On Corporate Intranet

1 Comment
Well finally had time to write a post on Intranet...

First of all I'd finally - I know I'm way too late... - like to point you to the extensive and insightful "2007 Global Intranet Survey Report" and "Trend Report" by Jane McConnell. There's too much stuff to chew on in there for me to summarize it for you. You can find the author's summary here and order it there.

So, what's up for the future of Intranet? Here are some predictions.
And Jeremiah Owyang has an insightful post on "challenges, evolution and success factors for the Enterprise Intranet". Intranet is "a direct reflection of your corporate culture", he states. And:
If a company’s competitive strength is it’s employees and how they work together, the intranet is a valuable tool. Secondly, with many baby boomers in the United States retiring in the near future a great deal of corporate knowledge will be lost, how will you capture and distribute this tacit knowledge?
This applies to Europe to. Jeremiah continues to describe the evolution of Intranet in companies. This relates well to Jane McConnell's "paths" of Intranet development.

Another interesting tip he has is to check the Corporate Intranet first before you accept a job at a new company. Why? Go and read the post, it's worth your time!

So, what is an Intranet anyway? Richard Dennissen from BT has an interesting definition. (Found this at ColumnTwo, by the way. Thanks!)

More stuff from BT: "6 lessons for building a successful Intranet". I like how they relate 'social media' to their business goals and not adopt it for it's own sake (sheet 5). I also like (sheet 26) the easy "type of page" selector! And again, sheet 29, the adagium is to "start small".

So, what's the plan for 2008? Jane has a good list. Practical and straight forward!

Popular posts

Keep the Intranet Small

Image
This tweet by Jonathan Phillips ( @digitaljonathan ) triggered to finalize this post, that's been burning in my draft box. I've always been intrigued by how unsuccessful many intranets are. And there are all kinds of good reasons for intranet failure. One of the things that is hardly ever mentioned is: Shouldn't the intranet be smaller? Usually intranets are huge. Lots and lots of pages with lots and lots of content. With complex navigation. The intranet  evaluation surveys almost always show employees only use the news page and people finder. But still we build and maintain nice big intranets. Not only stats point to smaller intranets. There are others reasons as well. I came up with a few. If you have more, just leave a comment. Here's my list: -            user requirements: users don't require large intranet -            search/navigation: searching and navigating a small ...
Read more

Enterprise 2.0 Research

Image
There's not too much fundamental research on Enterprise 2.0. Deloitte recently published interesting research done on enterprise 2.0 implementations and their return-on-investment. In the EU research has also done as well. Study is being done for the European Commission and it was carried out by Tech4i2, IDC and Headshift. What was the goal of the study? Goals of the study To provide a clear definition of Enterprise 2.0 is, describe the market and the positioning of EU industry, also in comparison with US and Asia; To analyze the take-up of Enterprise 2.0, the organizational requirements, and the role on the transition to a knowledge based low-carbon economy; To collect evidence on its macro-economic impact, as a market opportunity for the European Software industry and as a productivity tool for European business; To identify and analyse both the direct and contextual challenges, including the need for Next Generation Access and the legal barriers; To analyse an...
Read more

Innovation in Turbulent Times

Image
I love reading articles about innovation. And every now and then you read one that is very interesting. "Innovation in Turbulent Times" by Rigby, Gruver, Allen (in HBR, June 2009) is one of them. This article takes fashion companies as an example for continuous, year-by-year innovation. And how successful fashion companies are usually led by two people: a left-brainer and a right-brainer. "If you don't have highly creative people in positions of real authority, you won't get innovation. Most companies in other industries ignore this lesson." They extend this to show that successful non-fashion companies have the same kind of leadership. And this kind of leadership is usually also characterized by a long-term relationship. I think this concept can also be extended to teams and projects as well. More often than not, people are good at one or the other: thinking up great concepts or ideas, or, making them. In teams and projects we can learn from this as...
Read more