Companies tap RSS to tame info overload

by Juan Carlos Peréz

October 31, 2007 —

As employees struggle to read an increasing amount of work-related material,
some companies have turned to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) technology to
improve productivity.

With RSS servers and readers designed for workplaces, IT departments set up
internal information feeds that employees can subscribe to, a delivery mechanism
that, for some information, can be more precise and effective than e-mail.

"The first problem we see addressed regularly with enterprise RSS systems
is e-mail overload. Most knowledge workers these days are just about completely
fed up with e-mail," said Oliver Young, a Forrester Research analyst.

An enterprise RSS system is ideal for delivering the type of information employees
need to know about, but not necessarily act on right away, Young said.

RSS keeps need-to-know information out of the e-mail channel, which for most
people is "a need-to-do task list sort of thing," Young said.

Often those need-to-know e-mails -- such as a corporate benefits update or
a newsletter -- end up getting deleted or ignored, even though employees recognize
that they may contain potentially important information.

For example, a company could post human resource messages and documents on
the intranet's human resources section and send RSS alerts with the appropriate
links, instead of blasting out the information via mass e-mails.

RSS feeds became popular initially as a convenient way for Web publishers to
alert their readers about new articles and changed information on their sites.

Using consumer grade RSS readers like those from Google and Bloglines, people
quickly check what's new on their favorite sites without having to visit them.

Inevitably, people started using RSS readers at work, creating potential problems
for IT departments in areas like security and user support.

Seeing an opportunity, vendors like Attensa, NewsGator and KnowNow developed
on-premise, behind-the-firewall RSS software for workplaces.

Unlike consumer RSS readers, these vendors' systems can be integrated with
existing corporate directories and security frameworks, giving IT departments
control over employees' RSS use.

IBM's Lotus and Microsoft have started to add RSS capabilities to their respective
collaboration and communication platforms, but their feature sets don't match
the functionality of enterprise RSS vendors' systems, Young said.

The Union Bank of California hopes that enterprise RSS can help it tame an
internal communications overload.

About 80 bank groups, from areas like public relations, marketing, sales, product
management and operations, hit employees with a steady stream of mass e-mails,
all-hands voice mails, printed literature and intranet additions.

"We discovered that about half of the messages being delivered via these
methods weren't appropriate to the people [receiving them] so we definitely
needed to do something," said James Penn, the bank's vice president of
interactive marketing and communications.

For example, the bank realized that salespeople, deluged with often irrelevant
information, often fall behind learning about the bank's latest offers and promotions,
affecting their ability to pitch them at customers.

Union Bank is now in the pilot phase of an implementation of an enterprise
RSS system from KnowNow which it expects to eventually roll out to its about
10,000 employees.

The bank is creating very specific RSS feeds and defining the target audience
for each one, so that employees will receive fewer but more relevant messages.

While the project will initially focus on improving internal communications,
Union Bank may later link up the RSS system with its CRM (customer relationship
management) system, as well as allow employees to subscribe to external data
feeds, Penn said.

At the U.K. National Health Service (NHS) division in Orkney, Scotland, the
IT department has significantly cut down on e-mail overload with a NewsGator
enterprise RSS system, said David Rendall, a computer programmer involved in
the project.

At NHS Orkney, few of the 600 or so users -- mostly doctors, nurses, physical
therapists and business administrators -- are technically savvy. So, Rendall
has reached out to departments and held frequent training sessions to promote
the RSS system's use.

"The biggest challenge is helping people make the switch and get their
heads around the new RSS paradigm," Rendall said.

This user indifference and ignorance, coupled with e-mail familiarity, is a
common barrier to RSS adoption in workplaces, according to Forrester's Young.

"While most people have a love-hate relationship with e-mail, it's easy
to use and very convenient to [copy] your entire office to make sure you get
everyone involved," Young said.

This is why Young recommends starting RSS deployments within specific groups
in an organization and with the purpose of improving a specific communication
issue.

"Where I see most enterprise RSS solutions starting to fall down is when
you're trying to encourage or bring a whole host of workers along all at once,"
Young said.

In addition to reducing e-mail, enterprise RSS systems often boost organizations'
use of intranets, blogs and wikis by alerting employees to changes and additions,
Young said.

At NHS Orkney, the NewsGator system lets employees subscribe to feeds from
the organization's blogs and wikis, thus increasing their readership and boosting
collaboration and communication, Rendall said.

Meanwhile, Union Bank trusts RSS will improve its intranet, currently being
redesigned. "There are many applications for which we could use the intranet
as a repository, and leverage RSS for distribution and change alerts,"
Penn said.

Specifically, RSS could help with notifying Union Bank employees about modifications
to policies and procedures. This is key for banks, which are highly regulated
by the government.

"Often a little nuance of a policy will change, and while not applicable
to 90 percent of the employees, it's crucial for the 10 percent who need to
know," he said.

Not to be overlooked is the ability of enterprise RSS systems to give managers
a clear view into how popular blogs, wikis, external sites and intranet sections
are with employees, Young said.

"Because it's all coming into one central location, you can do very advanced
analytics on who is reading what," Young said.

For example, if half of the sales team subscribes to one specific journal's
feed, it might make sense to suggest the feed to the other half. "It really
helps information spread more quickly and best practices to proliferate across
the enterprise," he said.

Likewise, it makes it easy to spot skunks. "If your CEO's blog has no
one reading it, you know pretty quickly there's a problem there," Young
said.

IDG News Service