Web 2.0 is a real, if difficult to define, phenomenon. And predictions such as ““60% of organizations will have some form of social media in place by 2008” suggest that Intranet 2.0 is arriving inside the firewall. But, in our experience, most organizations have yet to make Intranet 1.0 deliver real value.
The Intranet Research Report by the Irish Computer Society underscores this nicely. Key findings of a survey of 2000+ companies:
- Half of all intranet users find intranet search ineffective
- 80% believe navigation and search need improvement
- Almost half say they don’t use the intranet to support their daily work.
Eek! None of this is about the Intranet 2.0 promise of spontaneous creation content, or emergent knowledge management. It’s about a failure to do deliver on the basics.
Want to succeed at Intranet 1.0? Follow these three steps:
Step One: Document the Tasks Your Intranet Needs to Support
Define and gain a detailed understanding of employees’ most common/most important tasks. You probably have much of this information available to you or can get it quickly. Key sources include:
- Your server logs (which shows what people use when they can find it)
- Your search logs (which shows what people are looking for even when they can’t find it).
- Quick and dirty surveys (probably supported by your CMS but if not, very simple to code)
Break down each task into the steps required for success and diagram these.
Step Two: Design your Intranet to Support Key Tasks
Create an information architecture designed to make these tasks fast and simple. This might mean organizing content for one click access or implementing a single sign on system but the goal is the same – drive employee efficiency. Organize content to support activity, not in a perfect logical structure or according to your org chart.
Step Three: Fix Your Intranet Search Engine.
Do this now. If your intranet is using old search technology or the search that came “free” with the content management solution, rip it out. Grab the Google Search Appliance or the free IBM/Yahoo Ominifind software. Explore Microsoft’s free Microsoft Search Server 2008 Express released last week.One note: You can turn intranet search into a gigantic, time-consuming project. And to deliver the full value of search, you are going to need to look at the hard stuff, like cross application integration. But you can plug in any of these search software solutions today and immediately deliver superior results. Spend even two hours tuning the search solution and you can make most of your users happy.
The Bottom Line
Intranet 1.0 and 2.0 do different things and deliver different value to the organization. I’ll be blogging shortly on the key differences, but the one line summary is that Intranet 1.0 is about providing efficient access to approved resources while Intranet 2.0 is about capturing corporate knowledge in a meaningful way. One last thought – these aren’t competing concepts – you will need both.