Your budget proposal has been approved and you have been given the go ahead to set about delivering your new intranet. Congratulations on being given the green light. If this is the first time you have managed a new intranet project I thought you might find my 10 Must Do’s useful as a starting point. To help you further you can download our guide to managing your intranet.
10 Must Do’s When Your Intranet Project Gets the Green Light
1. Understand your end users
Spending the time to gather your end user requirements is essential to ensure your final intranet meets their needs. 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 colleague’s 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. It’s also important to review the skills of your steering group and identify any areas of expertise that you might need to outsource.
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 in 2016. To inspire you further we would like to invite you to come along to one of our free intranet showcase events, just book whichever date is the best for you and we will be in touch.
