Running an intranet can be a huge and thankless task. All too often, intranet teams feel that they have made little progress towards their long-term ambitions for their sites.

While the success levels of intranets vary greatly, there are very few sites that do not contain at least a couple of successes. These successes may be small, perhaps benefiting only one group of staff, or they may be substantial pieces of functionality that support the whole organisation.

In either case, it is important to fully recognise these successes, and to communicate them throughout the organisation. Intranet teams should also take care not to forget that much has been delivered, even if there is much yet to be done.

This briefing explores the idea of intranet successes, how to identify them, and how to gain the greatest value from them.

Identifying intranet successes

Intranet successes may sometimes be very obvious, the ‘killer apps’ that drive site usage and reputation. These may be related to core business functions, or to the social environment within organisations.

In many situations, however, successes may not be recognised as such. Even small improvements to the functionality or content of a site may greatly benefit a single business area.

For example, in one call centre, a simple calculator tool for determining the tax payable on a transaction turned out to be the most successful aspect of the whole call centre intranet. This functionality took only a few days to develop.

[CM Briefing 2007-07, read the full article]