This was an interesting question that a client recently asked me. Obviously, it will vary from company to company, depending on your needs.

With that in mind, here are some of my opinions on the best way to manage an intranet document repository.

1) Less is more – people often go crazy and think they should load every document into the intranet. Ultimately the more they put in the harder it will be for people to find the right document. Try to only load documents that really need to be there. Documented rules on what documents should be stored on the intranet will help your content contributors.

2) Take time to tag correctly – the better you can name and tag your documents the easier it will be for users to find what they’re looking for. You should also be consistent about naming and tagging and maintain this consistency over time. It’s a good idea to have some basic documented rules on how documents should be named and uploaded.

3) Logical folder structure – take time to design your folder hierarchy so it’s logical and clear. Also, ensure that the security permissions are such that people can’t go off and create their own sub directories for new files that they want to upload.

4) Review documents regularly – it’s well worth having regular housekeeping sessions (perhaps every 6 months) to validate that the documents you’re holding are the right ones.

5) Continually improve – capture feedback from staff and the site statistics on which documents staff use/need most and how easy they are to find. Then evolve your document repository to improve the experience for the users.

Your staff may well find their inboxes getting cluttered with both internal actions and external communications. There is plenty of valuable content there, but due to the sheer volume of email to sift through, it can be difficult to be productive.

As a result of these frustrations, more companies such as ATOS are turning to email alternatives to share information within their organisations.

Intranets are an excellent alternative to email, providing a central place for staff to source knowledge, documentation and news within an organisation. They offer the facility for employees to view and search for information that is specific to them, reducing time wasted reading irrelevant content.

Intranets aren’t just about communicating corporate news. In fact, they offer many task driven options to your workforce. Rather than a frustrating inbox search, staff can access all relevant documentation through Document Management. Plus, if you want to collaborate and share business knowledge with colleagues, then Forums and Employee Feeds are excellent options all within a secure, sharable environment.

Using your corporate intranet as an alternative to internal emails can offer countless benefits, although it’s not something that will be adopted overnight. Changes will need to be made regarding your organisation’s culture and it will be essential to get senior management buy in.

Only then can you truly open staff’s eyes to the fact that internal email isn’t necessarily the best (or only) corporate tool available to them.

But as we stand today it’s clear that the demand from the market is pushing the designers of intranets in the direction of making the intranet simple, seamless and strategic.

Simple

Adoption continues to be the challenge for every intranet. Packing your intranet full of widgets and gadgets in the hope that something sticks is, at best, hopeful. Also, expecting your staff to have the ability and desire to use sophisticated content tagging techniques in order to simulate intranet intelligence is a high risk approach.

Simplicity is the key to user adoption. Understand what your users want, and why. Then give it to them, but make it simple to use.

Seamless

We live in an on-demand world and expect information to be at our finger tips immediately. The same is true for your intranet. If there is information or tools vital to helping staff do their job they should be able to access these quickly and simply by whatever mechanism is most convenient.

Technology and bandwidth are less of barrier these days and the future intranet needs to embrace and be accessible from any location using any device.

Strategic

It’s time for intranets to stand up and be counted as a business tool and not just a fluffy internal website.  The purpose and objectives of the intranet need to be clear, understood and fulfilled. Implementing an intranet because you ‘think it will help’ is not good enough. You need to know how it will help and be able to quantify the benefit. This will force the intranet onto the strategic agenda of your organisation thus securing support and funding for future developments.

If you’d like to discover more about the potential benefits your intranet can offer you, book yourself onto our next intranet showcase.

Opportunities to create killer applications can be found in any area of the business.

For example, booking onto training courses may currently be done manually using paper forms. You may decide to create a killer application on your intranet to streamline the booking process. Staff will then have no other option but to use the intranet to book a course.

Once you have decided what you want your killer application to be, you can begin the design process. This is when you decide the specifics of how your application will function.

The next step is to gather together your exact requirements by discussing the following with your intranet team:

• What is the business objective
• What is the best way to accomplish this?
• How will the application work in practice?

Of course, before you start the design process you will need to establish whether your current intranet can technically support the development of this application.

Once your requirements have been collated they can be put into a specifications document.

You will now be in a position to tackle the technical specifics of the design. You may ask your intranet supplier to create the application, or if your staff have the skills you may decide to develop the application in-house.

Designing a killer application can help you assess the best way to achieve your business objectives by streamlining essential processes. Using your intranet to provide business solutions you will be able to increase productivity, efficiency and encourage user adoption.

Placing these essential functions on your intranet will also encourage user adoption of your intranet.

Killer opportunities fulfil business needs such as:

• Speeding up existing processes
• Improving efficiency
• Cutting costs
• Empowering decision makers
• Streamlining processes
• Enhancing communication
• Making staff self sufficient

Every business has areas that will benefit from killer intranet opportunities. You may have information on multiple spreadsheets across your organisation which offers an opportunity to make processes more efficient.

Killer applications are the ones that have the greatest impact on a business. They allow you to make frequent tasks quicker and more efficient for staff.

General killer applications help improve staff communication by sharing information.

Some examples of general killer applications are:-

• Phone directory
• Document Management
• Company News
• Shared calendar/contacts
• Meeting room/resource booking

Killer applications can also be business specific. These are created when an opportunity is identified within the business which will help streamline an existing process. These business specific applications are also referred to as killer opportunities.