At one time, in the late 90s, IBM had 10,000+ intranet sites. No, not pages, 10-THOUSAND intranet sites (representing millions of pages). I call that gross intranet sprawl.

What’s a megalithic corporation to do with 10 grand rebel sites? Shut ‘em down.

Of course, they weren’t so crass to start hacking and slashing every site. Though by establishing a centralized platform, a set of enforceable policies, and a measure of political campaigning and time, IBM eventually rationalized more than 6,000 intranet sites. The campaign saved IBM $9-billion (BILLION!).

Most intranet owners cooperated willingly. And why wouldn’t they? If the corporation provides a central platform, an easy-to-use publishing tool, indexing from the central search engine and technical hosting, why wouldn’t renegade site owners jump at the opportunity to close their intranet site? They would; they did. Some of course were reluctant and a less subtle form of persuasion was needed in the end.

“Driving the consolidation of sites was difficult,” said IBM’s Liam Cleaver, a key manager of IBM’s intranet portal W3, in our recent webminar, Intranet World Tour with IBM. “We owned little and controlled less. “But we (the portal team) do own the URL w3.ibm.com and groups want to have that root in their URL. To be part of that they have to adhere to standards and we have the authority to shoot down sites. We don’t like to play cop but prefer carrot and stick approach that sells the value.”

Close the rebel site, migrate the content, relinquish the hassle, pocket the money.

Well, easier said then done. Believe me, by jove, it isn’t easy. It takes an open pit mine full of gumption, political fortitude and a double reinforced iron gut. If you’ve got brass kahunas to try it, the rewards can be high.

Here are the ingredients needed to attempt a site rationalization program:

• A forceful and tactful executive champion that is, with few exceptions, a C-level chief.

• A united and strong central steering committee or council that widely represents core business services and business units.

• A strong business case with anticipated and measured return on investment (dollars and cents sell business cases).

• A robust central intranet portal and supporting technology.

• An engaged and participatory IT department (no more excuses about understaffing and bigger priorities).

• A set of enforceable intranet standards and polices (development policy, editorial policy, etc.) that spell out the rules, roles and responsibilities of all.

• A central content management system and publishing tool that stores and indexes all content with standardized page and document templates.
• A decentralized content publishing model where content authors and owners write, publish and manage their own content via the central CMS while adhering to the aforementioned polices and standardized templates.

Start small and seek out friends for some easy wins. Rationalize a few sites. Talk about the program benefits and success for the content owners and the publishers. Sell, sell, sell. Once the carrot looses its shine and ceases being effective, then pull out the big stick.

Whatever you call it, rationalization, cooperation or adoption, the path to success will be fraught with politics. Intranets are political footballs and politics will almost always be an intranet manager’s top challenge, in most organizations. This is a natural outcome of the many divergent groups with different minds and ways of looking at the world forced to work together in a cooperative environment and a common platform. Communications sees the world far differently than IT. Marketing approaches business far differently than HR. So friction is natural. Hence the need for a strong champion, a cohesive steering committee, and an armful of polices (legislation) to support the process.

“I've had the opportunity to work closely with both developers and end-users during these system adoptions and have always noticed a subtle but very real threat to the outcome,” writes intranet journalist Paul Chin in his latest column, Lil' Orphan Intranet: Adopting an Ownerless System. “It isn't a technical threat, it's a social threat. IT may feel some animosity, justified or not, toward renegade developers...  Users, however, should never have to bear the brunt of this frustration.”

There’s the rub. The intranet must serve the audience: the users, your employees. Measured ROI and cash saved is important. Without the support and use by employees, however, that ROI will never be realized. The buck stops with the users who are tired of the frustrating experience that the intranet has become. A rationalization program will save money, but it will also save the sanity of frustrated users who are tired of complaining, “I can never find anything!”

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Protecting your goods

Top 5 killer intranet mistakes

Ruling by committee

Killer intranet mistakes #4 and #5

Intranet Design Wars

Intranet kingdom remains an unknown quantity

There are some really solid intranets out there by leading companies who are doing a great job. Sodexho USA is definitely a leader worth looking at. An in-depth look at the Sodexho intranet is precisely what I will extend to attendees to the next stop on the Intranet World Tour Webinar brought to you by Communitelligence.com.

Here’s a sneak peak at the SodexhoNET portal we’ll be examining and detailing on January 11:

SodexhoNet was recently redesigned from the initial case study which I originally documented in Best practices case study: Sodexho USA.

Learn how Sodexho undertook their successful re-design and how they manage and measure for success. Join the in-depth tour of a winning intranet then join myself and Sodexho USA for this jam-packed Webinar tour...

Intranet World Tour: SodexhoNet USA

January 11, 2006

3 - 4:15 p.m. (US Eastern)2 - 3:15 p.m. (US Central)1 - 2:15 p.m. (US Mountain)12 - 1:15 p.m. (US Pacific)

For more information or to reserve your space visit Communitelligence.com.

RELATED ITEMS:

Best practices case study: Sodexho USA

How do you know your intranet or portal is good? Or god awful? Yes, your intuition is probably a good clue; better yet is formal feedback from stakeholders and users.

Formally evaluating your intranet against a set of best practice criteria is strongly recommended. A formal evaluation in fact is necessary because there is so much that is required in developing and managing a successful intranet that you cannot possibly remember all that is required from day-to-day. In fact, Prescient Digital Media has developed an evaluation methodology that evaluates and scores more than 300 assets and heuristics in six broad categories.

Measuring the strengths and weaknesses of your intranet is a must – and it should be an honest and candid measurement. Hiring an outside, non-biased consultant is recommended. You wouldn’t want the contestants of American Idol to be there own judges would you? Without a non-biased view the evaluation may not be accurate and you may be doing yourself a disservice.

However, not everyone has budget to hire a consultant nor should they every time you need help. Step Two, the Australian-based consultancy headed by James Robertson, has developed a resource that any manager can use to take a solid, snapshot measurement of the current intranet or portal. The Intranet review toolkitis a guide that managers can use to measure dozens of site strengths and weaknesses. It contains a set of heuristics (guidelines or criteria) for conducting an intranet review focused on functionality and design.

“The Toolkit has been published as a Word document, designed to be filled in by the intranet reviewer,” says James, managing director of Step Two. “Space is provided for comments against each of the heuristics, and a total score is calculated for each of the sections.”

Very handy indeed! And if you’re down-under and need a strong strategic consultant to help you through stormy seas, James is the guy you want to hire. Step Two has worked with dozens of companies and government organizations in New Zealand and Australia.