11 steps to a successful Intranet
The following factors can gear the Intranet towards success:
1. Document the intranet strategy
Develop and document an intranet strategy, based on a consideration of the requirements and balance of information/content, technology and governance. This strategy has to be aligned with the overall strategy of the organisation.
2. Use personas and tasks/scenarios to identify user requirements
Personas are virtual cvs that summarise the main characteristics of employees undertaking specific roles, and the tasks that these roles require. Focusing on perhaps six key user scenarios can make a significant difference to the quality and acceptance of the intranet.
3. Understand and support content contribution
Information quality in an intranet is essential. Invariably intranet content contribution is not included in job descriptions or valued by managers, and as a result gets low priority.
4. Enhance the intranet in a series of small, manageable, steps
An intranet should be continuously enhanced to reflect changing requirements, rather than wait for the opportunity and resources to carry out a major revision.
5. Manage metadata
Content authors may not have the skills and expertise needed to add metadata. Metadata is not just about 'keywords'. The effort involved in developing metadata schemes and taxonomies is always underestimated.
6. Provide effective search functionality
Users have to trust the search functionality so that they feel totally confident that either they have found all relevant information, or that information is not on the intranet.
7. Provide access to the business environment
Make sure that the intranet provides access to information from external sources, such as business and market information. It is easy to be so focused on the provision of internal information that access to external information is overlooked
8. Undertake regular usability testing
Usability testing should be carried out at all stages of the life of an intranet, and there should be a range of feedback channels to ensure that the content and the information architecture continue to meet the expectations of contributors, users and stakeholders.
9. Support collaborative working
Intranet websites on their own are not good collaborative applications. There could be significant benefit in implementing wikis and blogs, discussion forums and surveys.
10. Set up a suitable governance structure
The governance structure should reflect this enterprise value of the intranet. There should be clear communication channels to the staff and also back to the intranet team so that changes in business requirements can be identified at the earliest opportunity.
11. KPIs and measurement of success
Both long term and short term goals and well thought KPIs have to be defined right from the beginning.
