Congratulations! If you are looking to plan your intranet software, this hopefully means all of your hard work in researching your intranet options, understanding your end users and calculating your ROI has paid off and your business case has been approved by your senior sponsor. This is a great achievement and you are now ready to start embarking on the next stage of your intranet journey. No matter what intranet software solution you have opted for, you will still need to project plan to ensure intranet success.
Your project plan should be one that is developed in collaboration with your preferred supplier but we would recommend your plan should consider our top tips!
Top Tips for planning your intranet software:
- Don’t jump into the design and layout first! This maybe the area colleagues are focussing on but a methodical approach will give you the intranet you need, rather than one that looks amazing that has content shoe-horned in and whose order has no relevance to your business.
- When trying to work out what content and functionality are needed, make sure you make the time to hold an intranet requirement gatherings workshop. You may need to host one or several workshops, depending on your own unique business needs. This session will enable you to extract all of the information your business needs the intranet to host. You will leave the session with vast amounts of information.
- Before you start looking at layouts, make time for card sorting. This is a natural follow on from requirements gathering and enables you to group, sort and bring some order to all of the information gathered. It’s a good idea to make sure you have a representative from each business area involved here as this is the stage you start to make decisions about content groupings.
- Engage your intranet team. An intranet can’t succeed on its own. An enthusiastic, team is needed to ensure your intranet software is a success. Involve them at key stages and let them demo the intranet software.
- Take time to wire frame. Wire framing is a great way for you to see your vision come to life and also help you start to prioritise content and revisit functionality. Your supplier maybe able to help you with this if you haven’t done this before.
- What’s in a name? An awful lot of thought can go into naming an intranet. Think about your name and intranet design together.
- Finally, decide upon a launch date and stick to it!
I hope you have found these tips helpful. For further information and guidance, take a look at our implementation guide.
Here at Sorce we’ve experienced hundreds of intranets of all shapes and sizes and are skilled at helping uncover opportunities to improve engagement and business processes.
As intranet software and consultancy providers our software powers the intranet and extranet for hundreds of organisations. Our clients cover a wide range of sectors from finance to manufacturing, not for profit organisations (such as charities and housing associations) as well as local authorities and other public sector agencies.