The essay below was written by my wife (bcagley@sck.net).   Checkout her website at www.sck.net.

Intranets that Communicate, Collaborate and Innovate

Recently I was sitting in a room of people trying to decide what information they wanted to put on their company intranet site. Sitting in a closed door room, the group which formed the companies’ intranet committee, was reviewing item by item of what they thought their teams would find useful. These were practical, intelligent people yet not once did anyone say lets go back to the team and learn what information they need easy access to.

The challenge to setting up an innovative intranet is not the technology. Rather, it’s determining what should be on the intranet so it is effective and the staff feels compelled to use it, thus to improve their individual and team efficiencies. The crucial step most organizations skip when implementing a site is talking to the people who will be using it on a day to day basis. Without engagement and understanding of what data is needed to make work more efficient the investment in to intranet tools can be wasted.

Think of creative ways to engage your team that will inspire them to collaborate and use the site religiously, for example:

  • employee of the month competitions
  • company classified notices
  • company photo sharing such as a best vacation photo contest
  • survey favorite local lunch spots

Once the team is engaged, demonstrate to them that they can rely on the site to make everyday tasks easier by implementing:

  • searchable documents
  • automated expense sheets
  • shared calendars
  • quick links

To build a truly innovative site that is an invaluable communication tool consider using Web 2.0 technologies such as:

  • blogs to share ideas
  • wikis to document knowledge
  • bookmarking to rank importance
  • RSS feeds that will push out information

This collaborative approach to an intranet will connect and engage your staff using the tools they are familiar with in their personal life.

Start any project to implement an intranet site by determining your strategy. The strategy needs to include the development of goals. These goals should be measurable by analytic tools; once the site is rolled out monitor it to determine its effectiveness.

According to a Jakob Nielsen 2009 Top 10 Intranets report, intranet sites that are designed to be highly usable are used by more than twice as much. Investing in a visual designer who understands usability is a key to a successful site. Other 2008 trends noted in this report include:

  • Executive involvement to increase in business efficiencies
  • Larger internal teams; bring in outside help to get an independent perspective, deep expertise and alleviate workload during redesign or rollouts.
  • Combining personalization and social networking with the traditional staff directory
  • Internal blogs by employees, department heads, or company leaders
  • Interactive forums to post urgent requests for advise from colleagues thus improving productivity by sharing knowledge
  • Provide each employee with news updates focused on their job role and personal interests

With a strategy and a team in place you could be rolling out a new intranet site in three months but wait . . . what about the technology.

There may be a great software platform sitting on you server right now. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 comes as part of the 2007 Microsoft Office system. Organizations large and small are using it to facilitate collaboration, manage content, implement business processes and access essential information. Half the Nielsen award winning sites were developed using SharePoint.

How do you determine if SharePoint is right for you?

At its core, the software offers non-techies a chance to manage sophisticated technical tools without having to learn the technology. For those who are technical the programming time is reduced when developing applications. There are about 90 different SharePoint modules supporting various tasks such as content publishing, content management or records management. Once it’s properly set up, the search feature enables staff to always find the documents they’re looking for quickly, thereby greatly improving their efficiency.

To ensure your intranet is truly innovative, study how people are already using the internet at home, and bring those strategies and technologies into the workplace. Develop a strategy with a dedicated team and implement with software that fits your needs. Following these steps and your company will have an intranet that will build collaboration, improve efficiencies and unite your team.

I can almost guarantee that you won’t regret the investment of your time.