Ensuring that its employees could easily locate information system-wide was one of the biggest challenges that Fannie Mae faced when it created its award-winning Intranet site.
The Washington, D.C.-based mortgage financing company wanted its Home Site to provide employees with immediate access to all of the information contained in the company's computers. The human resources department, for instance, might own a particular process, but employees outside of the division might search for that data under a different heading, said Mary O'Donnell, director of corporate communications.
Today, all of the company's 3,700 employees in Fannie Mae's six regional offices, have access to the site, including employees who do not have a computer in their immediate workstation. Employees can use the site to access company stock information and news clips, and individual divisions can communicate with the entire company.
"They had a lot of density of content," said Karl Lewis, vice president of Proxicom, an outside vendor that worked with Fannie Mae's communications and information systems departments to create the site. The volume of information helped make the site unique, he added.
Organize and Prepare
When Fannie Mae approached Proxicom, it was at a chaotic stage in the process, said Lewis. The company had a long list of information and needed help setting priorities, he added.
It was a "very fast-burn project." Organizing and editing material for a site takes time, Lewis said, and though Fannie Mae originally planned to launch the site in October 1997 with a two-week lead-time, it did not complete the launch until January 1998.
Proxicom did not conduct any formal employee surveys prior to designing the site but instead used its own team as a focus group, said O'Donnell. The contractor also researched other companies' sites and attended Intranet conferences to develop its own ideas.
During the development of the site, the Fannie Mae communications department realized the value of sharing control. Although the department maintains a supervisory role over the site, developers wanted to allow individual divisions within Fannie Mae to publish their own information so they authored publishing tools that are available to every department.
While many Intranet sites are static, Fannie Mae's includes an interactive retro-Space Age site, where employees can submit ideas about the company or any of its products, add on to other people's ideas, and participate in brainteasers. The Innovation Vision Site, which won an International Association of Business Communicators' Silver Inkwell Award of Excellence, is one of the sites where an individual division exercised its publishing authority.
"Most Intranets these days are static publications," said Ryan Bernard, president of Intramark, an Intranet consulting company. "Feedback and interaction and collaborationare where the true value of the Intranet will be realized."
Selling the Site
Throughout each stage of the project, the communications department also focused on promoting the new Intranet to employees. The promotion campaign included e-mail teasers, a colorful reference guide, and brown bag lunches. To solicit the interest of employees, the site also includes a link to ESPN, said O'Donnell.
Once the site was completed, promoting new additions was easy because the site itself became an advertising tool. Today, the site averages about 2,000 individual sessions a day and more than one million hits each week.
In early 1999, after it has been in use for a full year, the company plans to conduct an online survey to solicit employee feedback, said O'Donnell. Although the corporation also has profited from the site, saving up to $200,000 on printing costs, both Fannie Mae and Proxicom declined to release the costs associated with setting up the site.
No Intranet can rest on its laurels. Fannie Mae is planning a face lift in November to keep the site "fresh" said O'Donnell and would eventually like to include more information and a new site map. Some of the ideas under consideration include an online concierge service where employees could order flowers or find a dog sitter from their desktops. (Proxicom, 703/262-3270; Fannie Mae, 202/752-7128)
Fannie Mae
Founded: Founded in 1938 by U.S. government; went private in 1968
Stock Exchange: Traded on NYSE since 1970
Number of employees: 3,700
Number of regional offices (including headquarters): 6
Net Income for 1997: $3 billion
Net Basic Earnings per Common Share in 1997: $2.85