You’ve probably figured out by now that the technology behind a wiki, or a blog pales compared to most web content management systems… and can’t carry the dirty laundry of a killer portal or enterprise content management solution. The technology is terribly simple; what makes it ‘sing’ is people and process.

What makes Wikipedia the most trusted source of information on the planet? Is it the technology? The design? The name? Actually, all of the above are… quite awful, to be honest. The value is in the content; but more accurately, the people who contribute the content. Wikipedia’s technology is painfully simple – add to or an edit an entry and you’ll be shocked at the poor and pathetic state of its editing tool; there were better publishing tools in 1993. The secret sauce: the collective wisdom of the contributing crowd; the end contributors, and the process that encourages the all-too-simple, effortless contribution and peer reviewing of content. The collective wisdom of the crowd is transformative; so significant that it sparked a landslide evolutionary leap in user technology, and the Internet as we know it.

How does this translate to the intranet? It’s the same IP technology, the same browser, and the same users, but with a different focus, perspective and set of requirements. However, the intranet is not the Internet. A quantity of fundamental intelligence must first be applied before said technology can trigger a transformation of the corporate world behind the firewall. But when done successfully… the social intranet is the intranet on Starbucks: caffeinated, ubiquitous, and engaging.

A successful social intranet, though, is not easily achieved. If you build it they will not come… necessarily. However, if you understand the requisite process(es), you will attract the people, and the enabling technology that will help catalyze an antiquated business system into a dynamic ecosystem of collaboration and innovation.

Ten steps to a Social Intranet:

1. Business requirements
2. User requirements
3. Best practices
4. Strategic planning
5. Governance
6. Information architecture
7. Wireframes
8. Design
9. Launch
10. Change management

Learn more about the social intranet….
Download the full size version of The Social Intranet Infographic
Read the latest version of The Social Intranet White Paper (30 pages of intelligence and case studies)

The original intranet, intranet 1.0, typically began as nothing more than a bare bones website on someone’s desktop computer, usually in IT or corporate communications. The first version of this intranet was nothing more than a welcome page, perhaps a name and a phone number, and a simple welcome message.

Intranet 1.0 grew and evolved rapidly, more so at some organizations than others, but in some respects, faster than corporate websites who had a few years’ head start with the advent of the ‘super information highway’:

• Version 1.0: Welcome page (a welcome message and a phone number)
• Version 1.1: Bulletin board (simple communications)
• Version 1.2: Corporate newsletter (structured news & limited document management)
• Version 1.3: Help Desk (simple transactions like the employee directory)
• Version 1.4: Corporate Store (more complex transactions such as e-HR and self-service)
• Version 1.5: The Portal (authorization, authentication, application & database integration)

The trail has lengthened considerably as of late with the advancement of social media, and the intranet has made an evolutionary leap to version 2.0 – the social intranet.

Social media behind the firewall

Once a pipedream or just another passing fad, intranet 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and other vehicles have become mainstream, and are present in nearly two-thirds of organizations. In fact, those organizations that haven’t adopted such tools are now in the minority and are flirting with disaster and the ‘global talent crunch’ – the fight for young, talented individuals to replace the rapidly aging and retiring baby boomers. Organizations risk being squeezed by the talent crunch and losing the campaign for young talent if they ignore the demands of the next generation of 20-something workers that not only desire social media in their jobs, they’ve come to demand it.

Consider for a moment the powerful Telindus study (2008) of 1,000 European employees that should serve as a warning to all employers and communicators:

• 39% of 18 to 24 year-old employees would consider leaving their employer if they were not allowed to access sites like Facebook and YouTube;
• A further 21% indicated that they would feel ‘annoyed’ by such a ban.

This study is four years-old. Four. There’s a point here: if employees were demanding intranet 2.0 tools four years ago, they’re surely a little more impatient and demanding today.

It should be of no surprise then that social media on the corporate intranet has jumped in prevalence so dramatically in the past two years: from nice-to-have to common-place (if not mandatory). According to the Social Intranet Study (results from 1,400+ respondent organizations):

• 75% have intranet blogs; 26 percent have deployed blogs enterprise wide; 4 percent have no plans or interest in deploying blogs.
• 65% have intranet discussion forums; 26 percent have deployed intranet discussion forums enterprise wide; 7 percent have no plans or interest in intranet discussion forums.
• 63% have intranet instant messaging; 44 percent use instant messaging on their intranets enterprise wide; 16 percent have no plans or interest in deploying instant messaging on their intranets.
• 61% have intranet wikis; 19 percent use intranet wikis enterprise wide; 12 percent have no plans or interest in intranet wikis.
• 60 percent have intranet user commenting; 32 percent have deployed intranet user commenting enterprise wide; 8 percent have no plans or interest in intranet user commenting.

