Beyond the Intranet: Strategy (Part 1 of 4)

When planning for my upcoming webinar series for Communitelligence, Beyond the Intranet, John Gerstner asked one key question. “Which four elements of your intranet practice are most important for taking an intranet to the next level?” My response?

1. Strategy
2. User research
3. Governance
4. Content

That’s why we focused on these topics for the series. What might you learn in those webinars? Here is some perspective regarding the first one, scheduled for April 4.

Intranet strategy

What is really important to your business? Currently, we hear responses like “innovation,” “growth,” “regulatory compliance,” “collaboration,” or “cost control.” In 2014 and 2015, innovation was all over business plans and goals. Last year? Collaboration. Collaboration is of course a means to an end, not to mention a rewind from decades ago, but important nonetheless.

Whatever your business is trying to accomplish, you must tie your intranet strategy to that business focus to take it beyond. If you do, you might find your intranet becomes something more valuable to the business. It could become the heart of a broader digital experience for employees.

It doesn’t matter how we refer to this view. What matters is that we focus on the user experience, using it to help them do their jobs more effectively, efficiently and productively.

How you go about creating this strategy is nearly as important as what it winds up describing. How you do it is what drives trust and buy in. In the webinar, I’ll address who to include and why, what type of words to use to engender the support you need, and how to look at what the organization already has as a jumping off point.

For Example

Here’s a contrast between strategies from two organizations Eloquor is familiar with:

• Org A: The intranet is a space for messages corporate and leadership believe employees must have
• Org B: The intranet is a space for dialogue and collaboration on business goals & initiatives

• Org A: Contribution/content is tightly controlled by one centralized conduit
• Org B: Anyone can contribute comments and posts to the common spaces

• Org A: The intranet is a place to READ about work
• Org B: The intranet is a place to DO work

Which of these organizations tie their strategy to the business goals?

Get value for your time

Finally, webinar participants learn one of Eloquor’s tools that they can take back to their organizations and use to develop a formal strategy for what lies beyond the intranet. Register for this session today! Or, register for all four sessions and save.

If you seek a live-and-in-person experience, join me at ALI’s SharePoint for Internal Communications in NYC, where I’ll be teaching with my client, Satvinder Kaur from XLCatlin.

Next time, I’ll look at the second session in Beyond the Intranet, which focuses on user research.