Digital Design Blog

Ford Builds a Blikinet with Avenue A | Razorfish

This blog post comes live from the Avenue A | Razorfish Enterprise Solutions summit in Boston (26 October 2007). We’re holding the event to examine how companies are adopting web 2.0 design practices inside the workplace.

A team from Ford Motor Company just discussed how it worked with Avenue A | Razorfish to design a company blikinet — part blog, part wiki, part intranet.

In 2006, Ford sought invigorate its global marketing organization by more effectively sharing best practices and fostering collaboration — an interesting objective in a highly dispersed company spread across multiple geographies. Ford kept in mind that its employees are also consumers who enjoy the best social networking tools that the public web has to offer, such as Facebook — and they wanted Ford to live up to their expectations.

Avenue A | Razorfish tackled the solution by first meeting with Ford employees around the world to uncover their wants and needs — like their desire for up-to-date information on notable marketing events inside and outside Ford. In other words, our approach was to consider people first, not the technology. This approach also made it possible to build relationships with people inside Ford who would be needed to make the solution succeed.
We also applied our own branding expertise to design and name the platform, which became known as Go!, the Ford Global Marketing Network.

The Ford Go! Network, build on top of SharePoint features both curated and user-generated content. For instance, Go! contains a global marketing calendar where marketing employees can post content. A news area features more than 300 marketing and RSS feeds in multiple geographies and languages. It also contains a blog where marketers can post issues and questions. An “Our Work” section features notable project information.

Go! also contains a professional profiles section, where marketers can connect to each other’s profiles. The Go! System suggests employees you might want to get to know better based on their information posts and tags.

Ford launched Go! on September 24, 2007, in the Americas region. It’s the only web 2.0 solution built behind the firewall at Ford. On launch, Ford has seen nearly 800 persons adopt the site, exceeding initial forecasts. Other groups inside Ford, such as HR and Public Affairs, are approaching the marketing team to learn how to adopt it. Lessons learned:

• Employees expect their employer to live up to the best consumer experiences on the web.
• “What kind of platform do I need” is the wrong question to ask at the outset. First learn what your customers need and design around them.
• Don’t assume your people will even care about your solution just because you built it. Treat your solution like a brand and sell it.

We’re just weeks into the effort, and we still have a lot of work to do, but Ford has already established itself as an enterprise 2.0 leader with Go!

For more information about the Avenue A | Razorfish Enterprise Solutions Summit, please visit The Workplace Blog.