When asked what the intranet means to the future of their organization, global intranet managers say above all else that the intranet is or can potentially “increase an organization’s competitive advantage in the market place.” 

This was just one of the highlights from the 2007 Global Intranet Survey of 177 global intranet managers (medium to large organizations with 5,000 to 100,000 employees).

In other words, by empowering employees with better knowledge and tools, your organization can beat the competition. This finding is echoed in a previous study finding by Tata Group that found knowledge management (KM) is the most important competitive undertaking an organization can undertake (67% of companies cite knowledge management/business intelligence solutions as important to achieving their strategic goals over the next three years – see Survey says KM is the most critical strategic technology ).

I probably don’t need to tell anyone that KM is not a single tool, program or service but a collection of solutions, processes and people that work in tandem, of which the intranet is the most important factor and unifying thread.

Jane McConnell is now preparing the 2008 Global Intranet Survey and if you haven’t signed up to participate you need to. The last two reports are mandatory reading for any intranet manager or consultant and you should participate so you can get a copy of the 2008 results as soon as possible. To participate, send an email to Jane specifying:

• organization name
• # of employees
• website URL
• your name
• your role or title

There’s also a mini pre-survey poll so you can provide feedback on the types of questions to be asked.

Here are some more findings from last year’s study:

• Only one in five organizations have senior executives that think the intranet is mission-critical.
• Only 20% of study participants ‘absolutely’ agree that the intranet’s primary purpose is to facilitate collaboration.
• Only 22% absolutely agree that the intranet’s primary purpose is to facilitate productivity
• 60% absolutely agree that the intranet’s primary purpose is to distribute information.
• The intranet already is “the way of working” or will be in 1 or 2 years for over half the organizations in the survey population.
• 50% say that employees would be disturbed in their work if the intranet “went down” for 1 to 2 hours; 75% agree if it “went down” for 24 hours.
• 3 out of 5 organizations are “not really satisfied” or “not satisfied at all” with their intranet search.
• Well over half respondents have “less than one person” who works on supporting and optimizing search.
• A mall minority have taxonomies.
• Intranet 2.0 tools and technologies are being tested by a majority of organizations and visibly integrated into the intranet by many.
• 1 out of 3 of these organizations have established, or are looking to establish an official 2.0 strategy. 

If you haven’t already done so, go and purchase The 2007 Global Intranet Trends Report – its 95 pages and too long to summarize all of Jane’s good work on this blog.

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