Who doesn’t want “easy buttons” for everything? A successful intranet is covered in these buttons, from menus to feeds to landing pages, making it simple and helpful for people to use. In addition, it’s easily capable of identifying what’s being used most and how people are benefitting most from the system. A good intranet also should make it easy to find and share company information and improve productivity, Rich Blank writes in an article on CMSWire.
Of course, these days, a stand-alone intranet just won’t cut it. An intranet today needs to be a hub for the organization that builds relationships and connects individuals. Above all, it needs to be centered on what you do as an organization. An intranet should be a reflection of your organizational culture. There’s no perfect solution out there, so be selective in what you choose to focus on, providing features that add value to your employees.
Findability will be a key feature of any valuable intranet. An intranet should not “be a ‘dumb directory’ where people constantly dig and inefficiently hunt for information,” Blank writes, and that’s sound advice. Good information architecture along with consistent and well-planned use of metadata and personalized search results can help cut down on how much users have to sift through information that’s irrelevant to them to find the content they’re really interested in.
Similarly, content feeds that are customized based on users’ professional interests, work location, unit and position can help users locate interesting or important information they wouldn’t have gone searching for. Serendipitous content discovery doesn’t have to be limited to consumer websites and applications.
The bottom line is that if users can’t access the corporate intranet when, where and how they want to, they will likely stop using it. Be sure to pick features for specific needs instead of just trying to keep up with all the latest bells and whistles.
Source: CMSWire, November 2013
