I’ve been touring the globe over the last few months, talking about the possibilities now available for intranets running on SharePoint. Like other modern technologies provided to intranet teams, SharePoint has radically broadened the options for delivering intranets that directly help the business.

This presentation walks through many intranet examples, providing many intranet screenshots, most from the Intranet Innovation Awards.

A few notes from the presentation:

• SharePoint provides many possibilities for intranets, but the challenge remains to deliver great intranets.
• To bring shape to planning and design discussions, structure thinking around five purposes for intranets: content, communication, collaboration, culture and activity.
• For content, start by delivering good content, with effective navigation (Designing intranets provides a step-by-step methodology).
• Then use SharePoint to manage content in powerful ways (as discussed in my earlier presentation The power of content management in SharePoint).
• Intranets play a key role in delivering internal communication, and this should be done in a rich and powerful way. (This will require development or third-party tools, as SharePoint’s out-of-the-box capabilities are very weak in this area.)
• Collaboration is a hot topic for SharePoint, but what does it mean in practice? Different approaches (and technologies) are required to meet different business and user needs.
• Intranets can strengthen an organisation’s culture, starting by delivering a beautiful sites that generates a positive emotional response (see What message does your intranet send to your staff?).
• SharePoint is perhaps the strongest in delivering activity: the intranet as a place for doing things, not just for reading things. This includes automating and streamining core business processes, transforming the whole organisation.

Want to know more? Obtain a copy of our Best practices for SharePoint intranet report, and my brand-new book Essential intranets: inspiring sites that deliver business value.