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Articles by James Robertson
Many intranets are ugly-very, very ugly. Designs dating from the 1990s, determined by the out-of-the-box layout of dated publishing tools or created by back-end developers, are commonly seen within the firewall. intranets cannot afford to be useful but ugly. Conversely, of course, they can't be beautiful but useless. Intranets may not be not sales and marketing tools or high-profile ecommerce sites, but looks still matter.
I'm currently halfway through writing my next book. As part of the writing process, it's been interesting to explore common design mistakes made on intranet projects. Here are the most common mistakes I've seen.
When intranet managers gather, common topics arise: authoring and publishing models, maintaining content quality, designing and structuring sites, protecting the intranet homepage, making search work, and choosing a suitable intranet technology. These are important topics, but they can be considered “intranet fundamentals.” They have been well-covered and addressed. But that doesn’t mean that this knowledge is shared. The intranet industry has two tasks ahead of it: Spreading Best Practices and Innovating Intranets.
Intranet teams are busy and are pulled in many directions by different stakeholders. Resources are limited, and senior management visibility is often low. Most teams do not have the luxury of playing with technology without some level of accountability. So what can real-world teams do?
Innovation equals originality plus impact. Innovative ideas are not simply new; they must also deliver concrete benefits, creating something of value or making things easier and quicker.
Collaboration is a vexing topic for many intranet managers. The requests from business areas for wikis or SharePoint spaces are never-ending, but the question remains: Where do these fit in relation to the intranet?
In 2005, Fiat was about to face its fiercest challenge: to overcome the deep economic and image crisis into which it had plunged during the preceding years, to revitalize its brand, and to again establish a leadership position in Italy and all over Europe.
Intranets have come a long way in the last 10 years, from hobbies to core corporate platforms. Yet the metaphor underpinning this success is still the intranet as an “internal website.” This metaphor leads to a focus on content management, usability, information architecture, publishing models, search, and governance. These have improved the effectiveness of intranets, but there is a limit to how far they can take us.
When faced with the task of improving the intranet, the focus is naturally on the desired future state of the site. Where do we want to get to? What does intranet nirvana look like?
Reviewed this Issue: Making Search Work; The Data Administration Newsletter; and Enterprise Search
Deployment, Usage, and Trends
There’s often a focus on the big things when it comes to technology: install a new web content management system to better manage the intranet; deploy a document management system to improve compliance; use a new collaboration suite to dramatically improve communication and project management.
At home, you have broadband, with a wireless router allowing you to surf the net anywhere in your house. Your news aggregator tracks RSS feeds of dozens of different blogs, and your bookmarks are stored in del.icio.us. Having long since abandoned film cameras, all your digital photos are uploaded to Flickr to share with your friends. Maybe you even post to your own blog. The Web seems to be undergoing a new phase of rapid evolution, under the “Web 2.0” banner. Whatever it is called, there are many new services being delivered, driven by entirely new forms of interaction. It’s an exciting time to be using the Web . . . well, at home anyway. When you get work, it’s a whole different story.
Just because your intranet has a huge volume of content, it doesn’t mean you have to spend all your time maintaining it. When new intranet managers are appointed, they are generally confronted with an intranet that has grown organically over many years. Consisting of thousands (or tens of thousands) of pages, many intranet sub-sites and applications, these intranets are daunting for even the most experienced intranet manager.
Reviewed in This Issue: Learning to Fly: Practical Knowledge Management from Leading and Learning Organizations, 2nd Edition; Content manager.net; and The Content Management Handbook
Reviewed this issue: Learning to Fly: Practical Knowledge Management from Leading and Learning Organizations, 2nd Edition, Contentmanager.net, and The Content Management Handbook
Staff directories (also known as phone directories, corporate phone books, or internal white pages) are generally the most used element of a corporate intranet. They are also one of the few tools that staff use every day, and as such, they have a considerable impact upon the efficiency of staff throughout the organization. The role of the staff directory is to provide an online source of staff contact details that is quick, easy, accurate, and complete. As the size of the organization grows, and the rate of change in the business increases, so does the importance of the staff directory. There can be no communication within an organization without the ability to first find the staff person to contact.
In my first Intranets column of 2005, it seems a good time to step back and reflect on the fundamental nature and purpose of intranets. Or to put it another way: what is your intranet actually for? Having worked with many organizations on intranet development, I am constantly surprised by how few have a satisfactory answer to this question. Yet I have come to realize that an intranet will not succeed in the long term if its purpose isn’t understood clearly.
Running an intranet isn’t easy. There are so many different issues and tasks to manage, it can sometimes feel like you are juggling—keeping a dozen balls in the air, making sure that none of them get dropped. It was also once suggested to me that running an intranet is like running a small business. As a small business owner, you have the responsibility to handle everything, including promotion, sales, payroll, budgets, inventory, and a hundred other things. There’s no one else who can do these things, and if you fail to keep up with some of the key activities, you go bust.
Regardless of the metaphor, there are many different aspects to consider when managing an intranet. If you are lucky, you have an intranet team to support you. Even then, there is a lot to accomplish with a small team.
Most intranets grow organically, starting with a single person creating a site made up of a handful of pages. Once the awareness of this initial intranet grew, so did the number of pages. With each new section added ad-hoc, without any overall plan or vision, the intranet quickly grew into a sprawling mass of content.
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