It’s nearly the end of the week and I just wanted to give some further insight alongside this week’s best practice on gathering your employee intranet requirements gathering. I blogged about the very practical ways in which you can capture your organisations intranet requirements. I think it’s also important to be aware of the common challenges you can face as business doesn’t stop. I’ve likened this to the art of catching jelly (almost impossible to catch it all at once!).
When you gather your intranet requirements you will inevitably relate to some of the points below. In most cases, you can try your utmost to counteract them but business sometimes move at a faster pace than the time it takes to create a comprehensive intranet business case. I’ve summarised some of the most common experiences found by Intranet and Communication Managers. If you can relate to any of these, don't worry we can work through it as we go through the intranet journey.
- Requirements will come and go. What is considered urgent, business critical priority 1, by one department, may be downgraded from business critical to nice to have as their own department strategy changes. The important point to note here to is to make sure you can engage with all of your department heads/directors and seek clarification on any outcomes to help sense check.
- There will inevitably be more requirements than there will be budget for. Here it’s important to catch that jelly and then as you work through your intranet journey, start to look at prioritising requirements and a phased approach. It’s important to remember that although there will be a launch date for a new intranet, the work doesn’t stop there. Continual intranet development is essential to maintain engagement and move with the organisations changing needs.
- As well as intranet requirements being downgraded, some may vanish altogether as you start to piece them together. A requirement in one area may be cancelled out by the combined effects of others. A new intranet may well bring new ways of working and remove the need for some requirements.
- More and more requirements, where does it end?! You can end up in a continual cycle of refining your intranet requirements without ever moving past this stage. Give yourself a time frame and stick to it. New requirements will always be uncovered or emailed to you. These will be captured but collated for phase 2.
- Launch day won’t mean 100% of intranet requirements are live. If you deliver 80% of your organisations mainstream intranet requirements then you have done an amazing job.
I hope this gives some insight into the realities of gathering your intranet requirements. Next time we will be looking at what intranet options are out there.
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Our intranet expert Martyn Green has taken the time to create a great video on gathering intranet requirements. Grab a coffee and watch the video for further advice. This is just one of series of videos we have created to help you uncover your intranet opportunities.