The Social Intranet

Not to be confused with intranet 2.0 — the loosely labeled collection of social media tools applied to the intranet — the ‘social intranet’ provides structure and evolution to these tools; it organizes and ingrains the use and adoption of social media into most aspects of content consumption on the corporate intranet.

The phrase social intranet has only appeared in recent years (late 2009) to describe an intranet with social media features. Although with any emerging technology there is likely to be disagreement on the precise definition of a new term, I describe a social intranet as the following:

An intranet that features multiple social media tools for most or all employees to use as collaboration vehicles for sharing knowledge with other employees. A social intranet may feature blogs, wikis, discussion forums, social networking, or a combination of these or any other Web 2.0 (intranet 2.0) tool with at least some or limited exposure (optional) from the main intranet or portal home page.

However, a few employee or executive blogs do not make a social intranet. A social intranet requires wide participation, or at minimum, opportunity for participation, by most or all employees that have intranet access. Social intranets require social media: blogs, wikis, and user comments, to name a few. More advanced social intranets may incorporate multimedia, user-tagging, and social networking that are integrated into multiple channels including user profiles (such as the feature set produced by Microsoft SharePoint 2010 or Lotus Connections).

A social intranet however does not have or include:

• All social media tools (two or three will suffice);
• The participation of all employees (but be open to most employees); and
• A technology platform that is strictly a social media platform (e.g. blog or wiki platform).

Social intranet basics:

• Multiple social media tools
• Open opportunity to use social media tools for most or all employees with intranet access
• Access to social media tools from the intranet home page
• Social options woven into most content consumption (e.g. user comments, rating, links to tools, etc. on most page templates)

Social media on the intranet is a relatively new phenomena having only appeared behind the firewall in the past 4 or 5 years (with the exception of instant messaging and discussion forums which have been around, in some form, since the late 1990s). In the past year or two, social media on the corporate intranet have become mainstream with nearly two-thirds of organizations in the western world having some form of social media on their intranet.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE SOCIAL INTRANET. DOWNLOAD THE FREE WHITE PAPER: THE SOCIAL INTRANET

Yeah, Intranet 1.0 really sucked.

Intranet 2.0 is the promise of something so much more – an evolutionary jump so significant that when compared to the original, the new hardly bears any resemblance to it. In short, it describes the next generation of intranet characterized by more advanced and engaging collaboration processes and tools best represented by social media tools.

The original intranet, intranet 1.0, typically began as welcome page, designed by some techie using Front Page or native HTML. The first version of this intranet was nothing more than a welcome page, perhaps a name and a phone number, and a simple welcome message. Hidden on a server under said techie’s desk, the welcome page slowly expanded into a bulletin board, with lists, appended PDFs, and often a newsletter cobbled together by corporate communications.

Intranet 1.0 grew and evolved rapidly, more so at some organizations than others, but in some respects, faster than corporate websites who had a few years’ head start with the advent of the ‘super information highway’:

• Version 1.0: Welcome page (a welcome message and a phone number)
• Version 1.1: Bulletin board (simple communications)
• Version 1.2: Corporate newsletter (structured news & limited document management)
• Version 1.3: Help Desk (simple transactions like the employee directory)
• Version 1.4: Corporate Store (more complex transactions such as e-HR and self-service)
• Version 1.5: The Portal (authorization, authentication, application & database integration)

Though not every intranet has followed such a clear evolutionary path, Intranet 2.0 is a great leap. We’ll discuss this evolutionary leap, and how best to tackle it, in a very unique, online, interactive event on February 8th, Real Engagement Event – Intranet 2.0.

THIS IS NOT A WEBINAR. Real Engagement is the only event series that is 100% about the audience. Submit your questions for experts, vote for the questions you want to see answered and weigh in on the topics that interest you most. It’s all about you. Come see this new, exciting technology in action… a sneak preview of the future of employee town hall forums.

Reserve your spot now and make sure you’re with us on February 8 for what promises to be a great conversation.

