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Putting your intranet on the right foot Corporate intranets are currently in vogue, but already there are many proving to be triumphs of design over function. So, what can you do to ensure your intranet becomes a powerful business tool, and not simply a geekish folly? There’s a certain me-too-ishness about intranets. Often they appear because the IT department has the technology to produce them, or because a number of functions within the organisation launch their own sites…and others see the need to follow. Soon many of these sites become dead areas of static out-of-date publishing, where the only thing moving is the tumbleweed across the screen. And where does the greatest fault lie? Generally, it’s right at the beginning in not clearly defining the purpose for the intranet and the need among potential users. Within business organisations, intranets can have many purposes. HR may use intranet-based tools for selection or performance management; there are also many transactional applications governing everything from procurement to paying expenses. But the intranets I’m concerned with are communication-led: tools to build communities within organisations; to enable collaborative working and to share knowledge quickly and effectively among teams likely to operate from multiple locations. If you’re responsible for internal communication for your organisation, such an intranet is likely to be one of the mechanisms in your communication plan, and if you haven’t yet turned that plan into action, there are a number of crucial questions to address in order to give rhyme and reason to your intranet. First, you need to define the purpose of your intranet.Is it going to be a live and interactive site, or will it be a library? Just getting that clear will help you define the resource you need to put behind the site in terms of design, content and on-going management. In parallel to defining the purpose of your site, you need to get a very clear handle on your audience. The five key pieces of information you need are: Why will they want to use your site – what’s its USP? What can they get from the site that they won’t be able to get anywhere else? What information do they really want from the site? How do they wish to participate in the site? What do you want them to do as a result of accessing the site? The Holy Grail will be to get people to access the site repeatedly, and there are some 'must-haves' to ensure this happens. You need to ensure the finished product is: User-friendly Easy to navigate Quick to download through effective but not overpowering use of colour, graphics and applets Useful – with working links to contacts and other useful sites Two-way – make sure the audience has a chance to participate in the site, through message boards, chat rooms or project/function-specific private areas. The other side to this will be ensuring that users have access to the intranet and that they are trained to use it – and encouraged to do so by line management. In this on-line age, it’s easy to assume that all users will be perfectly confident to use the intranet as a business tool – but never presume. Assess the situation and be prepared to cost in time and money for user training. Your structure for site content will only be effective if the content lives up to it – and it’s here that input from your future audience is most crucial. Too many intranets are designed from the inside looking out, rather than assessing the business communication needs of your audience and developing the site appropriately. When building the Forte Hotels site a couple of years ago, we canvassed opinion from across our hotels and head office on what the ‘killer content’ that would draw everybody to the site again and again. Not entirely surprisingly, two applications stood out: an in-depth directory of all the Group’s properties around the world, and an up-to-date key contact listing of all the Group’s key managers. Certainly this second application had never been gathered in one place – nor kept up to date – before. More recently, when brought in to look at why a client’s intranet wasn’t working – despite being lauded as THE prime communication mechanism by the management team, we found the content was excellent, but that over 80 per cent of staff had no regular access to the intranet, and even those who did were discouraged from using it in regular working hours……a recipe for complete failure. There are some simple rules to boost the quality and ‘within tell-by-date-ness’ of your content. These include: Ensuring the site is regularly updated with ‘new news/information’ that’s directly relevant to the needs of your audience Assessing the most visited parts of the site and ensure these are kept fresh Archiving less requested information – but making it easy to access Ensuring content is engaging and published in a style that’s sufficiently familiar to the organisation to draw users in Publishing content that simply isn’t available elsewhere Keep your audience involved. This all sounds easy, but it rapidly becomes clear that an intranet requires regular feeding and watering if it’s to thrive. That means having a dedicated content manager or managers responsible for each part of the site, plus clearly defined roles and responsibilities to ensure the right information is captured at the right time and turned into attractive and useful product that will engage users. How often should you tend to the site? It all depends on your organisation. But if it’s a communication-led intranet, you need to be refreshing the site in some respect at least weekly. Summary Assess the need among potential users for an Intranet Is it the right means of communication for your organisation? Get to know your audience, their needs and how they choose to access and use information Plan content to meet user needs Ensure you have those ‘killer applications’ Make usage as simple as possible Encourage two-way and cross- organisational usage Refresh, refresh, refresh Keep it business-focused In recent years, Leapfrog Corporate Communicationshas worked on a number of Intranet launch projects, including sites for Barclays, Forte, Orange and Diageo.