This Viewpoint looks at Intranets evolved. It will look at defining and delivering a vision for your intranet.

1. Issue 05
Intranets Evolved
Defining and
delivering a vision
for your intranet
viewpoint
Corporate digital communications

2. Issue 05
Intranets Evolved
viewpoint
Corporate intranets -
delivering a step change
In this issue, we explore the challenges and opportunities now faced by many
large organisations as they embark on the next development phase of their
intranet and how we can better leverage this important internal communications
channel to drive real organisational change.
Most organisations now have an intranet of some sort. But often the lofty
aspirations at their inception have failed to materialise. A lot of information has been
poured in – but has it been translated into knowledge coming out? And have these
corporate intranets delivered the tangible business benefits that their significant
budgets intended?
Outcomes have been mixed. As organisations ask where next for the corporate
intranet, we can start to shape the answers to some important questions.
HOW CAN HOW CAN WE GET OUR
OUR INT
DELIVER RANET PEOPLE TO USE THE
REAL
BUSINES INTRANET MORE?
S IMPAC
T?
HOW CAN WE PLAN
A SINGLE GROUP
ENCOURAGE OUR INTRANET?
HOW CAN WE
COLLABORATE?
EM PLOYEES TO
LANCE
E BA ESS
CAN W BUSIN
HOW D
P AN
IS THERE A ROLE FOR GROU ING?
D
SOCIAL NETWORKING BRAN
WITHIN OUR INTRANET?
HOW DO WE KEEP
CONTENT UP-TO-DATE?

3. Some emerging themes
There are many components to consider when defining and delivering a vision for your
intranet. Whilst every organisation has its own set of challenges, there are usually a series
of common issues which should be considered as part of any corporate intranet initiative.
Good governance
It’s all too easy for there to be a lack of coordination, cooperation and collaboration across
the different businesses. But frustration and loss of confidence are inevitable if content is
out-of-date. The goal really has to be that every page and each application has an owner.
You first need to establish exactly where your intranet is today. Which means a detailed
and structured content audit to map out your entire intranet. Don’t forget to identify, engage
and empower content owners. Then put in place a sound Governance structure, including
strong sponsorship by senior management. From solid foundations, you can establish a content
strategy that clarifies roles and responsibilities for all content creation and ownership.
Content strategy
Content migration is often the single largest activity in an intranet redevelopment, and usually the
least interesting! Don’t underestimate the scale of the task: updating, migrating or creating an
intranet from scratch, or moving to a new platform requires a lot of time, effort and support.
A next-generation content strategy should be focused around content streamlining to identify
gaps, duplication and what can be removed. Plan what to do with the content and set clear
policies, guidelines and procedures for content creation, publishing and maintenance. Explore
new forms of content delivery, such as multimedia, mobile or social media and define standards
for metadata, taxonomy, and search engine optimisation.
Navigation & information
architecture
Too often, the information architecture (IA) is a legacy that simply reflects the company’s
organisational structure. But an effective IA is one that is intuitive to users and reflects how they
think about the subject matter.
A smart information architecture is one that helps, not frustrates the user, with navigation that
enables them get where they want to quickly and easily. Help them to perform tasks, rather than
just read information. And remember - people can only appreciate what they can actually find!
Personalisation & segmentation
Technology has made it easier to deliver the right content to the right people. Personalisation
and segmentation makes for a more integrated user experience, identifying the individual and
pushing key content to them. It can also provide a much more flexible platform on which
to surface a range of content on key pages of the intranet.
Of course there is the balance to be struck to satisfy all requirements, allowing personalisation
by individual users and segmentation by business units, while still meeting the needs of the
wider organisation. While personalisation might seem like a holy grail, there are technical issues
to overcome, particularly if your business intranets are built across different platforms and there
are inconsistencies in employee data.

4. Your intranet as a collaboration tool
Collaboration might sound a bit wooden. But working better together is a very smart thing to do
and we all need to become better at sharing skills, knowledge and information. However, people
need clear and compelling reasons as to why they should collaborate and the necessary tools
and resources to be able to do so effectively - it doesn’t just happen by chance.
The key is to keep it simple. The intranet is a powerful tool and perfectly placed
to enable collaboration. It’s a place where employees share ideas and create relationships
by creating, publishing and sharing information in real time. Put your people at the heart
of your business intranet and let a social intranet break down organisational and geographic
communication barriers.
Social media
Social media tools have transformed the way in which people communicate with one another.
So why not use the same channels at work that people use in their personal lives?
But first, it’s vital to foster a culture in which people aren’t afraid to speak, and that encourages
the active uptake of social media. Be careful not to become constrained by poor data - enrich
and develop your employee data first. And get Search right - one of the challenges of social
media is the massive explosion in content that will result.
Creative, branding and
user experience
A good designer is one who resists the temptation to ‘over-design’ instead striking
the right balance between attractive and useful. The role of intranet design is principally
to encourage people to use the content and applications, and to get them to the
information they require quickly.
There is also the issue of brand. How important is the employee brand experience while using
the intranet and reaching the right compromise between Group and individual business brands?
Making (and naming) the intranet as a brand in itself is a nice side-step but accommodating
legacy and valuable brands is the design challenge faced by today’s Group intranets.
Ongoing stakeholder engagement
Listening to your audience is a fundamental marketing principle - few would argue with that.
Stakeholder engagement has become an increasingly sophisticated process. Not least with
an intranet because of the range of stakeholders: end users who in turn vary in the roles and
tasks they perform; business owners, wishing to communicate; managers, needing to manage;
intranet, content and communications managers responsible for running it; and the key business
sponsors of a corporate intranet.
It’s a subtle exercise, engaging stakeholders in an increasingly complicated subject matter,
gaining genuine insights, and translating these into the all-important road map for delivery.
And it’s important that stakeholder engagement is not limited to a one-off exercise at
the start of the project. As in the marketing cycle, research and measurement are tasks
that are repeated again and again.