It’s a testament to the Microsoft organization that SharePoint (in some shape or form, at some level of deployment, often limited to a work group or department) is present and running in more than two-thirds of all medium to large businesses (and many SMBs as well). Microsoft has invested hundreds-of-millions of dollars in this diverse web development platform – no longer marketed as a portal solution or enterprise content management system – and has spent many more millions marketing and selling it to you.

I must disclose that most of our clients use SharePoint; and we at Prescient Digital Media also use SharePoint 2010 for our internal intranet. I’ve come to know it intimately as a user, and reasonably well as an administrator – both its’ strengths and weaknesses. This famous technology has many, many strengths, and many, many weaknesses; a great it for many organizations, and a terrible fit for many others.

I’ll be honest: I wouldn’t choose SP 2010 for our intranet if I didn’t have to. There are many more, better suited, effective enterprise content management system solutions that are a fraction of the price that are better suited to my company. But my company is not every company. This is not a personal opinion or choice, I am a power Microsoft user and owner, and an unrivaled PC, Windows, and MS-Office user as you will find (and not at all a fan of Mac. In fact, I openly dislike Apple). However, SP is used by so many clients, and the platform itself has so much potential, I, as a consultant, have no choice but to not know it intimately.

Here’s the crux of the problem: SharePoint 2010 has so much potential, so many potential benefits, and can deliver so much value for the average organization… but not the basic version, and not out-of-the-box, and not without a multitude of additional costs, hours and frustration. Yes, SharePoint can be customized, and tweaked, enhanced, and built upon – it’s only a function of time and money.

Do you have the dollars? Do you have the patience? I don’t know anyone that uses the basic SP 2010 edition, and no one that hasn’t spent a lot of money customizing and enhancing it.

The social intranet @ Prescient Digital Media, using SharePoint 2010

SP 2010 gets a thumbs-up when compared to MOSS 2007, but given the cost, gets a failing grade or a bare pass in nearly every other category. It’s very revealing to learn 54% of your customers say that it fails to live up to functional expectations; and 46% say it fails to live up to technical expectations.

However, as I’ve said, SP 2010 is a “mile wide and an inch deep” – which is exactly what some organizations need. SP 2010 offers a lot, but it’s more than what many organizations need, and less than what still others demand.

For you and your organization, you need to make careful, informed decisions about SharePoint, and alternatives to SharePoint, and more specifically, you need to know what it can and cannot do, at what cost. Call it the “dos and don’ts” of SharePoint.

Learn more about SharePoint Dos and Don’ts on our webinar – it’s absolutely free, and is not a sales pitch – next week, February 2, at Noon EST. Register online for for the SharePoint Dos and Don’ts webinar.

Who should own the intranet? Communications? IT? HR? All of them? You may be shocked to learn that many companies don’t know the answer; in fact, many organizations can’t clearly answer with any confidence whom is the present intranet owner.

Gone are the days where a single IT geek creates an intranet on a server under his desk, and manages the whole kit-and-kaboodle (at least in a real business environment that doesn’t feature the cast of Dilbert). Also in retreat, facing extinction (where budget permits) is the ‘wild west’ intranet: anyone can do whatever they want, and they do.

As is the case with most intranets it is simply impossible to achieve any long-lasting success without a clearly defined ownership and management structure. Far from being a buzz word or jargon, intranet governance provides clarity and rules: namely the titles, roles and responsibilities of its owners, managers, stakeholders and contributors.

Sample governance model – large-sized financial services firm (Source: Prescient Digital Media)

Simply put, governance defines an intranet’s ownership and management model and structure including the:

• Management team
• Roles & responsibilities of contributors
• Decision making process
• Policies & standards

Like the content of your website or intranet, planning and governance is technology agnostic; whether it’s SharePoint, IBM or another portal or content management system, the necessity for and the approach to governance is the same. Given its technology neutral status in governance is largely applicable to any technology platform.

POLITICS

Politics and the issues of control, ownership and standards go hand-in-hand with intranet management and perhaps these issues, more than any other, have driven the requirement for planning and defined governance models. Sadly, very few organizations actually have a well-defined governance model, and many of those have spent hundreds-of-thousands to millions of dollars on their website or intranet – amounting to extraordinary investments left to chance and execution on a whim.

According to the Intranet 2.0 Global Survey in 2009:

• Only 47% of organizations have a defined governance model (32% have 6,000 employees or more; 11% have 30,000 employees or more);
• Of the tools and platforms being used by survey participants, a whopping 47% are using SharePoint (MOSS 2007) in some shape or form.

