Sales intranet case study: IKEA

(NEW YORK) Intranets
help empower employees and sales teams to increase sales; a revenue
enhancing benefit that is far too often overlooked by too many
organizations.

IKEA
U.S. has 37 stores, with over 12,000 co-workers; an employee audience
that is both geographically dispersed, and has limited capacity to
connect to the intranet. However, a challenging retail environment
with a dispersed target audience and a limited attention span has not
daunted the IKEA intranet team from focusing on the bottom line:
decreasing costs, and increasing sales.

IKEA's
intranet team began with a series of philosophies that guide their
work and execution:

1. An
   emphasis on the power of people.

2. Decentralization
   works!

3. The
   Intranet is part of a total information landscape.

4. It’s
   good to be a passionate fanatic!

5. We
   are obsessed with impacting the bottom line!

The
last philosophy 'obsession' with the bottom line has also served them
well – leading to increased sales, and cost savings of more than
$500,000 per year:

• PAPER
  COSTS = $192,000

• STREAMLINING
  PROCESSES / SELF-SERVE TRAVEL PROCESS SAVES $4,590

• MODERNIZING
  COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES VIDEO CONF to WEBEX = $90,000

• SELF-SERVICE
  HR = $219,000

The
intranet is particularly focused on supporting the sales
organization; especially sales events and the monthly “seize the
day” sales. In particular, the intranet team delivers content that
is highly focused on sales events with:

• Photos

• Stores
  “reporting in” with lots of co-worker quotes

• The
  good and the bad

• Employee
  discussion boards

• Sales
  number & metrics

Demonstrating
their success in covering their big sales events, IKEA has
consistently exceeded its sales goals since the third sales event
proactively targeted by the intranet team.

IKEA's
intranet team also delivers key content and tools based on personas
or “key roles” in the stores. The team built manual pages called
“dashboards' for role specific functions. In doing so, the intranet
team hit the road and visited employees on the store floors to
determine the scope and focus of these dashboards, working
side-by-side with employees to understand what content and online
they need.

To
learn more about the IKEA intranet, and other top-rated intranets
showcased at The
Intranet Insider World Tour Live (New York, April 16 – 17).
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