5. Ten words to success...
02 Trusted
Your intranet is a trusted
source of information and
business tools.
01 Innovative
Your intranet innovates
to meet ever-changing
organisational needs.
02
01
04 05
03 04 Useful
Your intranet supports
day-to-day staff and 05 Pervasive
organisational needs. Your intranet supports
every staff role and every
geographical location.
03 Productive
Your intranet delivers tangible
and visible benefits to the
organisation and staff.

6. 07 Essential
Your organisation is
not able to function
effectively without
the intranet.
08
07
08 Collaborative
Your intranet supports staff
working together effectively
and sharing knowledge.
09
09 Coherent
A clear and consistent
direction, purpose and
design underpins the
intranet as a whole.
10
06 10 Strategic
The intranet is a strategic
platform and environment
for the organisation.
06 Usable
Your intranet is easy to use
and quick to learn for all
major staff groups.

7. Case studies
View have designed and built a number of intranet solutions for our clients, across a range of technical platforms.
Centrica is in the process of upgrading its intranet to the Microsoft SharePoint 2010 platform. View are
engaged at a number of levels, facilitating a range of stakeholder engagement activity in order to better understand
the corporate and individual business unit requirements, in order to deliver a framework on which to build a more
coherent, consistent approach, whilst providing the flexibility the businesses require to deliver the right content
and functionality to their employees.
theSource, Anglo American’s new intranet has become the main application for collaboration and innovation around
the Group. Following an extensive stakeholder engagement exercise, View collaborated with Anglo American’s IT team
to deliver a solution that enables and supports individuals to find information, expertise and knowledge; connects
individuals and groups across business units, geographies and time zones, and provides the principal
repository for documented and recorded experience, best practice and processes.
View partnered with Tullow Oil to build and implement a new intranet that better serves the needs of this rapidly growing
organisation; connects staff globally; and provides an information and communications hub for the organisation.
The new intranet delivers dynamic targeted content to employees, based on their locations or roles within the
business and is now a key internal communications channel.
View are working with United Biscuits on the design and build of an intranet solution for its ‘iProfessional’ community,
comprising approximately 800 employees from various areas of the organisation. This group receive a high volume of
email traffic, interface with a number of systems and applications, frequently require remote access, and require the
ability to quickly and seamlessly access and transact with the application. We’ve delivered an interface design that
is simple, intuitive and provides a coherent, consistent access point for this key audience.
Rentokil Initial partnered with View to develop and launch a single, ‘cloud based’ intranet environment that spans Group
functions, individual divisional businesses and country business units. View delivered a range of creative and technical
assets, working with Rentokil Initial’s internal IT team on build and implementation. The new intranet platform is a key
source of content within the Rentokil Initial Group and will provide a portal into key business processes.

8. Issue 05
Intranets Evolved
viewblog
“Creating an intranet
strategy that senior
managers buy into is key.”
Mark Smith Creative Director
As organisations contemplate the next steps in the evolution of their corporate
intranet, it’s time to pull together some building blocks and lay solid foundations.
We are now able to track and assess user journeys, create user personas,
and look to deliver personalised and customised content to enhance the online
experience. The stakeholder engagement workshops that we have developed
focus specifically on this.
Content audits, strong governance models, collaborative tools, and social
networking media are all useful tools that can be added to the modern intranet
manager’s armoury. Most importantly, these need to be forged together and
articulated into a clear and compelling vision for your corporate intranet.
Many companies are now looking for a single intranet for the whole Group,
integrating different intranets from different businesses. As these intranets
have often been built on different technical platforms, using different content
management systems, and variable content consistency, the task should
not be underestimated.
However, developments in collaboration and content management platforms
such as Microsoft SharePoint 2010 have opened the door to opportunity.
SharePoint 2010 is an ambitious enterprise platform with six core functional areas:
sites; communities; content; search; insights; and composites. Using SharePoint
2010, your people can set up sites to share information with others, manage
documents from start to finish, and publish reports.
When companies develop their intranet using platforms such as SharePoint 2010,
they will start to realise some pretty tangible benefits. Metadata and tagging is
much easier, which leads to a more powerful Search function. Managing metadata
has been more of an operational hazard, or mission impossible; now it can become
a seamless part of content management.
The use of social networking media in business has also taken a quantum leap.
Improved personal profiles are now much more akin to what people are familiar with
on Facebook or Twitter. Meanwhile dynamic activity feeds that aggregate content
you track and publish, and tagging notes and pages are all features designed to
improve the social experience.
While opportunity beckons you need to be realistic in delivering your vision.
Our clients find it useful to start mapping their vision for their intranet onto a project
‘Roadmap’ that stakes out the ground with achievable milestones, checkpoints
and measurement. Making your intranet integral to achieving your business goals
is a journey, not an event, but a journey worth embarking upon. And View is
well-placed to guide you on this journey.
For more View blogs visit our website:
www.viewplc.com

