Helping organisations create and deliver a successful intranet is why we love doing what we do. Behind the scenes, the collective team, both client and our side come together and really make change happen. From removing the daily pain points for users, to creating an experience they enjoy and benefit from in their daily working lives is phenomenal and this is where the magic happens.
But the magic doesn’t just happen, and all to often we meet with organisations wondering why their existing intranet isn’t working and how can they ‘fix’ it. Most intranets that we see that are failing, are doing so for similar reasons.
We thought it would be useful to share the most common reasons intranets fail to help you avoid them and ensure your own intranet is successful.
Top 7 Reasons why intranets fail:
- New intranet project started
Underestimating the time needed to really uncover what it is your organisation needs from an intranet and then finding a software solution that fits your requirements.
- Changing Trends
Focussing too much on the latest intranet and wider software trends and how your business might be able to benefit from them. Trends are just that, they are of the moment and shouldn’t detract from the fundamentals of what it is you need your intranet to do to be deemed to be successful.
- Business Requirements Change
As with everything, your business evolves, and your intranet requirements will change and grow over time. Many organisations that launch with no post launch continual development plan in place, can very quickly find themselves with a mismatch between users’ needs and the intranets capabilities.
- Outdated designs
It’s important to build in intranet design refreshes, to keep your users engaged and content fresh. We often see intranets that haven’t been updated since they went live and the site analytics reflect this, in falling engagement levels.
- Training challenges
To get the most out of your intranet, it’s essential to spend the time to train everyone that is responsible for creating and managing pages and more broadly every user should know how to create and post content, comment and react to content. Over time, colleagues who were part of the original intranet team leave, and training of new starters doesn’t happen, leading to an information gap.
- Lack of Governance
Governance isn’t the most exciting element of your intranet, but it’s essential. Often, we come across intranets where the team have been so committed to creating a great looking intranet that has all the bells and whistles you could ever wish for but absolutely no governance. Over time their intranet slowly descends into chaos because no one is sure who is responsible for what and no knows what the rules are.
- Project Team Leader or Sponsor moves on
The final common reason is because of changes in personnel. Sometimes its one person who champions your intranet for your organisation and whilst they are in post, your intranet is highly engaging and central to daily work life, but when they leave the momentum leaves too.
If any of these reasons are resonating with you and you are not sure what to do next, I'm on hand to share with you how our approach to helping you create a great intranet doesn’t start with our software, it starts with helping you uncover what it is your employees and your business really need from your new intranet.
