AI, cloud, personalization, but chiefly people.
When I think back to the pop explosion of social media, around 2005 and 2006, a number of so-called experts proclaimed the death of the email — and the intranet. Today, email continues to be the killer app, and the intranet is very much alive and, in some cases, thriving.
Sadly though, the intranet is not thriving in all workplaces, and it certainly is not the darling of the digital workplace. However, it excels, ironically enough, at the heart of the digital workplace, acting as the gateway to all your digital tools. The best digital workplaces, have a great intranet – and vice versa.
As such, the future of the intranet is somewhat tempered. Don’t expect immersive virtual reality, robots and flying vehicles. AI has not taken over intranets or supplanted the digital workplace (not yet, and not with the current tools, anytime soon). No, the future of the intranet is a lot less sexy, but it is slowly, if not doggedly, advancing forward.
People
An intranet is not just a technology project, it’s a digital and living ecosystem, powered by people, process and technology. In fact, it’s more about people and process; the technology just acts as a support and delivers the product. Technology is the easy part: you can buy and deploy it in minutes. Intranets still require careful management, structure and feeding (particularly content).
People still write the content, program the apps, and populate the data. Think about content management: people create and edit the content, and use technology to post it, but even the tags and expiry date are controlled by people and process. So naturally, your people deserve the most attention and energy – as they can make or break not just your intranet, but your organization.
Anyone creating and managing intranet content must be trained in writing, editing, formatting and using a content management system. Rules for content must be established and adhered to – and baked into the system. People create and populate these rules that ensure consistency across the intranet. For example, every page needs an expiry date and should be tagged with keywords from a central taxonomy or managed term store.
In short, people will continue to be at the heart of any intranet or digital workplace for years to come, regardless of any technological leaps forward.
Cloud Intranets
Building a custom employee intranet can be a significant drain on both time and resources. You need a skilled team to design, develop, install and manage an intranet platform. And the capital investment is significant, commonly running into the hundreds-of-thousands of dollars in a large organization, and at times, millions of dollars.
Intranets shifted towards hosted, cloud-based enterprise solutions a decade or so ago. As a result, more than 100 different cloud-based intranets are now available. These solutions range from instantly available (plug and play) to customized with specialized development or third-party applications. Some intranet solutions are generic in nature (e.g. Microsoft SharePoint), some cater to a specific industry (e.g. law firms), others to a certain language or geographic location.
Opting for a cloud-based or SaaS (service as a software) intranet over building one from scratch can significantly reduce the time required for adoption and implementation. The core product is already developed, tested and refined by the provider. After thorough research and testing, you can quickly deploy the chosen intranet. These providers also offer customization options and handle software updates, leaving you to focus on your internal communications strategy. And increasingly, these solutions are more robust than their client-side or on-premises solutions and certainly patched and updated more frequently and easily.
AI
Artificial intelligence promises to change the world, the universe and the intranet. Has it changed your world? Your life? Your work, yet? Almost certainly not.
AI is changing certain elements and enhancing others but also detracting from key components, like content creation. The intranet as you know it, just like email and the pre-AI explosion internet, will remain largely the same.
Read the complete article on Reworked, “The Future of Intranets 2025”
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Toby Ward, a former journalist and a regular intranet and digital workplace columnist and speaker, is the President and Founder of intranet consulting firm Prescient Digital Media and has been writing and speaking about intranets for 25 years.