9. A useful glossary
You may be fully aware of the terminology around intranets and Web 2.0. But if you’re not,
here are some useful terms and references, some of which are contained in this document.
Active directory Metadata
Stores information about network-based entities (e.g. Metadata provides information about a content item.
applications, files and people) and provides a consistent For example, a text document’s metadata may contain
way to name, describe, locate, access, manage and information about how long the document is, who the
secure information about these resources. author is, when the document was written, and a short
summary of the document. Web pages often include
Aggregator metadata in the form of meta tags, to allow search
A tool which gathers information from multiple online engines to operate efficiently.
sources, usually via an RSS feed, and then republishes
on your site. For instance, allowing users to view Personalisation
BBC News headlines on their intranet homepage. Web-based personalisation involves delivering customised
content, applications and channels to a user based on
API their stated preferences through web pages, e-mail or
A development interface that facilitates the use of push technology.
3rd party applications, such as Google search or
Google maps. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
The process of improving the quantity and quality of
Blog traffic to a website from search engines. Typically, the
A series of personal articles written in an informal tone, higher a site ranks in a search results the more users
which can also refer to photo, audio or video content, will visit it.
and often contain links or tags to other online sources
of content. Derived from the term ‘web log’. Segmentation
Identification of different groups within a target market
CMS in order to develop different offerings for each group.
Acronym for Content Management System. An application Segmentation can analyse and characterise a visitor’s
used to create, edit, manage, search and publish content activity on a website and their profile. Content can then be
online, to a website or intranet. specifically targeted to the visitor’s needs and interests.
Collaboration Social bookmarking
Online collaboration allows people to work together Systems to enable users to store and share lists or
on projects, documents in real-time over the intranet. Internet resources that they find useful to view or use
It also embraces communications, including email, again in the future. This sharing of tagged content can
video conferencing, instant messaging, and chat. create a grassroots popularity rating of a site by users.
Content audit Social media
Creating an inventory and assessment of all content Social media describes the online tools that people
in preparation for a redesign or CMS. Can extend from use to share content, profiles, opinions, insights,
‘what’s there?’ to an assessment of ‘is it any good?’ experiences, perspectives and media itself, thus
A content audit may be limited or comprehensive, and facilitating conversations and interaction online between
extend beyond a listing of all assets into areas of meta groups of people. These tools include blogs, message
tags, who published the content, date, where the boards, podcasts, micro blogs, bookmarks, networks,
content is in its useful life cycle, and other attributes. communities, and wikis.
Content migration Syndication
The process of moving information stored on a web To make information on your intranet - such as
content management system (CMS) (or any digital asset corporate news, blogs or podcasts - available to other
or document management system) to a new system. sites or registered users, for instance as an RSS feed.
Governance Targeted content
An organisation’s structure of people (each with To provide individual users with content tailored to
well-defined roles, responsibilities, and authorities); their own specific interests or profile (also referred to
technical systems; and the policies, procedures, and as personalisation, customisation or localisation).
relationships in place to maintain and manage an intranet. Good examples are the BBC or iGoogle websites,
or Google-sponsored ad search results.
Information architecture
On an intranet, information architecture describes Taxonomy
how content is organised and presented to users in Refers to the way a site organises its data into
order to facilitate navigation and search. categories and subcategories, as seen in a sitemap.
Usability
At its simplest this means making online environments
as easy to use as possible and matching them more
closely to user requirements.

10. View is a corporate digital communications agency.
We help FTSE and global companies engage with their business stakeholders.
We do communications and content strategy; stakeholder engagement;
corporate websites, intranets and microsites; bespoke application development;
integrated marcomms campaigns; digital design, build and support services.
For more information please contact:
Jason Ross, CEO
jross@viewplc.com
Tel: +44 (0)20 8811 8651
Mike Boogaard, Client Director
mboogaard@viewplc.com
Tel: +44 (0)20 8811 8612
View
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Block A, Long Island House
Warple Way
London
W3 0RG
+44 (0)20 8811 8600
www.viewplc.com
Corporate digital communications