All too often, centralised intranet teams find themselves battling with decentralised authors to enforce consistency and quality standards.

Intranets must be more than just a dumping ground for ‘second-hand documents’ if they are to be successful. Instead, a radically different policy needs to be put in place.

Staff in geographically isolated locations are most reliant on information sources such as intranets, and yet in practical terms they are the hardest to reach.

Any intranets structured around the organisational chart are difficult to use. Before attempting a restructure, consider why this structure has been used.

One of the first challenges when establishing an intranet is to determine who should have overall ownership of the site, and where the intranet team should be located.

The challenge is to deliver sufficient intranet content and capabilities, within the time and resource constraints. This briefing outlines a simple approach for balancing these factors.

A critical success factor for an effective and sustainable intranet is the establishment of an intranet ‘community of practice’.

By improving the way the intranet supports key tasks, immediate business benefits can be delivered in a manageable and cost-effective manner.

Many intranets are dedicated to allowing staff to complete administrative tasks easily, instead of assisting staff to do their core business.

The intranet can serve as a platform for knowledge management initiatives, via approaches such as collaborative environments, staff directories, wikis and weblogs.