Comparing good and great intranets

Probably inspired by Jim Collins’ bestseller Good to Great (I recommend you read it!), Toby Ward developed a matrix that compares good and great intranets:

What is the difference between a good intranet and a great intranet? What do you do to get to great? There is no simple answer. In fact, using the Prescient Digital Media intranet methodology of rating and scoring an intranet out of 10, I estimate that to advance a 6 out of 10 intranet to an 8 out of 10 requires twice the effort and much more intelligent thinking.

Results Global Intranet Strategies Survey

Jane McConnell published the results of her Global Intranet Strategies Survey. 101 organisations from around the world participated by answering a 20-page questionnaire. Here overall conclusions are:

• Intranet has achieved a first milestone of being a primary information tool. Its benefits as a collaboration platform and productivity tool have not yet been fully achieved. More importantly, it is rarely perceived to be a tool to bring business value to the organisation.
  
• The intranet is moving towards the individual. This is clear seeing trends in personalisable portals, feeds to hand-held devices, implementation of web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, and initiatives in the area of personal knowledge management.
  
• Numbers and comments throughout this report repeatedly show that senior management in most organisations is not yet fully aware of  the role and potential of the intranet nor of their own responsibilities regarding the intranet.

I’ve asked Jane to email me the shorter version of the report and she did. It’s really very interesting and definitely worth your time studying the results.

Thanks again, Jane!

Creating a single page intranet concept

James Robertson of Step Two again wrote a great article. This time it’s about what an intranet concept is about and how you should create and use one.

According to James, intranet teams need to be clear on where they are heading and what they will deliver. Like he says, this typically involves writing either a bullet-point list of goals or a 20-page intranet strategy. In practice, a list of goals is too short (and too abstract), while the intranet strategy documents are often wordy but unclear.

James explains what he calls an intranet concept:

What is needed is a single sheet of paper that captures where the intranet is at, where it is going, and what this means in the short-term in terms of actual deliverables.

He talks through how to create an intranet concept and provides examples of two different formats that have been used.

The “Brochure format”
In the article there are two examples: a narrative and a brochure format. The brochure format is my personal favorite….

Nine steps to improve intranet search

James Robertson, founder and Managing Director of Step Two Designs, has written an interesting article on how to improve or fix intranet search. The article outlines nine steps that can be taken to improve the effectiveness of search. Robertson:

On the whole, this is not a technology problem. Most modern search engines provide more than enough functionality for corporate intranet sites.