Step Two Designs unveils 2008 Intranet Innovations Winners
Sydney, Australia – October 9, 2008
Enterprise 2.0 and “social” tools continue to permeate business, while intranets begin to emerge as hotbeds of corporate activity
What are the real reasons for devoting time and money to corporate intranets? The winners of the recently-announced 2008 Intranet Innovation Awards give a clear answer to this question, showing how intranets are going beyond their traditional roles to harness innovative new ideas.
Supported by Step Two Designs (www.steptwo.com.au), and announced at the annual KM World conference in San Jose, California, 22-24 September, the Awards showcase some highly innovative approaches to wikis and collaboration spaces on intranets, together with advanced, functional applications that deliver business value.
Getting competitive with wikis
US-based Scottrade created a competitor wiki dubbed “CIA”, which tracks the company’s key rivals, employed standard wiki software that transformed a month-long process to publish competitor intelligence published on the intranet into just a few clicks of the mouse.
Transfield Services, a leading Australian global services firm, created a new intranet built on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server. Fundamental to the project was the roll-out of collaborative spaces across the intranet, called “Team Sites in a Box”, which included functionality for online communication and teamwork.
Fostering genuine collaboration
In his summary of the awards, Intranet Innovations judge James Robertson said these winning examples demonstrated true collaboration.
“This is not just collaboration for collaboration’s sake. These examples have been targeted, with a laser-like focus, at the most important areas of the organisation. They’re examples of strategic solutions that deliver clear benefits, while fostering ties between staff.”
Innovating to meet business needs
Collaborative examples did not rule entirely, however, with the overall Platinum Award going to Canadian Accounting services firm, Fuller Landau, for it’s Partner Dashboard application. Partner Dashboard, together with the Workflow, Sign-in board and Conflict Checker applications produce genuine business benefits and have combined to “change the way the organisation works”.
Such sophisticated applications suggest a maturation of intranets as business tools.
“Historically intranets have focused on content and communication,” says James Robertson. “But these are just two of four fundamental purposes of intranets, the others being collaboration and activity. We’ve argued for some time that intranets need to evolve into ‘business tools’, directly supporting organisational and staff goals. The winners in this year’s awards demonstrate that this is now happening. Activity – the intranet as ‘a place for doing things’ as opposed to just ‘a place for ‘reading things’ – is now coming to the forefront.”
Winners
Award Winners came from four continents and included representatives from non-profit organisations, professional services firms, the airline industry and pharmaceuticals firms.
Accounting services organisation, Fuller Landau, scooped the Platinum Award for the outstanding “Partner Dashboard” application, while Gold Award winners included British Airways (Crew Community Forums), Scottrade (Competitor Wiki), Syngenta (Location Finder), Urbis (Project Finder), Transfield (SharePoint Teamsites), Swiss Post (Speaking Intranet News) and more.
Press release, full details and executive summary available at http://www.steptwo.com.au/products/iia2008/
You can view this press release online at: http://www.steptwo.com.au/products/iia2008/press/ and download the executive summary featuring more information on the awards, a rundown of all commended entries and award winners, and full case studies of the Scottrade Competitor Wiki dubbed, “CIA” and Janssen-Cilag’s in-house, Twitter-style micro-blogging tool, “Jitter”.
About the Intranet Innovations Awards
The Intranet Innovation Awards are global awards that celebrate new ideas and innovative approaches to the design and delivery of intranets. The goal is to find these ideas (whether large or small), and to share them with the wider community.
The inaugural Intranet Innovation Awards in 2007 attracted entries from across the globe, uncovering and sharing many great ideas. Winners came from Italy, USA, UK, Denmark, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand.
About Step Two Designs

Step Two Designs was established in early 1996, and has grown to become Australia’s leading vendor-neutral consultancy specialising in intranets and content management.
We recognise that a holistic approach is necessary to solve real-world organisational challenges, and for that reason we have focused our efforts on a number of tightly-related fields: intranets, content management, knowledge management, and usability and information architecture.
We take our independent status very seriously, and while we have a strong knowledge of the marketplace, we have no affiliation or connection with any products or vendors. For more information, visit www.steptwo.com.au.