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Features
Since their appearance in the late 1990s, intranets have offered a way to deal with a variety of business issues—in practically every industry and business type. On the back-end, they help address issues of application sprawl by providing a centralized framework. On the front-end, along with content management, intranets provide a single interface to employees through which they can access multiple systems. The goal of providing access to enterprise-wide content has always existed but this dream has not quite been realized—at least in part because employees still struggle to locate information stored in structured and unstructured content repositories. "Findability" has been sacrificed because of the very limited search capabilities provided out-of-the-box by intranet and CMS solutions, and, in some cases, even those provided by search vendors. The key here is out-of-the-box, because findability is an issue of more than just ready-made technology.
Toby Banks, a worldwide portal and workplace sales specialist for IBM, works out of his home, but routinely travels to places like Texas, Cambridge, New York, and New Hampshire. To stay abreast of developments within IBM and the wider world of technology and business, Banks—like thousands of other mobile IBM employees—hits IBM’s On Demand Workplace portal several times a day. IBM’s On Demand portal enables Banks as well as other IBM employees and executives to access new information, participate in forums, and keep up to date on important developments in the industry. IBM salespeople use a separate educational portal: Sales Compass. And IBM is notalone. Intranets and portals are growing in popularity for elearning.
Columns
While reviewing intranets, I often come across instances where a team knows that they need to communicate information with the rest of the organization , but to do so, they publish all of their paper materials. This may fulfill the desire to put all communications online, but without an appreciation of what users want and how they use information, it will all go unread. Communication is, after all, a two-way process.
In developed countries, everyone has the right to public services such as transportation, communication, and education. When the intranet serves as a utility for the way a company works it becomes as essential as water and electricity; it becomes a public service. Likewise, in an international company, all employees should have equal access to intranet services. In reality you often find populations living above the digital poverty line and others below it—pockets of wealth alongside pockets of poverty.
Read_Me_File
Reviewed this issue: Information Strategy in Practice, Information Nation, and NetStrategyJmc
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