True intranet success is rare and often fleeting. It takes a lot of work, with an emphasis on people, and process. To reach the rarefied air of intranet success, your site must be delivering on all three tiers of the Nexus model. Success is often pre-determined by the understanding and support offered by your organization’s executives (senior management) and is delivered by motivated employee users who keep returning. The in-between – planning, resources, use and value – is the foundation or blueprint for success and the ‘devil’ in the details. The details in this case are highlighted and revi ..read more

Too many think the digital workplace is the next generation of intranet. However, we’ve all had a digital workplace for years. The digital workplace is not a website or the intranet. The digital workplace is not a destination or an app or platform. The digital workplace is the sum of all your digital tools. We have all worked in and off the digital workplace for decades. If designing the digital workplace was as easy as throwing together new graphics, you could buy a template or hire a graphic designer. The digital workplace is infinitely more complex, disparate, and decentralized. The more d ..read more

Is the digital workplace something new, or is it just packaging? The digital workplace is not an intranet on steroids, or a replacement of an intranet; or the next great enterprise portal, nor is it SharePoint. The digital workplace describes a workplace of digitally interconnected tools used to get work done. It’s that simple. And yet, that complex. Digital Workplace Definition Many will claim to be the first to use or define the “digital workplace.” Consultants love to clamor to be the “first” to coin a phrase or a combination of words that have been in existence for dozens of ye ..read more

It is easy to publish to a SharePoint intranet, and fast; in fact, too easy and fast, without proper intranet governance. Virtually anyone within an organization can create an intranet site, and publish pages, with little to no training, in seconds. This type of power and publishing comes at a cost, and intranet governance helps limit the damage of intranet sprawl. Intranet governance details the ownership model (who owns and manages it), and the rules for creating pages and content (roles and responsibilities, and policies); SharePoint intranet governance is really no different than the ..read more

Your company intranet is a powerful hub that affects how your company operates on a day-to-day basis. It helps employees keep track of company news, connect and communicate with fellow employees, find important company documents, keep track of projects, and so on. Unfortunately, for a lot of companies, their intranets are old, clunky platforms that employees only use as a last resort. However, it shouldn’t be this way. With strategic intranet design, you can turn your company intranet into an engaging platform that your employees use on a daily basis. Question is, how do you come up with a goo ..read more

To create a digital workplace strategy that improves the employee experience and supports overarching business goals, the first order of business (and by no means the easiest) is to identify the key stakeholders and assemble the right team for the initiative. If the thought of having to actually do that evokes images of herding cats, it’s for good reason. It’s tough to put the right team together when it’s not always clear who owns the employee experience in the first place. Is it HR, since they deal with the human capital aspect of business? IT, since technology will be involved? And what ab ..read more

Corporate communications, according to the latest crowd-sourced definition on Wikipedia, ”is a set of activities involved in managing and orchestrating all internal and external communications aimed at creating favorable point of view among stakeholders on which the company depends.” Wrong. If this is your definition of corporate communications, you are failing as a communicator. The notion that communications is “orchestrated” and aimed at “creating a favorable point of view” is antiquated and undermines the concept of synchronous communications. That is to say, two-way communications (dialog ..read more

Save time, save money – these are principal objectives of content management (and intranet news). In short, content management describes the process of easily creating, managing and publishing online content and intranet news with neither programming nor technical skills. Easy and effective content management is achieved through the deployment of a content management system (CMS) that is either custom-built or purchased as an off-the-shelf solution. With hundreds of content management vendors and systems – ranging in price from free to millions of dollars once implemented – choosing the right ..read more

All-the-rage 10 years ago, collaboration on the social intranet is now part of the weekly work routine for most knowledge workers. The social intranet is at the hub of this collaboration and the underpinning technology continues to innovate and evolve. About 90% of intranets have some form of social component, be that instant messaging, discussion forums, or employee commenting on news articles. A survey conducted by PGi reveals that 88% of industry professionals use online collaboration tools at least once per week. Online conversations and meetings are replacing traditional meetings, and emp ..read more

The digital workplace is revolutionizing at high-speed; leading the charge is the intranet. The intranet is the gateway to employee tools, and all internal applications. From custom-built solutions to portals, and complete digital workplace solutions, intranet software solutions are changing the way we work, fed by trends in artificial intelligence (AI), social computing, and mobile access. Dominated by Microsoft SharePoint and Office 365, many other intranet software providers are following the leader. In the early ’90s, the first intranets were custom-built, home-grown initiatives; followed ..read more