By 2011, according to the Social Intranet Study, the picture had improved considerably: 67% of organizations have some form of governance, and at minimum, some form of policy that regulates intranet content publishing and management. A marked improvement for certain, but still many lack a well-defined governance model that explicitly details the ownership structure and policies required to support and govern a leading intranet.

Most importantly, a thorough governance model will help inoculate your intranet against the number one killer: politics.

Politics will kill your intranet. Without a well defined governance model (and should your intranet survive the naturally occurring politics of competing priorities amongst various stakeholders – communications, IT, human resources, various business units, etc.) then the value the intranet or portal delivers will be severely hampered.

OWNERSHIP

“If you don’t have structure, you’re going to constantly run into politics,” said Terry Lister, Partner and Leader of IBM Canada’s Business Consulting Services. “Without a governance structure with standards, different silos try to do something in parallel (their own thing) and it costs more… and will lessen the user experience.”

Much of the problem lies in the immaturity of this nascent intranet technology. With the rational consolidation of intranet sites and services under a central site or portal, disparate departments and stakeholders such as corporate communications, human resources, IT and varying business units now must cooperate under a lone umbrella with a single intranet home page. Along with this ‘forced’ cooperation comes the predictable politics and competition for ownership of the intranet (and competition for valued home page real estate).

The problem lies with the traditional growth and evolution of the intranet. Initially, when intranets first came online in the early to mid-1990s, they were nothing more than a web brochure (a.k.a. ‘brochureware’) that sat on a small server under the desk of a Web developer who served as designer, writer and Webmaster.

GOVERNANCE MODELS

I categorize intranet governance by four broad approaches or models:

1. Decentralized (no single owner; do-what-you-like)
2. Centralized a single owner or department controls it all; highly bureaucratic; common in small organizations)
3. Collaborative (shared ownership via committee)
4. Hybrid, centralized (single owner, with collaborative accountability, decentralized content ownership)

COLLABORATIVE GOVERNANCE

The most common governance model in recent years, in medium to large-size organizations, has been the collaborative model. The collaborative model is most often focused on a cross-representative steering committee representing the major functional stakeholders:

• Communications
• Human Resources
• Operations
• Information Technology
• Business units / departments

This model is most successful when the committee is championed by one or two key executives, often the CIO, the head of Communications, or HR. Instead of no owner, or one single owner, a collaborative team governs the intranet through the application of policies, standards and templates. This committee is typically responsible for the direction, vision, prioritization of projects, and future evolution.
About two-thirds of medium to large-size organizations have some form of collaborative governance and some form of intranet ‘steering committee’ or council. They typical committee has 6-10 individuals (mostly from IT, HR & communications) and is focused on:

• Mandate and vision
• Business objectives
• Policies and standardization
• Project prioritization
• Trouble-shooting and conflict resolution

HYBRID, CENTRALIZED GOVERNANCE

The hybrid, centralized governance model is one that combines elements of all three previous models:

• Centralized ownership
• Centralized policy making and future development decision-making
• Centralized technology and content management platforms
• Decentralized content publishing and ownership
• Decentralized application ownership / management

The hybrid model is very closely aligned to the collaborative model, with two significant exceptions: there is often a supporting steering committee, but it falls under a single intranet owner (or co-owners); and the role of IT is usually reduced from a collaborative owner to a committee member without ownership, but rather a support or enabler role for the business owner (often communications or HR). So while the collaborative model has a committee as the end intranet owner, the hybrid model puts the committee under an owner (though sometimes this business owner is in fact IT).

YOU’RE NOT DONE YET… KEEP READING:

The Politics of Intranet Ownership

Collaborative Intranet Governance (Intranet Politics Part II)

Intranet management is plural

Why is the intranet so political?

According to the Social Intranet Study of 1,401 participants in organizations of all sizes (conducted by Prescient Digital Media and IABC), intranets are becoming more social, but there’s a fair bit of work to still be done.

Truth be told, most business are using social media in some form (if only trialing and experimenting with it): 61% have at least one internal social media tool on their intranet. But very few organizations are satisfied with the results, and less than 10% of organizations have a true ‘social intranet’ (an intranet with multiple social media tools integrated into the home page and most content consumption, and are available to most if not all employees).

