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Features
Today, a series of myths surround intranets, myths that initially arose during the Internet boom days and have somehow survived. As a result, many intranet projects—whether they are new intranets or retreads of failed intranets—are still overly complex and potentially fated to remain both costly and ineffectual.
Ventures marketing research project on multi-channel communications illustrated this and made me question the belief that most firms are committed to implementing an enterprise information portal. My hesitation didn’t arise because portals are bad, simply a fad, or not beneficial to most companies. I’ve just found that enterprise information portal implementation is simply too large of a project or investment for the vast majority of companies. Perhaps what most businesses really need is a somewhat scaled down technology that can deliver the benefits of a portal, without extensive and complicated development and without a huge cost: portals for mortals, in other words.
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Not long ago, information professionals were hampered by the limitations of information technology. This was especially so in fostering the creation of new knowledge and connecting people in meaningful, non-text-based ways. While technology considerations remain important ones, most info pros agree that now the really tough challenges in increasingly complex organizations are related to people and processes. The goal is to deliver content in context—in a convenient form and format for information and knowledge exchange, with as little disruption and as significant a performance boost as possible—to individuals, teams, and organizations. With this focus shift, there comes an opportunity to be creative, to reassess and increase the capabilities of the intranet, to determine the usefulness of adopting Internet trends (like the shift of “power” to the individual), and to consider ways to leverage emerging forms of information sharing and communication.
Question: I have circulated a proposal to our senior management group about implementing a CMS, but our CIO says that what the organization needs is a portal that enables staff to personalize the information they need to access. What are your views?
Answer:As you walk around a gallery or a museum the door to each room holds a wonderful collection of paintings or artifacts, each labeled and placed in context. Yet few people ever wonder about the skill and effort involved in creating the display. A few years ago, enterprise information portals (EIP) were all the rage. Circa 2000/2001, there were over 100 vendors, and everyone was forecasting the death of the intranet. Luckily for my consulting business they were wrong, and, as it turns out, Plumtree is about the only independent portal vendor left standing...
Question: Our intranet has been owned by just about every department in the organization. It started in IT, who then handed it over to marketing because they managed the corporate site. It turned out that they had no interest in internal communications, so our corporate communications team took it on. Now this team is being disbanded and our intranet is about to be rudderless. Any suggestions as to who should be taking responsibility for the management of the intranet?
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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: Leading Organizational Learning, Enterprise Content Services, and Usability.gov
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