Maine Agency Improves Communication With Intranet Social Networking

It’s a common challenge for business professionals: how to communicate effectively and foster a culture of collaboration with colleagues — especially if their colleagues happen to be in offices hundreds of miles away.

One common method is sending out mass emails, but keeping track of mountains of inbox messages and relevant data can be a daunting task.

One major independent agency in Maine is tackling this challenge by adopting an alternative method — an interactive, intranet social networking platform. The system was developed by a Portland, Maine-based startup company called iKNO (pronounced “I know”). It offers a social media-like interface — providing blog forums, news feeds and employee profile pages where workers can team up and share information in a searchable database. The platform also offers employee directories with customized biographies and photos, similar to what one might find on Facebook or LinkedIn.

F.A. Peabody, a Houlton, Maine-headquartered agency offering property/casualty, life and health insurance, installed the platform one year ago. And the firm says this interactive intranet is helping to improve communication and spark a more cooperative environment.

“We have eight offices and roughly 90 employees spread throughout northern Maine. It encompasses territories spread over some 200 miles, so it’s a large territory,” said F.A. Peabody’s president, Christopher Anderson. “The furthest office from our central office is a two-hour drive away. So it’s not like we can just drive down the road to a nearby office to have a meeting.”

But in an insurance agency, employees’ collaborative efforts are important in placing appropriate insurance on behalf of customers, Anderson remarked.

“So if I am working on a commercial vacant building, I might want to put that information on our new intranet under my user profile, informing my colleagues that I am working on a vacant property,” he said. “Because there might be someone else in the organization who’s in a similar position. And they could appreciate that information.”

If other colleagues want to pitch in and help with a project, the interactive social networking platform makes it easy to find out what everyone is working on and see if there is anything they might need help with.

F.A. Peabody also uses its intranet to inform employees of changes in carrier partners’ product lines and other updates.

“As the president, I may get a piece of information from an insurance company announcing some change to their product line,” Anderson said. “In the past, I might just broadcast that via email, which I still do today. But now, I will also post it to our intranet,” he said. “So that when people want to go back and reference that company’s change, they can easily find it from our intranet’s searchable database. People get lots of information across their daily workload. And they read it, and they delete it. They might save it, but they might forget where they saved it.”

F.A. Peabody employees also post insurance news articles on the platform’s news feed section, where others can join and write comments, in a manner similar to social media sites. The agency also archives its human resources-related forms and information on the intranet, accessible to employees.

“So this enhances our communication, which is now on a two-way basis as opposed to a one-way basis which we had before,” Anderson observed. “This is another tool in our arsenal as a company to enhance communication, so that we can serve the customers better and serve ourselves better as employees of the company.” The entire installation took about six weeks for the agency.

Corporate Intranets

Corporate intranets have been around for decades. Microsoft’s SharePoint is perhaps the most dominant system used by large corporations. But such a platform, which requires dedicated administrative staff

and a large upfront fee, may not be a good fit for insurance agencies with tens or hundreds of employees, said Mark Girr, a technology consultant who co-founded iKNO with entrepreneur Becky McKinnell last year.

McKinnell says that for F.A. Peabody, one key component was the feature that brings colleagues together and “put the power of all knowledge of the company in a searchable intranet database,” so that employees from any of their eight offices can quickly search for product lines, contact information and other proprietary data posted and updated by other members of the company.

Girr says his company’s goal is to offer an interactive and intuitive platform for small businesses. “I noticed that small to medium-sized organizations didn’t really have any good options,” according to Girr, who has been running a consulting firm specializing in employee communications and intranet optimization.

Girr said the iKNO intranet is an internal website that employees have access to and serves as an online forum where they can collaborate. “They are able to access company information such as policies and procedures, and also put their hands on forms, sales and product information, and vendor information.” Everything that the company’s operation consists of are reflected in the intranet.

“We wanted our system to reflect technologies people are familiar with, yet not overwhelm them with gadgets, functions and information that they can’t, won’t or don’t use,” he remarked. “Our iKNO system specifically addresses information overload while at the same time increasing access and knowledge sharing.”

At a time when companies are demanding more from their employees because of hiring freezes or downsizings, it is important to engage workers and provide them with a tool that mitigates information overload, provides easy access to information, and fosters cooperation, according to iKNO co-founders.

The company offers two versions of the platform. One is a cloud-based application with no additional requirement for hardware or IT support by the client. Another is an enterprise version whose platform would be placed on the client’s own servers.

Prices start at around $4 per employee per month for small businesses, plus a $5,000 initial fee and the customization and training fee starting at $2,500. Girr said iKNO was designed for companies that have between 50 and 1,000 employees and more than one location. The system is currently used by several Maine-based financial services and healthcare companies.