The most popular social media tools on the intranet? Not surprisingly, blogs. Other findings include:

• 75% have intranet blogs and 26% have them enterprise-wide.
• 65% have intranet discussion forums; 26% enterprise-wide.
• 61% have intranet wikis; 19% enterprise-wide.
• 63% have intranet instant messaging; 44% enterprise-wide.
• 43% have intranet social networking; 19% enterprise-wide.
• 55% of organizations with Intranet 2.0 tools are using Microsoft SharePoint
• 30% is the overall satisfaction rate of intranet 2.0 tools

The summary analysis of The Social Intranet Study is now available for a free download at www.PrescientDigital.com (the full 46-page report provides detailed data, analysis  and cross-tabulation by size, industry and social media tools such as wikis and blogs is only $89).

More highlights and explanation of the top-level study findings and some of the analysis can also be found in my webinar, Business Turns Social.

In fact, if it weren’t for dictators, communist strongmen and military fuhrers, the intranet industry might be in decline. Instead, the intranet is a growth industry. Note the latest stories and headlines from those great countries that are particularly skilled at violating human rights, but have a fantastic intranet: Iran, China, North Korea, just to name a few.

It’s all about balance: in these countries, people do go missing; freedom of press or web is managed with a big stick and violent crackdowns; and torture and blackmail are effective tools for sustaining effective government. But man, they have tremendous intranets.

Look what Iran is working on!

Iran squeezes Web surfers, prepares censored national intranet (CBS)

Iranians have lost the right to surf the Web anonymously at Internet cafes as the government reportedly moves closer to its ultimate goal of replacing the global network with a censored national intranet.

The Iranian Cyber Police published new rules on Wednesday designed to allow officials to know exactly who is visiting what Web sites. Before they can log on, Iranians are required to provide their name, father’s name, address, telephone number and national ID, according to an Iranian media report cited by Radio Free Europe. Cafe owners will be required to install security cameras and to keep all data on Web surfers, including browsing history, for six months.

The rules, which come as the country prepares for parliamentary elections in March, are a deterrent to activists who might want to use the Internet cafes to organize protests. Calls to boycott elections distributed via social networks or e-mail will be treated as national security crimes, the Iranian judiciary announced last week, according to a report today in the Wall Street Journal. Government officials claim they need to control access to the Internet to counter what they say is a “soft” cultural war being waged by Western countries to influence the morals of Iranians.

Monitoring Web surfers is an interim measure until the government is done building out its own domestic intranet that is “halal,” or pure. Initially, the Iran intranet will run in tandem with the Internet before the global Web is shut off to the 23 million Internet users in Iran, according to reports. Payam Karbasi, spokesman for Iran professional union Corporate Computer Systems, told Iranian media that the domestic network, which was announced last March, would be launched in coming weeks, the WSJ reported.

I love those halal kebobs… and now there’s a halal intranet! Brilliant line extension!

Not to be outdone, China is building a dozy of an intranet, too. It may not be halal, but rumor says it will have no MSG!

China: Father of GFW on Internet Sovereignty

Fang Binxing, known as the “father of China’s Great Firewall,” recently recently made a speech on “The future of Internet security” which justifies the development of national network or national intranet by stressing the rights to Internet Sovereignty. Since Fang Binxing has great influence on the development of Internet infrastructure and censorship system in China, his speech may imply the future plan of the China Intranet.

When discussed the objectives of Information security Fang compared the imagined targets of security maintenance to beast, pet, livestock and children.
The first objective is security defense, the target is like a beast. It is like the management of a prison house, and invasive and preventive measure is needed. The second objective is trust, the imagined target is like pet. The management style is similar to an office where there is incentive and punishment. The third objective is reliability, the imagined target is livestock. It is like management a farm, the pigs are surrounded in bars and well fed. The fourth objective is control, the imagined target is children. It is like managing one’s home, everything is under monitored and parental guidance.

You know, I never thought to liken intranet use and its users as livestock and beasts… but come to think of it, this is a brilliant employee engagement tactic! Heck, if your users don’t use the intranet, break out the whip! If employees don’t use the intranet at all… 3 years in the gulag! I bet engagement rates soar!

Anti-democracy and intranet growth go hand in hand; the more democratic your organization, the less effective your intranet might be. In fact, if your intranet is suffering, one such strategy for improving intranet effectiveness is clearly to violate human rights.

Now I’m ready to open up the new Prescient office in Pyongyang.

