When looking for examples of good practice on the web, businesses are spoilt for choice.  They can check the online offerings of their competitors, of large Dot Com companies, of online newspapers, and media groups.  Building the perfect beast when it comes to the intranet is very different.  Getting to grips with what works and what doesn’t is an altogether more tricky affair.

In pure commercial return–on–investment terms, intranets often present businesses with the single greatest opportunity to harness internet technology to business gain.  According to a Nielsen Norman Group Report a company with 10,000 employees that has only average intranet usability can save £3 million in productivity each year by increasing the usability and effectiveness of their intranet.  Whilst few businesses in Northern Ireland are of that scale, the principle can be applied on a more modest level.  Running an efficient user focussed intranet can bring clear commercial advantage.

The winners for the 2003 best intranet awards are an eclectic lot.  Organisations as disparate as Fujitsu Siemens in Germany, the United States Coast Guard, North Tyneside College in Great Britain, ChevronTexaco and Wachovia Corporation, the 5th largest bank in America all collected honours.

Many of the winning intranets represent huge organisations with enormous document management systems and mission critical applications such as sales force monitoring, and project control.  Crucially however, some of the winning designs are for smaller companies, suggesting that great intranet usability can be found in a wide variety of places. A large budget is of course the envy of all, but the best intranets come from a focus on simplicity, iterative design, and willingness to let the design be driven by needs of users.

So what are the characteristics of the winning intranets?

A ruthless dedication to increased productivity.  The intranet must enable a workforce to carry out tasks more quickly and easily than they are currently doing it.  The intranet is after all an information system and user tool.

A singular focus on the needs of their users.  Projects teams who put the specification for the intranet together are disinterested in the background colour and font size.  They are focussed clearly on making life easier for the work force who will use this for their daily tasks.

A realisation that publishing to the internet is different to publishing to print.  The web is not a print media.  The rules have been changed.  Readers demand information more quickly, they are less patient, they are easily distracted.  It is important that copy is written differently and that old print materials are appropriately changed and reapplied to the system.  Too many intranets are dumping grounds for old documents.

Appropriate investment for company size.  The killer application for all intranets is the staff directory.  It the single most important hook that will compel staff to use it.  Small successful companies with good intranets have focussed on the low hanging fruit – the big wins.  Staff directories, business & social news, document & digital libraries and meeting room / hardware booking engines are the most popular applications with clear efficiencies.

A project team not scared to carry out research.  Successful intranet teams have listened to staff.  They haven’t assumed their needs, nor focussed on feature rich technology.  Rather they have listened to what staff want, and simply gone about delivering on their needs.

Publishing schedule.  A commitment from all staff to keep the intranet up to date, to ensure that it is useful for colleagues and vital for management.  A cultural understanding through all of the users on the system that their actions and inputs affect all of their contemporaries.

Measurement.  Related to last month’s article, a clear commitment to measure, review and revise intranet activity in line with staff feedback and with usage reports.

The world’s most successful intranet projects never stop.  They are constantly watching, measuring, monitoring, improving.  We would do well to copy their processes for our own organisations.