Expected Developments in the Intranet World: What Does the Future Hold?
- Omer Ben Yehuda
- Nov 1, 2004
- 4 min read
Translated from Shiv Signes' article in Portal Magazine
The intranet has advanced significantly since 1995, when it first caught our attention. Today, we're accustomed to dealing with complex challenges within budget constraints, timeline deadlines, and various resources.
Endless publications advise making the intranet more useful and valuable to organizations. The market is flooded with software offering solutions for distribution, publishing, and finding information on the internet.
But what's in store for intranets in the future? As managers, what should we be tracking? How can we create more value for your organization through it? Is your organization's intranet ready for new technology and ideas? Or is it just about finding and retrieving information?
Here are several expected innovations that hint at "what's coming," translated from an article by Shiv Signes, a leading portal manager and implementer at Avenue A/Razorfish offices in Boston, as it appeared this month in Portal magazine.
The document draws on the author's experience working with several organizations.
The Intranet Returns to Department-Level Servers
In recent years, companies have concentrated their technology efforts on connecting communication channels. Most intranet sites were disconnected from individual units and centralized in cross-organizational programs led by communication departments, human resources, and IT departments.
But now, more organizations are discovering that the real business value comes from intranet sites that reflect the needs and processes of individual departments and team levels. Distribution, planning, and management will return to the departments themselves. Only the technological aspect will remain centrally managed.
Regulatory and Legal Departments Become Involved
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 changed how legal departments view organizational intranets.
It can no longer be considered unofficial, unstructured information that doesn't need to be checked. The legal department will want to review the intranet and establish organizational rules for information distribution, ownership, and content management. Similarly, the regulatory department will want to implement numerous rules for managing, recording, and removing information. Our time as site managers will be spent on these issues in the next two years.
All Employees Become Information Distributors on the Intranet
Until now, intranet distribution has been done by a few in IT departments, administration, and stakeholders. In some cases, employees were specifically recruited to manage and distribute information on the intranet. All this is about to change!
The evolving needs of information distribution and discovery by employees will require more democratic knowledge distribution processes. Existing knowledge distributors won't keep pace with their units' distribution needs, and distribution processes will need to evolve so that every employee, from the CEO to security guards, can efficiently distribute information directly on the intranet. Employees who don't distribute information efficiently and in the right place will be seen as unsuitable.
The Organizational Phone Directory Loses Altitude...
If we still see the phone directory as the main "killer application" on our intranet, we have a problem!
The phone directory is important and adds value to its users, but there should be better reasons to use the intranet. In the coming year, we'll see organizations creating more "killer applications" with business significance, and more systems and users will be integrated. The intranet will finally become more than a bulletin board, phone book, and fancy folder drive.
The New "Killer Applications": Knowledge Management Tools
The intranet needs killer applications to survive and evolve. Knowledge management tools will be the successors to the phone directory and cafeteria menu. Regardless of the type of organization, employees will consume more knowledge as a central mechanism in competing with rivals. Additionally, managers will view knowledge and employee productivity as the only competitive advantage for survival in trying to minimize the damage done by offshoring. Knowledge management tools will be more important, and the organizational intranet will be the natural place to manage them.
Real-Time Information Becomes a Top Priority
Likely, one of the most important impacts on the intranet that escaped our attention is the ability to report data in real-time. Managers see accurate and real-time information as essential for making smart business decisions. A Harvard business article notes that the need for real-time information can be in the area of customer transactions, progress reports on product development, productivity reports, user reports, and cash flow, all according to the nature of the organization. Real-time data transfer isn't difficult given the right technology; the challenge is deciding which information is most valuable and to whom.
Information Retrieval Remains Unsolved, But There's Hope...
IDC research shows that 40% of organizational intranet users don't find the information they need to do their jobs. It's less than 50% of the time when they find it. The issue hasn't been resolved despite the flooded market with information retrieval tools. But there's good news: employee weblogs show how organizations preserve, communicate, evaluate, and share information. The emphasis is on stopping the search for specific information from time to time and reviewing information in various sources (mainly weblogs) daily. This phenomenon reduces the importance of information retrieval and improves knowledge levels throughout the organization.
Employees Demand a More Pleasant User Experience
Although most intranet sites are generally usable, few of them are also aesthetically pleasing.
Despite managers claiming that aesthetics aren't relevant in business management tools, employees who must use the intranet more frequently will respond to it behaviorally and in other ways.
Just as employees demanded a more pleasant work environment in the past, they will now be interested in it in the intranet environment. Organizations will need to upgrade the user experience to meet their emotional needs.
Summary
There is never a miracle answer to where and how to invest the organizational intranet budget. Each organization is unique and different.
Various factors such as organizational culture, existing applications, and business priorities will drive this decision.
However, it's recommended that we remember and address the innovations mentioned earlier, regardless of the nature of the business and the intranet in each organization. Some are already on their way to us, and we'll have to respond to them soon.
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