The great are great for a reason. And while It’s dangerous to merely copy others, much may be learned from examining the trails they’ve blazed.
Having worked on well more than 100 intranets, and seen and examined many hundreds more, there are three key ingredients that make great intranets great:
- Superb, detailed governance
- Active executive sponsorship
- Great content (content management)
All of the other ingredients are nothing but nice-to-haves:
- funding helps, but the above ingredients don’t cost anything;
- design provides esthetics but far too much is accorded to this over-rated discipline;
- the search engine is an enabling technology, but is useless without the above ingredients;
- usability becomes increasingly important the more content you have, but is hard to violate if the above ingredients are in place.
People matter most
The best intranets on the planet enjoy great executive sponsorship – in fact the top ones, are often championed by the CEO, who not only talks-the-talk, but walks-the-walk (e.g. contributes blogs, podcasts, etc.). People (the key component of governance), in short, are the most important ingredient (from top to bottom): executive sponsorship is critical; an effective intranet management team is mandatory; and highly motivated publishers and end users deliver the end-value for the intranet.
Have a look at the video replay of the Best Intranets in the World webinar, and have a look at how these leading organizations rise above the pale:
http://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/view-the-worlds-best-intranets-webinar
To see the slides of the presentation, mosey on over to Prescient’s Slideshare channel:
http://www.slideshare.net/Prescient/the-worlds-best-intranets
To attend the monthly webinar, sign-up for the Intranet Insight newsletter:
http://www.prescientdigital.com/articles/subscriptions