–

Speaking of intranet growth, I’ll be speaking at one of the best intranet conferences in Europe this May, IntraLife in Oso, Norway. Well worth the trip to see some great speakers and case studies. See: IntraLife

Flere og flere intranett får sosiale funksjoner. Få med deg workshop om sosialt intranett med. IntraLife

–

The founder and CEO of Prescient Digital Media, Toby is a senior Internet and intranet consultant with particular expertise in the area of Internet and intranet planning and communications. He is a big fan of all the Kim Jung ____ (fill in the blank for whatever family member is seizes power).

Jim Jones’ Kook-Aid never tasted so good.

However, once deployed, SharePoint is incredibly easy to use for blogging, creating Team Sites, My Profile driven social networking, and general collaboration. It may leave a business user wanting, but it’s so easy to use that virtually no training is ever required for an end user.

It’s so easy to use, my kids can do it; literally.

My daughter's My Site, Sharepoint 2010

My grade 5 daughter uses SharePoint 2010, as does the rest of her class, school, and district, to communicate and collaborate with her fellow students, and teachers; she blogs, she networks, she shares documents; all with no training.

My daughter's SharePoint 2010 dashboard

If you don’t need to implement a custom design, navigation schema, or integrate non-Microsoft applications, and only need basic collaboration and document sharing, SP 2010 is a brilliant solution (if you can justify the price tag). In fact, SP2010 can do just about anything imaginable, as long as you have the time, money and patience to make it work. It’s not a best-of-breed solution when compared to anything but itself (but it is so diverse that it is hardly comparable to anything else), but it is highly effective when deployed properly. As I’m fond of saying, a successful intranet is only one-third technology, and two-thirds people and process (yes a proper plan is mandatory; nay, mission critical).

Oh and by the way, because of the built-in, or baked-in nature of its’ web content management, templates, and site collection structure, the governance is actually better than most solutions. It still requires some work, and offline standards, policies, and proper stewardship and management, but it’s baked-in governance is about as good as it gets. The rest is your responsibility.

You don’t have to drink all of the Kool-Aid to enjoy some of its flavours…

Read more on SharePoint 2010 intranet requirements and recommendations

SAS SharePoint Intranet. Source: Sharepointdazzle

It’s difficult study leading intranets without firsthand access to someone else’s intranet. However, our recent webinar, The Best Intranets from the Intranet Global Forum (with Kurt Sorensen, and myself), was a chance for a wide audience (300 organizations worldwide) to see how some of the very best intranets look, operate and achieve success.

Great case study examples from Cisco, CHR Hansen, IBM, SimCorp, Verizon, and more than 20 others were showcased, and examined during the webinar and last month’s Intranet Global Forum conference in New York City. Though many topics were discussed, particularly in the Q&A session following the webinar, time did not provide sufficient room to answer all the questions. Here are some of the key questions discussed, and a few that were asked but not answered due to the ticking clock.

1. How do you affect/change the behaviour of end users (increase usage)?

Behavioural change does not come overnight. It’s particularly difficult to instill such change with employees, who have limited time and interest in the intranet.

For many organizations, an intranet makes a fundamental change in organizational communications, and also, business process. Though the degree of change, and the required change management, depends on the type and culture of the organization (e.g. union or non-union, small or large, etc.) and the intended value and power of the intranet (e.g. self-service, executive communications, etc.), a change management communications program is a requisite for any intranet launch.

Intranet change management becomes an exercise in “selling” or communicating not only the reason and purpose for the change, but especially anticipating and directly addressing the spoken AND unspoken fears (or apathy) of employees.

As I’ve become fond of saying over the years, “If you build it, they will not come.” To build an intranet is not enough to inspire employee use. Like most things in business, the intranet has to be sold and communicated so those employees that are not keeners (or potentially fearful or distrustful of the intranet). Understanding the key elements of a successful change management program will help ensure a successful intranet launch.

Successful change management requires:

• Frequent communications
• User training
• User incentives
• Inherent value

The last point is perhaps the most difficult, should you have a poor intranet: the intranet must demonstrate natural value to the end employee; employees must inherently understand that the intranet is of value to their day-to-day jobs.

Read more: Intranet change management.

3. How to design an intranet for a large enterprise (tens-of-thousands of employees)?

“Be careful that you do not write or paint anything that is not your own, that you don’t know in your own soul.” – Emily Carr, Canadian artist.

A new intranet design or redesign requires a lot of careful user research and user testing if it is to be successful. Do not simply turn an intranet design over to a designer and say, “We need a better intranet. What can you come up with?”

