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Features
Looking at the way business is conducted today—websites, email, online document management—it’s hard to imagine how we ever managed before the internet. I find it strange that, with so many tools at our disposal, so many companies still rely on paper in the form of memos, handbooks, phone directories, and so on to manage internal communications. Even companies trying to make the digital switch by using an intranet often default to traditional inter-office communication methods. ecause we work with many clients integrating their intranets into a content-management system for the first time, we get to see many companies as they go through the process of evaluating what works and what doesn’t on their intranets. Here are some of the tips I’ve gleaned from watching that process.
Sharing information across an enterprise is difficult, much more difficult than one would expect in these latter days of the Information Age. Part of the problem is terminology. It seems every corner of the enterprise has its own language or dialect. Even though two people work for the same company, they often use different terms for the same concept and something is always lost in translation. The other part of the problem is technology. The number of the components comprising our intranets has exploded.
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"Welcome to our site, we hope you find the information useful. We aim to provide information to help you in your job. Please let us know if there is other information that you want to read. Click on the titles on the left to find out more information.” This may not be typical, but there are intranets with sub-sites that read like this. A?content-management system isn’t enough; intranet authors need training on what content is appropriate and how it should be written.
The role of divisional and regional intranets can be both ambiguous and misleading. They are neither global nor local. Global intranet managers may feel they reproduce global content, thereby keeping users from the authoritative global site; local managers may feel they are unnecessary because they can best provide their local users with what they need. Thus, the divisional and regional intranet mangers are caught in the middle, running intranets with little guidance, other than their managers saying “we need to have an intranet.” The hard truth is that the majority of these intranets should not exist.
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Reviewed this Issue: 6x2 Methodology for Intranets; The Impact of Organisational Culture on Knowledge Management; and Groxis Inc.
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