Here at SORCE we work with many clients from many different industries, each with unique requirements. Over the years we have experienced hundreds of intranets and have gained some great insight into achieving intranet success. I thought it would be useful to share some of our insight with you. If you would like to find out more come along to one of our intranet showcase events.
Tips for intranet success:
1. Understand your end users
How can you design an intranet if you don’t know how it will be used or why? Too many businesses bypass this stage or don’t give enough time to undertake this fully. Time invested here is worth the effort and will enable you to really understand your colleagues intranet requirements.
2. Seek senior sponsor support
Intranet success can be heavily influenced by the level of internal support it receives. Seeking the support of senior management will help when it comes to resourcing, budgeting and prioritising.
3. Pull together an effective intranet steering group
No intranet can achieve success alone. A steering group representing key business areas is essential to ensure its managed and delivered on time, to spec and to budget.
4. Phase your intranet development
Intranet success can’t be rushed. It is achieved through continual development, reviewing and improving.
5. Ask the experts when it comes to design and user experience
Intranet design and user experience is a specialist skill and is unique to your business. If you are not a design expert then do get some help to ensure your intranet is consistent with your brand and reflects your end users requirements.
6. Ensure it’s the central place to access information
Intranet success is helped greatly by making the intranet the first point of call for information.
7. Ask colleagues what they think
Periodic feedback on how the intranet is meeting their needs is essential to ensure ongoing engagement. The feedback can highlight new developments to add your continual development schedule or highlight existing functionality that doesn’t quite work as needed.
8. Manage content
A sure fast way to see your intranet engagement figures take a dive, is lack of new, relevant and up to date content. Your team of intranet contributors and editors should be briefed on content creation and management and also have sight and input into the annual content plan.
9. Stay focussed on your intranet strategy
A successful intranet is not one necessarily one that has all of the latest widgets available, but one that sets out to do what it said it would well. Don’t lose sight of your intranet strategy.
10. Celebrate success!
When you have achieved key milestones for your intranet, tell everyone! A successful intranet is used to communicate positive news stories and the story of the intranet should be one of the featured articles.
I hope this has got you thinking about how you can achieve intranet success. To inspire you further we would like to invite you to come along to one of our free intranet showcase events.