In short, intranet design has very little to do with ‘design’ and should instead be driven by careful user research, requirements and participation. If you know anything about intranets, you know that an intranet is not a website, and employees have entirely different motivations and demands than the public. Employee intranet priority number one is speed; get them to the content or tool they need as fast as humanly possible with as little error and distraction as possible.

The very best intranet designs are clean, uncluttered and support a highly effective and carefully crafted information architecture and navigation structure. Put too much on the home page, and you’ll anger your employee users; put too little on the page, and you’ll anger the same users. It’s a tight rope walk that requires their involvement if you’re going to nail it.

Read more: Intranet Design.

3. How do you address cultural differences for global audiences?

Most large, global organizations now conduct business in one principal language (often it’s English). However, it’s also smart to allow different regions, countries, business units, etc. Conduct business in their own language, where necessary, especially if the dominant tongue differs from the principal language of the company.

The key to success is decentralized content management: centralized content management technology and policy, decentralized content publishing, ownership and management. In other words, the company provides the technology and policy (standards), the writers/owners control the actual words on the site.

Read more: Intranet governance: ownership, management & policy.

4.  What’s the best alternative for SharePoint, for a small organization of a few hundred employees?

A home buyer asks a real estate agent, “I want a house: what’s the best alternative to a mansion for a small family like mine?”

The real estate agent responds with 42 probing questions to determine the buyer’s requirements.

Get it?

There is no best alternative to SharePoint or any other technology: there are hundreds of alternatives, and what’s best depends on your particular requirements.

Our approach to complex technologies is rooted in our project methodology of first understanding the client’s needs and particular requirements, and then building plans and designs for those needs and requirement. Once all plans are complete, then the evaluation and selection of technology can begin.

With literally thousands of technology vendor solutions in the market (WCMs, ECMs, CRMs, portal solutions, social media platforms, etc.), choosing the right technology can be very difficult, and time confusing, tiresome and frustrating. It is critical to define and prioritize your requirements, and carefully compare vendor offerings. A solid understanding of your company’s tactical and strategic objectives will help in ensuring a successful technology implementation.

Prescient’s Technology Blueprint service applies our rigorous business requirements analysis methodology and includes user and stakeholder research. For example, we build a complex, detailed evaluation matrix that scores and weighs hundreds of technology, and business requirements (including price, security, organizational culture, etc.). It’s not a small process, and it’s not an easy decision.

Would you spend $50,000 or $500,000 on a new intranet and not spend a few weeks determining your requirements before you looked at potential alternatives to SharePoint?

Keep reading: CMS Blueprint.

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I was a kid, naive and a little stupid, but not so stupid that I continued the error of my ways. I learned my lesson and was smarter for it.

Some corporations are about to learn the same lesson: ditching doesn’t always pay. Europe’s largest IT firm is revoking employees’ internal email. Atos is cancelling internal email, as its CEO claims only “15% of the 200 emails his staff receives on an average basis are valuable,” according to reports (summarized on Simply Communicate).

Atos CEO Thierry Breton claims his employees are wasting 5-20 hours a week handling email. Instead of the internal communications tool, he wants staff to opt for instant messaging and other chat-like media.

Breton says he hasn’t sent a work email for three years. If employees want to reach him, he prefers they call, text, or visit his office.

Meanwhile, external communication will still center around email, leaving employees vulnerable to interruptions in spite of the internal email ban.

So, let’s see, whether I like it or not, I can no longer receive or send internal email, but I still have to use email for external communications?

This has to be the most intelligent business decision since Paris Hilton took up acting, and then filed for a patent for her trademark saying, “That’s hot!” There are so many things wrong with this decision it is not worth my time to count the ways.

• Remember when email was going to kill the fax machine?
• Remember when the Internet was going to make books and magazines redundant?
• Remember when Atos fell flat on their face for making a stupid, knee-jerk business decision that killed the most dominant and effective corporate communications vehicle in 99.5% of all organizations?

Is email misused? Yes. Does it need to find ‘better balance’ with the intranet, chat, and other social media? Yes. Are employees in a position to still operate effectively without it? No. The decision is just plain stupid.

Good PR; bad business.

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Toby Ward, CEO and Founder of Prescient Digital Media, is a former journalist and a regular e-business columnist and speaker.

Toby Ward, a former journalist and a regular e-business columnist and speaker, is the CEO and Founder of Prescient Digital Media. His white paper “The Social Intranet” is a free download.