James Robertson is one of the global experts on intranet strategy and design.
He is the author of Essential intranets: inspiring sites that deliver value, What every intranet team should know and Designing intranets: creating sites that work, the three best-selling intranet books in the world. He has also written over two hundred articles and a variety of best-practice resources, including the Intranet Roadmap.
James is the founder and managing director of Step Two, a vendor-neutral consultancy located in Australia. In this role, he has helped high-profile organisations to develop intranet strategies, both within Australia and internationally.
James has keynoted conferences around the globe, including in the UK, USA, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Singapore, Malaysia, New Zealand and Australia. As a certified trainer, he regularly runs one and two-day practical workshops on intranet strategy and design, both within Australia and internationally.
James is also a leading specialist on the topic of web content management. He is a founding member of the CM Professionals association, and has helped many organisations to select a suitable CMS.
See James in action
What others have said
James is innovative in his approach and an industry leader. The methodology used in our project was comprehensive and flexible. James provided support from the definition of requirements through to the selection of a service provider. He provided great value, and his commitment to our project resulted in an excellent outcome.
- Greg Robinson, IT Strategy and Transformation, Macquarie Graduate School of Management
The University of Sydney struggled for six months to capture our requirements for a new CMS. When we asked James Robertson to facilitate a two-day workshop, we hoped that he would help us develop a requirements document that would enable us to confidently make the right final decision. James worked with us to streamline our requirements, engage with the relevant stakeholders, and prioritise which selection criteria would actively help us pick the best CMS for the University. In short he helped us to make the hard decisions to choose the best product for our needs.
Similarly, James helped us to procure vendor demonstrations which showed us how each system can create the type of content we regularly produce. He helped us to write scenarios for the demonstrations that were reflective of our requirements, rather than allowing vendors to demonstrate the aspects of their product that they wanted to show us.
These two pieces of advice and assistance really made the difference and helped us to select the right CMS for the University’s needs. We are delighted with both the process and the CMS that we purchased. We would never have been able to acquire this CMS without James’ expert guidance.
- Jane Clements, Head of Web and Digital Development, The University of Sydney
“Step Two, and founder James Robertson, supported us to deliver our first-ever company intranet platform. We worked with James for over a year to deliver an exceptional MVP intranet tool and craft an internal communications strategy to support the intranet and inform our practices moving forward.
James was a wealth of knowledge. The team learnt so much from him, and James enabled us to turn what was initially a cross-functional group of employees with little formal internal communications background into a fully-fledged internal communications function. The research he does to understand your company is something I’ve seen very little with external vendors. James cares about internal communications and knows the value it can provide if successful. Hence, he seeks to understand your business to deliver a customised strategy that will work for your business and your people.
Myself, and our entire team, would highly recommend James & Step Two to support you if you’re ever thinking about launching an intranet and/or building your internal communications strategy. Working directly with the vendor will never give you the level of support and expertise you need to deliver a platform that will continue to impact your business for years.”
- Saskia Starck, Program Manager, Consensys
Pleasure to have you here speaking at the Digital Workplace Experience conference in Chicago. Thanks for all your excellent contributions – much appreciated and your sessions were all highly rated by attendees.
- Paul Miller, Digital Workplace Group
James has been instrumental in helping us identify what it is we want in a new intranet. He has led several workshops to develop our intranet strategy; fully supported us through stakeholder research and scoping; and closely advised us on the vendor selection process.
Most importantly, James provided invaluable guidance and kept us on course when momentum was slowing. As a result, we’re now 3 months out from launch. We’re on track to deliver an intranet that will support the whole organisation to work, communicate and collaborate better into the future.