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Articles by Sam Marshall
Recently, I've heard a number of case studies in which companies have decided that the current intranet is so outdated that management has decided to launch a new social platform and simply leave the old site to stagger along, rather than try to migrate or integrate it. At best, they may use the new platform to create a few links to the most used content on the old site. Is this really the best way for traditional intranet and social intranet approaches to coexist? Many organizations have invested heavily in highly structured and well-governed intranets, but they also struggle to get regular, widespread content contributions. A social approach offers the promise of higher engagement levels and more dynamic content, but introducing these toolsin tension with the existing intranet can cause confusion about where things should live. This leads to concerns that there will be a loss of content control or a loss of structure as topics get duplicated on different systems. Both of these ultimately threaten to degrade the user experience.
Editorial/Columns
Posted 01 May 2012
I often hear intranet strategies that include something about "breaking down silos" as a way to improve knowledge sharing or collaboration. Silos, otherwise known as departmental barriers or cliques, have long been a target of internal social media, and knowledge management before that.
Since Apple, Inc. launched its App Store, more than 1 billion applications have been downloaded. This year, it expanded the idea to cover its Mac computers and sold 1 million apps on launch day. Given such unequivocal success, are there things that we might learn for the intranet world? Perhaps intranet interfaces should look more like a collection of apps than a website? Or could it be a way for employees to create a personalized experience? Both of these have merit, but what I feel has more potential in the near term is a third version: an app store for intranet site owners.
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