There are many intranets that have been built in-house by the organization’s own people. IBM, Cisco, Microsoft, HP are just some that have been featured on IntranetBlog.com. Most of these however are technology companies that are highly web savvy and have had a constantly evolving intranet for more than 15 years.

There are many advantages to building or redesigning an intranet with internal staff resources:

·         Costs less cash out of pocket

·         Internal stakeholders are forced to learn the ropes

·         Internal jobs are reinforced

The disadvantages of building or redesigning an intranet with only internal staff are obvious:

·         Lack of skill and experience

·         Lack of people to execute

·         Internal politics on what and how to do it

·         Lack of available time to execute

Many organizations however don’t have great resources or experienced staff that know what it takes to build a great intranet (see Good to great intranet). Hiring an external consultant makes sense for many that face some of the above hurdles. However, an Internet consultant is not an intranet consultant. A web design firm has deep creative skills, but rarely has any business acumen and intranet expertise. A big-five consulting firm has very smart people but is very expensive.

So what should you look for in an intranet consultant? Here’s 10 questions to ask potential consultants or intranet consulting firms:

1-     How many intranets have you worked on?

2-     How long have you been in business?

3-     How well do you understand our organization / our business?

4-     Provide a written understanding of our needs / requirements.

5-     Provide client intranet case studies.

6-     Provide intranet client references.

7-     Provide bios of the proposed consultants.

8-     Provide detailed pricing

9-     Provide documentation of your project methodologies.

10-Provide evidence of vendor neutrality / technology neutrality or evidence of experience with the organization’s chosen technology.

Some things to look for and to be cautious about:

ADDITONAL READING:

Hiring an intranet consultant

About the author: Toby Ward is an intranet consultant (Internet consultant too) and the founder of Prescient Digital Media. He has worked with and improved many, many company intranets including Amgen, HSBC, Mastercard, Manulife, PepsiCo, Royal Bank, etc. Toby and his company are consultants for hire and can build your intranet or improve an existing intranet You may contact this intranet consultant directly via the Prescient Digital Media website or email him at: toby{at}prescientdigital{dot}com.

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An online chat forum for staff at Lynn's Queen Elizabeth Hospital has been closed down because employees were using it like "kids in a classroom”, reports the Lynn News (UK).

QEH closes staff online chat forum:

"Bosses at the hospital have decided to close the forum on its intranet site as the content, which included inappropriate comments about members of staff, could raise human resources issues and showed staff were not working.

The forum was set up so staff could keep in touch and place items for sale. It was also used as an internal swap shop for things like printers and scanners, but while those areas of the forum remain open, the chat facility has been removed.

A hospital spokesman said: “The content was becoming suspect and a bit near the mark. Some slightly offensive comments were made about other members of staff.

“People were using it a bit like kids in a classroom and it was getting a bit out of hand.”

There had been warnings in the past that the facility would be removed, and it has been axed once before. Because of the problems, staff were not allowed to post comments anonymously.

The spokesman added: “We are quite a large site, and staff at one part of the building may never see other staff, so it is a nice way to keep in touch during the day.

“I do not think it was used by a great number of people, it seemed to be about half a dozen staff.

“However, a couple of things were started on there, and from a management point of view it was thought it was getting out of control.”

The staff involved had been spoken to, and the chat forum would remain closed until further notice. No disciplinary action was taken."

This is the scenario that most executives and companies fear when they consider discussion forums, blogs and wikis: People will revert to child-like states and begin misbehaving and running amok. However, in the QEH example above, are employees to blame or is the hospital?

Both are to blame. Ultimately the employees involved have to take responsibility for their actions. However, the hospital didn’t take the necessary steps and put in place the critical framework and policies to prevent future problems. Allowing anyone to post any comments anonymously, for example, is a recipe for disaster – particularly if there are any issues with employee morale or dissent.

