The intranet community

“Intranet managers are forming large communities using external social media, getting support from peers around the world and gaining visibility for their roles and work,” says Jane McConnell in her annual Global Intranet Trends (2010) report. In fact, this growing community, spurred by social media, is one of the most prominent findings outlined in the preface of her report.

“2010 has seen fast growth in intranet-related groups in LinkedIn where multiple discussions take place 24 hours a day. Twitter has become a fast-moving source of information about what’s happening in the intranet space. The hashtag #intranet has many tweets every day with lots of conversations, links and ideas being shared.”

Jane is right: there’s been an explosion in intranet consciousness. You can thank social media for the explosion. When I started writing about intranets some 12 years ago, virtually no one was writing about them, and the response to most references to intranet was, “Don’t you mean Internet?” Today, Twitter is the epicentre of intranet buzz, that mostly originates in the blogosphere, but has trickled across too many groups, webzines and newsletter to count.

The picture of the corporate intranet is not quite as rosy: intranets are paltry when compared to the corporate website, and in fact, nauseatingly underfunded compared to the .com site. This despite the fact that intranets are far normally far more complex, and the audience is typically more demanding.

“However, in some organizations, the intranet may be losing momentum as collaborative and social media features are being implemented and end up competing with the intranet,” says McConnell. “There is an urgent need in many organizations to define new, global strategies for this expanding online workplace.”

I think our mutual intranet colleague, James Robertson of Step Two Designs, put it best a few years ago when describing the state of the corporate intranet (speaking at an intranet conference in London) calling the average intranet “piss poor.”  Well, things have improved a bit, but there hasn’t been a dramatic improvement.

While improving, the intranet is far from invaluable. Only 7% of senior managers with stage 1 and stage 2 intranets (three possible stages, with stage 3 being the most advanced) consider their intranet “business critical.”

440 organizations from around the world participated in this year’s Global Intranet Trends survey.  Among the many other findings from the World’s most comprehensive intranet study:

INTRANET 2.0

• Social media is now present inside 70% of the organizations (this is low when compared to the Intranet 2.0 Global survey that found 87% had social media on their intranet)
• Wikis and blogs are found in 55% of the organizations (equivalent to the Intranet 2.0 Global survey findings)
• Social networking is present in 22% of the organizations (almost equivalent to the Intranet 2.0 Global study)

VALUE

• 90% of the organizations say it is technically possible to access the intranet from home
• From 60 – 65% of those with social media say “yes, absolutely” or “yes, quite a lot” when asked if they have observed benefits
• About 50% of organizations measure the “impact” (value) of their intranet; only 25% of stage 1 intranets, 60% of stage 3 intranets regularly measure
• Less than 10% of organizations measure cost savings / cost avoidance

STRATEGY & GOVERNANCE

• Only 39% of organizations have a documented intranet strategy; 32% have a strategy approved by senior management
• 41% of intranets have a single owner (communications owns it 66% of the time); 32% have co-owners; 8% have no ownership model at all
• 50% of organizations have an “informal” decision-making process regarding strategy, standards, etc.
• 59% of intranet steering committees (still a minority dominated by single owner intranets) have senior management representation

It’s free to download an executive snapshot of the findings report from the Intranet Global Trends website.

Download Intranet 2.0 Global Survey Summary Report

INTRANET BLOGS OF NOTE:

Intranet Connections Blog

Column Two

Intranet Focus Ltd – Blog

NetJMC/Intranet Strategies

Blog Central – BT’s intranet blog

Intranet Experience – An Online Dialog About Organizational Intranets

IntranetLounge

The Content Economy

HSM Blog (Brazil)