How to Make Sense of Intranet Feedback

So, you have spent the summertime reviewing your intranet and following the steps that we have talked about each week. If you have been following us you may well by now have a lot of intranet feedback, ideas and stakeholder insight as to how your current intranet is performing and a list of areas that could be improved upon.

If you already have an intranet, you might be confident that your existing platform can be developed to meet any changes needed to its structure, functionality, design and usability to address the areas on your list. Alternatively, you might well be thinking a complete overhaul.

No matter how great you think your intranet is, it is not uncommon for intranet reviews to highlight many areas for development. Don’t worry this is a great thing! It means your colleagues have engaged with you and it may be the first time the whole organisation has had the chance to give feedback of your current intranet platform.

Top Intranet Review Outcomes:

• Low employee engagement from across the organisation
• Missing functionality business critical to specialist teams
• Design issues. The look and feel of the intranet doesn’t reflect the organisation
• Disorganised information. Despite your best efforts the document management system has lost its way and important documentation is being duplicated
• Lack of information security. Time may have highlighted the need for greater security for internal documentation.
• Poor software performance. Constant bug fixing and upgrades can quickly downgrade the perception of the intranet amongst colleagues.
• Weak intranet governance. Time and feedback has shown that your intranet needs greater guidance in terms of roles, responsibilities, policies, guidelines, overall strategy and support.

Where to go from here?

When faced with a list of feedback, it can be very tempting to get a little carried away with regards to what you want to implement right away, especially when you’ve got lots of ideas and you are still not sure of the best way forward.

When companies come to me saying they want big applications such as Expenses, E-learning or a CRM immediately, I advise them to take a step back and break the project down into manageable chunks.

The best thing to do is prioritise your intranet content and fresh ideas based on its potential Return on Investment (ROI) and business need. We tend to work with clients to assess what can realistically be implemented at each phase with what we refer to as an Affinity Analysis.

Working with a client, we’ll take items of content and fresh ideas, write them on post-it notes and place them on a graph based on level of priority and the timescales within which they need/wish to be implemented. During this process we’ll discuss realistic timeframes and which applications will offer them quick wins during the project’s first phase.

By focussing on the most pressing areas first, you’ll be able to deliver a solution to staff much quicker, so they’ll be able to start benefitting from efficiencies right away.

Reviewing your intranet can be a daunting process and you have already undertaken so much work this summer! We’ve experienced hundreds of intranets of all shapes and sizes and are skilled at helping uncover opportunities to improve engagement and business processes.

As intranet software providers our software powers the intranet and extranet for hundreds of organisations. Our clients cover a wide range of sectors from finance to manufacturing, not for profit organisations (such as charities and housing associations) as well as local authorities and other public sector agencies.

To find out more about our intranet software or consultancy call us on 01635 551777 or get in touch via our website.