Intranet redesigns can be seen as the cure-all for an intranet’s ills, and many intranets will certainly benefit from a significant overhaul. But if the redesign has come about due to a lack of focus, general neglect and poor content management, then a redesign alone will not be sufficient to revitalise the intranet offering.

Designing in the right direction

Intranets can lose their direction for any number of reasons. Some principal ones include:

• the organisational landscape changes significantly due to growth, mergers or change in overall direction
• the intranet becomes a casualty of its own success with expectations exceeding original scope
• there are multiple owners without a single focus to align disparate stakeholder needs

Getting back on track has been discussed in other strategy and design papers including Three elements of every intranet strategy and Intranet (re)design wrap-up, but to summarise:

[July article by Stephen Byrne, read the full article]