Five Bullets

This is in response to a LinkedIn thread posted by Andrew Wright, Director at CIBA Solutions. Andrew’s question: “What makes a great intranet (in 5 bullet points or less)?” Here are my one-word thoughts:

Search

Must be quick, complete — i.e. your search must index all important repositories of information, regardless of where they are housed — and Google-like. Whether we like it or not, the Google search experience sets the bar. Also keep in mind: very few of your users care about advanced/boolean search.

Secure

Must be secure, respect privacy rules/laws, and — this is key — be perceived as such by users and business owners.

Slick

Has to look professional and be consistently on-brand, otherwise users won’t take it seriously.

Responsive

Intranet team must be equipped and staffed to accommodate requests from new user communities quickly and efficiently. That said, day-to-day work (especially content updates) should never be centralized.

Governance

Have buy-in from upper management and from grass roots, as well as clearly articulated rules and processes governing business ownership. The most successful intranets don’t let any content go up without a named business owner who is accountable for it.

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