How Staffbase makes other information systems better
Discover why Staffbase tools are built to enhance what's already in your toolbox.
At Staffbase, we often get questions related to our relationship with “deeper” information systems, like SharePoint and ServiceNow.
How do intranet and internal comms systems like Staffbase co-exist with these systems?
What’s the relationship between them?
If I have one, do I need the other?
And we get it — this is sometimes confusing. But let’s clear it up by starting with a perhaps gross generalization: SharePoint and ServiceNow sometimes try (poorly) to replace us. However, we don’t try to replace them.
We’ve talked about that first statement before. Attempts to use these systems as front-door intranets almost always end badly. It’s like trying to shove a square peg into a round hole.
But for now, let’s talk about that second statement in particular, and why it matters.
Staffbase tools are designed for enhancement
We view Staffbase as a “force multiplier” or enhancement for those other systems. It’s designed for a specific usage with a side effect that it can make information systems like SharePoint and ServiceNow better over time.
From our perspective, the relationship isn’t adversarial, it’s cooperative and complimentary.
SharePoint and ServiceNow are very “deep” frameworks. And I use the word “framework” very intentionally. At their defaults, they really accomplish very little. These systems are designed to be built on — they are platforms, in which your organization has to deeply define an information architecture or a workflow process or something else. Out of the box, they’re toolkits.
As such, these systems simply have a base level of complexity that’s often tough to mitigate from a usability perspective. Configuring them to do productive work is usually an organization’s biggest concern. To enable them to do this in a usable, simple way is often another project entirely.
Have you seen the sheer number of menu options in the average ServiceNow implementation? It borders on the surreal, like something out of a Terry Gilliam movie.
What Staffbase provides are “contextual windows” into these systems that provide much greater utility to 95% of your employees than access to the systems themselves.
Staffbase tools are designed to serve users
Consider that most employees don’t need the full power of ServiceNow. Rather, they need sporadic, task-directed contact with it. Any usage audit would tell you that most employees need the following use cases:
See what tickets they own
Search for a ticket
And — for most employees — that’s really it. They simply need this as conveniently as possible, in a place they frequent every single day.
They need a “window” into ServiceNow.
There’s a saying that people only use 20% of a software’s capabilities, but everyone uses a different 20%. I’d modify this to say that 90% of your users actually use the same 10%.
Staffbase provides this window into ServiceNow: We have a UI widget that can be embedded into any page, which will show employees all the tickets they own, and let them search for any other tickets. From that view, they can access top-level information, then link directly to the ticket inside ServiceNow.
Staffbase tools are designed to eliminate clutter
It’s the same with SharePoint. Direct the average employee into a specific SharePoint site or a SharePoint document library, and — presuming they can find it — they’ll just be confused. However, we have a set of SharePoint integration tools that “lift out” information — lists of documents, calendars, individual files, etc.
Within Staffbase, this information can be surrounded with important contextual information — “Once you complete this form, send it to Bob, then do X, Y, and Z.”
If there’s one thing I’m sure about in enterprise IT, it’s that people hate blank slates and total flexibility, no matter how much they say otherwise. Giving someone unfettered access to an empty SharePoint installation is simply a great way to ensure that a project is going to fail.
Consider that SharePoint is literally designed as an information system that can be a source for other systems. One of the key use cases of SharePoint is to manage information that’s then sent to other systems for presentation and consumption. Staffbase is one of these systems — we are an outlet that surfaces information from deeper systems like SharePoint.
And that's the goal of Staffbase in relation to these systems: We make them better by surfacing their information in a more convenient location and with additional context that makes more sense to your employees.
Breaking down Staffbase’s system success
There are a few mechanisms at work here:
Staffbase reduces UI friction. Rather than opening ServiceNow and digging deep through its menu structure, we provide the information your employees want directly in their front-door intranet. We reduce the number of steps to find what they need to know. Those steps add friction, and friction slows processes down.
Staffbase reduces complexity. Our system allows you to take a multi-step process of finding information and allows you to roll those up. Instead of saying, “Find this document library, then sort by this, then locate that,” you can do all of that for your employees and just present them with the data they need.
Staffbase adds context. Directing employees to raw data is rarely helpful. They need to understand the context around the information. Sure, that’s a fine-looking graph, but what do the different axes mean? And we love that form, but what do I do with it once I’ve filled it out? Many times, “the information” is not the hard part. It’s the “meta-information” around that which is more important and more complicated.
Staffbase’s ultimate goal
Staffbase is not trying to become SharePoint or ServiceNow. We understand that those systems provide deep functionality around line-of-business information. They do things that we don’t do and never will.
But let’s face it: morale and satisfaction around SharePoint and ServiceNow are traditionally very low. Few employees speak of these systems in a positive light. They are, in some senses, victims of their own complexity — they do so much and have been designed for so many possible use cases, that sometimes it’s hard to get them to do the simplest things.
It’s no coincidence that project failure rates with these systems are weirdly high.
Staffbase smooths out the complexity of usage and access to these systems. Our overriding goal has always been to keep employees better informed in the face of organizational complexity, and this is just one more aspect of that.
Our goal is to improve those systems and give you more return on your investment in them. We want to make them work better in your organization, for your employees, and for your specific usage patterns.
Want to see how Staffbase can enhance your employee communication?
