets contain dashboards. Both demonstrate the enduring value of visualizations, particularly in a field laden with verbal and numerical content, not just text.
Intranets provide the channel through which enterprise resources—including content, workflows, and search mechanisms—are funneled. Dashboards serve as the medium for a rapid assessment of any particular space or business concern. Collectively, they facilitate the “aggregation and visualization of data to make more competent business decisions,” commented Jennifer Crawford, director, solution engineering and SaaS presales, at Access. “They synthesize and visualize meaningful information to support a business decision.”
Therefore, it may be surprising to learn that the latest advancements in this space pertain to growing expectations about the underlying user experience. Those expectations are influenced by the consumerization of dashboards and intranets, contributing to a climate in which greater levels of personalization are not only necessary but also demanded.
User Expectations
The consumerization of information technology has had a profound impact on the development of dashboards and the intranets in which they’re frequently found. Vanguard technologies for reviewing, scrutinizing, and consuming multiple datapoints are as commonplace as the widgets in a social media application, phone, or any other connected devices. The ubiquity of these capabilities can’t help but shape what users want from other technologies throughout the enterprise. “We don’t want to have an experience in our personal lives, such as on our phones, that varies too differently from what we expect at work, because the learning curve is too great,” Crawford pointed out. “We want to be able to flow seamlessly across all our interactions, especially when it comes to dashboards.”
The similarity of the expectations for user experiences with dashboards and intranets, then, is twofold. On the one hand, users prefer a commonality in how they access the fundamental aspects of relevant information—which is what dashboards and intranets deliver—in their personal and professional realms. On the other hand, they’re becoming accustomed to these resources interoperating to achieve that end. “That’s why you see kind of a continuity across how these work in DoorDash versus how things work in Salesforce,” Crawford explained. “We want that; we want it to feel intuitive.”
Intranet Developments
The parallels between the dashboard and networking resources outside and inside the workplace are too salient to be ignored. Crawford detailed an online banking use case in which, instead of logging into an intranet, a customer logs into his bank’s website and is apprised of information via dashboards, where he sees “quick links to all the customer’s accounts,” Crawford mentioned. “And, maybe you see some alerts or an inbox that lets you know that you have an action you need to take here, or a notification you need to be aware of, or a quick link to contacting someone or chatting with a bot to help you answer questions.”