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Thanks Andrew, for this blog post. A lot of intranet initiatives, the pet babies of CEOs and CIOs, end up in the dump. Intranet adoption is a problem creators of intranets and intranet software have grappled with for years. The following is Andrew's advice on the things to keep in mind to make for a successful intranet:- Requirements The idea is to start at the beginning. Not to first implement your intranet and then start thinking about what intranet requirements are. The first stage of successful intranets is the drawing board. One must identify the end objectives of the intranet. Not just in terms of high level organizational objectives, but also the day to day user needs, and what they stand to gain out of the intranet. So intranet implementation needs to be preceded with an extensive requirement gathering phase, involving both high level management and end users. The following list of questions may help clarify the requirements:- - What applications or collaboration software do users access often?
- What content do users need quick access to, and where is it located?
- What knowledge, data, documents do you need to share across departments?
- What information should be presented to users at the start of the day?
- What organizational level information would you like users to have that isn’t necessarily related to work tasks?
- Where is all this information currently located?
- How do you collaborate across the organization currently?
Functionality and Integration Often people tend to view intranets as a set of static web pages where they can view information, download document etc. But this view of intranets is very outdated. Nowadays, intranets are the place where users access not only information, but also all the software tools they use on a day to day basis. Intranet software these days come pre built with tools like document manager, project manager, forums, surveys, workflow tools etc.In addition to pre built tools, the intranet should have the ability to integrate with third party software tools seamlessly. Performance As rightly pointed out by Andrew, intranet performance is all important. An intranet which takes ages to load or is slow is bound to end up turning off users. For all your planning and implementation, your intranet will be destined for failure. Â Maintenance The intranet should allow for easy updation of information. The intranet administrator, or group administrators should be able to update information daily without having to go through complex coding. In addition, the intranet should require minimal maintenance effort. If you need to expend constant resources in upkeep, the intranet will be self defeating its purpose. Modern software-as-a-service intranet software score highly on this count. The backend is handled by the intranet vendor, while all administrators ever need to interact with is easy to use user facing dashboards.Â
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