Intranet discussion forums will die – from either lack of use or misue – if not implemented properly. To implement successful discussion forums requires a number of key ingredients:

·         A willingness to participate by employees

·         Support and contributions from senior management

·         A policy or code of conduct that everyone must accept prior to posting

·         No anonymous comments or postings are allowed or possible

·         Relevant conversation and topics to the business

Without a proper policy employees can and will write about whatever’s on their mind. However, if there’s a policy that must be agreed to, defined subject matters for discussion, and ongoing participation (e.g. occasional postings) from senior management, most discussion forums will not only be successful, but will deliver real value for the organization.

Verizon’s intranet, Digital Workplace (DW), features 40 self-regulating forums (authentication and names required). Self-regulated meaning employees are empowered with the responsibility of their own posts; Verizon doesn’t have the staff nor time to monitor all posts. Despite executive fears of profanity or brazen language, there the forums have never been a problem even in such a large organization. But their are rules and no one is allowed to post anonymously.

“We’ve never had a single problem in the 4.5 years it’s been active,” says Verizon’s Donna Itzoe, Digital Workplace Communications Manager, during the Intranet Insider World Tour featuring the Verizon Digital Workplace (presented by Communitelligence.com). “We’ve never had to remove a single post.”

If left to run wild, some employees can always be trusted to do the right thing. If left to run wild, particularly in a stressed environment with employer-employee dissent, then some will run wild and undermine the good intentions of the rest. Plan before your proceed before you jump into intranet discussion forums.

RELATED READING:

Intranet discussion forums deliver mixed results

Champion of free speech kills intranet forum

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(TORONTO, ON) When last I critically mused about the value of trendy buzz words and catch phrases and the next hype, Intranet 2.0, my musing turned out to be the most read article I’ve written on IntranetBlog.com (see Intranet 2.0).

Not to be outdone, Enterprise 2.0 is a buzz pharse that’s been around longer than Intranet 2.0. There are blogs and even a conference dedicated to Enterprise 2.0 (though I’m not cool enough to be included in either). And many more people cooler than I have mused and even postulized openly about the value and coolness of Enterprise 2.0. At the risk of sounding bitter and like a kid who ‘missed-the-boat’ on the latest craze (think the comeback rage of Hush Puppies that came and went and still left me baffled and feeling extraordinarily un-cool in my Basses), enterprise 2.0 is much the same as intranet 2.0 (note how I effortlessly and carelessly alternate between capitalized and non-capitalized versions of said buzz phrase) but potentially bigger (depending on which consultant or maven’s definition).

Blogging, wikiing, podcasting, social bookmarking – all within the confines of the enterprise, and usually on the intranet, possesses the power to make everyone’s life a little better, a little more empowered and informed, and a little cooler. Throw out your Sketchers and burn your tickets to the next MTV ‘unplugged’ show, there’s a new fashion sweeping the corporate world. Strip away my outwardly facetious tone and awkward outsider approach and you do have a trend, a means, a collaborative ecosystem and set of tools that could transform a poor or average enterprise into something that is good or possibly exceptional.

...

Read my complete article Enterprise 2.0 vs. Intranet 2.0 on www.PrescientDigital.com

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Above and beyond CRM, the intranet itself is an invaluable tool for increasing corporate sales. Many successful sales organizations rely on the intranet to improve their sales. 

Intranet benefits to corporate sales include:

• Better and faster responses to customer RFPs
• Better customer service leading to more sales
• Reduced time to market for promotions
• Increased collaboration amongst sales people
• Enhanced collaboration between reps and customers
• Migration of sales brochures to the web

Ketchum (one of the world’s largest PR firms) deployed the Plumtree portal to help employees work faster and smarter – and to increase sales for the company. Using an independent research firm, META Group, it was estimated that the collaboration and productivity gains from using the portal would help increase sales and grow more accounts. META estimates that the Ketchum portal – myKGN – could lead to revenue growth between 0.5% (conservative estimate) and 5% (liberal estimate). Using 2000 revenues of $168 million as a baseline and a compound annual growth rate of 10%, Ketchum can increase its sales by $18,350,640 (using moderate estimates) over three years.

Read my entire article Sales intranets deliver money on Communitelligence.com.