5 Tips to Planning an Intranet

5 Tips to Planning for a Successful Intranet

Since we have guided companies through the intranet construction process hundreds of time, we have boiled down 5 steps for planning a successful intranet. It is crucial to plan, since it largely determines of outcome of a company-wide flop and a stellar company site.

• 1. Gather Together Key People - At the initial phases of planning, someone has to have vision as to what this intranet is going to look like. So you have a visionary and an eye for design, but also pick a team that will expedite and carry this project along from start to finish. Build a self-motivated group.

  2. Spread the Word and Grab Content Owners - Beyond the people directing the site, there needs to be a feeling of support from your underlying departments. Also, you need to assign content owners, the people who are going to maintain and police their areas of the intranet. This is the time for a mass email to gather your troops.

  3. Make a Plan of Attack - Nothing is worse than starting a project with confusion. Before building an intranet, it needs to be well-communicated with the intranet developer the purpose of the site. Set reasonable milestones for waves of content to be completed and mockups to be reviewed.

  4. Collect the Necessary Resources - An intranet is an internal website, no doubt about it. Website's need copy, images, layout, and plugins. Decide with your steering committee who is going to pull these assets together and place them in the CMS structure. Usually, we like to see things organized in Dropbox or Google Drive, where there can be a clear folder structure mimicking the sitemap.

  5. Get People Excited and Build-Up Energy for the Intranet - A good morale brings an intranet to life. No one wants a boring intranet with stale content that everyone forgets in a year. The thing needs to grow and therefore excitement is integral. Remember you are basically launching a website - market the thing like crazy at all stages of development. Make it the next Apple product reveal for your company.