With the talk of "social" seeping into every nook and cranny of business software - social CRM, social collaboration, social business - intranet software could not have kept immune for long. Enter social intranets! Dion Hinchcliffe, that heavyweight of modern software has dealt with it in detail, but I would try to do a lay businessman perspective. 

For one, it is to an extent a marketing term that has been just thrown out there without much thought. That being said, the concept itself has some depth, and also reflects the changing nature of IT and organizational structure. Social intranets mean introducing the concepts of social networking and consumer software into the intranet, not just as extra features, but deeply embedding them into the basic design of intranets.

Traditionally, intranets have consisted of an intranet homepage (or dashboard), with subpages for specific groups and individuals. Each of these pages displays static information (with some dynamic elements like a news feed), and has collaboration tools bundled around it - document libraries, calendars, forums etc. However, social intranets somewhat change this "glue" or intranet pages which have held together group information and tools. It introduces the "activity stream" concept of social networks, where the group page displays all the activity relating to the group displayed on it as a continuous stream of information. Similarly, the personal page of each worker displays a continuous stream of information related to that worker across groups. This gives groups and individuals a real time view of whatever is happening across the organization that they may have interest in. 

A second aspect of social intranets is the importance of personal profiles. Traditionally, intranet just had an employee directory with basic information on that employee. However, directory pages have given way to personal profiles which display the information on that person, a stream of activity related to that person, and also allow others to connect to that person, and message them directly from that page. This helps people in organizations, especially large organizations discover expertise across the organization, which might not have otherwise been easy to find.  

I came a cross a very interesting article by Sean Nicholson of socialmedsean.com. Sean describes how he was in the discussions for a new intranet portal proposed for the spin off of a large telecom company. In the middle of the conversation, a senior Executive asked a question that many must have secretly harbored - "Why do we need an intranet?".

It is a totally valid question, and points at the disconnect between users and management, and the team managing the intranet. Sean has proposed the following reasons why a company needs to have an intranet:

1. Corporate communications – When a company is small, it is easy for management and employees to mingle, have periodic open house meetings, and keep communication on company culture, announcements, policies and strategies flowing. But as an organization grows larger, it needs to leverage information technology to help two way communication between employees and management. An intranet is a central hub, which attracts everyone's eyeballs, and which everyone can use to convey important information.

2. Consolidation - An intranet consolidates all the important information and applications employees need to get work done and be more productive. It saves everyone from the hassle of having to go to 20 different places to access they tools and data they need to do work.

3. Enterprise Search – Since an intranet software consolidates all the important information and applications in the organization, it also provides the benefit of allowing users to search across the portal, and easily access relevant information. 

4. Knowledge Management and Collaboration - Intranets, especially modern "social" intranets encourage everyone to participate and contribute their knowledge to the intranet in the form of forum discussions, blog posts, document collaboration and so on. This enables an organization to capture organizational knowledge for the future, and also encourages employees to work together for organizational goals. 

5. Decentralized Content Management – Modern intranets are easy to use, and allow content owners to publish and manage content rather than a centralized IT department. This is hugely beneficial because departments can publish and share content according to their needs rather than having to go to the IT department for every small need. 

6. Organizational Transparency - When everyone is sharing and contributing information to a single transparent intranet, it encourages a culture of transparency and "silo breaking". Important information is out there for people to see and access, rather than people holding on to their knowledge.

7. Employee Satisfaction – Intranets provide users with the tools they need to get their work done, and encourages everyone to contribute and share information, creating a culture of openness. This leads to higher employee satisfaction.

CMSWire had just the kind of article one likes to read about. No abstract beating around the bush, and get right to the point. Not one way, but 50 ways in which you can improve your company intranet solution. Since 50 will be too much to consume in one go, I thought I would do it in parts. No beating around the bush from me either, here are the first 10 ways:

1. Remove redundant content. Most intranets have redundancy all over them. So rationalize, rationalize, rationalize.

2. Implement a contextual view of information. One bit of information need not only be found at one place. This is the age of FaceBook style information aggregation. Multiple paths lead to the same information as long as they are contextually related.

3. Identify key tasks and content and enable access 

4. Implement meta data so that important content is easily searchable

5. Implement a new information architecture. A new customer driven taxonomy 

7. Implement “best bets”. Identify commonly searched terms and manually create synonyms to ensure that the best matches appear at the top of the search match list.

8. Identify tasks and roles. Identify tasks each user has to perform and customize their experience around that task

9. Provide instructions for completing work tasks

10. Automate processes/ online forms 

Jane McConnell, well known intranet software expert and analyst just published her much awaited Global Intranet Trends 2011 report. The study incorporated inputs from 440 organizations from around the world. This sample pretty much includes organizations across the spectrum as it included mega enterprises with more than 100,000 employees and smaller organizations with less than a 1000 employees. 

Jane identified 5 mega trends impacting intranets in 2011

1) The intranet is the front door to the workplace web: The intranet is the "front door" to the workplace web - a set of communication and collaboration tools, and information that help employees do their jobs. "Business needs" and "productivity" are number two intranet strategy drivers after communication.

2) Team oriented and collaborative: Intranets of yesteryear, which were static and sometimes jokingly referred to as "the place where information comes to die" have become collaborative and focused on team activities. 10% of survey participants said their intranets were totally collaborative, 20%  said they had integrated collaboration tools into the intranet, and 40% integrated with external collaboration systems.

3) People centric: Rather than being information centric, intranets of today provide the tools for employees to connect and network with each other, and create communities across all levels. Social media was found in 70% of the organizations, blogs and wikis in 55%, and 30% had some sort of ideation process in place (a way to generate new ideas)

4) Real time: Intranets are becoming a platform for real time communication, speeding up connections and decision making. 26% of the intranets had social networking, and 23% had twitter like "activity streams".

5) Place independent: Now employees no longer need to be confined to the office to have access to intranet information and tools. 90% of organizations said that the intranet could be accessed from outside the office and at home, while 30% of organizations said that accessing the intranet from home was a "common practice" for employees. 25% said they were currently running pilot projects to enable mobile or smartphone access to intranets.  

Companies tend to sometimes just follow the crowd, without thinking through its decision. Purchasing collaboration software is one such recent trend. Although collaboration software may indeed be good for these companies, they is no clear cut thinking about what problems are sought to be solved with these tools, nor any clear planning about how the successes be measured. This is the latest theme that Gartner is considering, and it is asking companies to consider the following themes about collaboration:- 

1. The right tools will make us collaborative

As collaboration experts keep emphasizing, collaboration isn't merely about the tools. There needs to be a culture which encourages collaboration, a situation which require collaboration, and the collaboration tools merely act as facilitators.

2. Collaboration is good

Most companies just start with the irresponsible assumption that "collaboration is good" before implementing collaboration solutions in their organization. There is no clear attempt to identify the benefits of collaboration.

3. Collaborating can eat up time

In their enthusiasm to implement collaboration software, companies end up burdened with scores of tools which don't help the company meet its objectives but actually become a time sapper. 

4. People know how to collaborate

Again, companies indulge in the wishful thinking that they just need to put collaboration software out there, and collaboration will magically start happening on its own. This undermines the natural human tendency to resist change, and the importance of creating context for collaboration to get rolling.