We are a third of the way through 2017, how well is your intranet achieving it's goals? This blog sets out 10 ways to find out how well your intranet is performing and steps you can take to ensure your intranet is reaching it's fullest potential. For more information on manging your intranet project, download our free guide.
Evaluating your intranet’s performance will indicate whether you need to make small short term fixes, continual developments or consider starting completely afresh.
Below are a few activities that will help you to understand how your intranet is currently performing:
1. User Feedback - Ask your users for feedback and input through meetings and employee surveys.
2. Stakeholder Interviews - You can supplement the results generated by your intranet survey with stakeholder interviews, they are a great way of uncovering what is really going on and also great for generating ideas to improve your intranet. Download our free guide for more information.
3. Review Your Statistics - Take time to review your company intranet usage statistics, including employee engagement. Who is using the intranet and who isn’t?
4. Content Audit - It might be a good time to undertake a mini intranet content audit. It’s important to take stock of the volume of content held within your intranet. You may remember writing the original intranet specification and discovering thousands of disconnected and duplicated pieces of content. This stage ensures history isn’t repeating itself.
The next 6 steps suggest ways to reflect and act on the information gathered from the above activities:
5. Consider Your Priorities - Digest all of the information and draft what you think are the priorities. At this stage you may reach the conclusion that your current intranet software is not fit for purpose and you therefore need to start to build your business case for greater internal support. Download our Business Case guide for help with this.
6. Identify and Quantify Improvements - If your company intranet is meeting your core requirements but in need of some improvements, you might want to identify a number of small, medium and large intranet improvements that are achievable and would make a difference to your intranet’s performance. You might like to come along to one of our free intranet showcases to get some inspiration.
7. External Feedback - Ask for feedback from your company intranet contributors. If you are continuing with your existing intranet supplier, now is also a good time to engage them for their feedback on your requirements as they may have some further insight and provide ways forward you hadn’t considered.
8. Finalise Priorities - Once you are confident you have captured the main requirements, finalise your “intranet priorities” and circulate these to your intranet contributors and sponsors.
9. Schedule Improvements - Begin scheduling your intranet improvements and research any elements that would require additional budget approval.
10. Checklist and Communication - Begin to work through your priorities with colleagues and schedule regular updates. Don’t forget to communicate to your intranet users at regular intervals.
I hope you have found this useful. Evaluating your company intranet can be a daunting process, but it is a great way to make sure your intranet is on track and is doing what you intended. If you do need any help or advice, SORCE are here to help. We’ve experienced hundreds of intranets of all shapes and sizes and are skilled at helping uncover opportunities to improve engagement and business process. To find out how we've helped other organisations, book your place at one of our Intranet Showcases.
