Tis the season for prognosticating the future and issuing the annual prediction list for the coming year!

 

(Intranet job posting below)

 

Does anyone really care? Does anyone running an intranet actually have so little to do and so much time on their hands that they believe some keyboard jockey (myself included) can predict what they should be worrying about in the upcoming year?

 

Yeah, I kinda want to know too!

 

Shiv Singh writes about his top Intranet Trends to Watch for in 2006 in CIO magazine. Singh knows his stuff and is clearly a solid intranet mind, but I honestly don’t agree with him on most accounts. I do however like two or three of his seven prognostications:

 

  1. The Intranet grows up and makes new friends (DISAGREE) 

Singh claims that “As these intranets morph into Swiss army knife-like systems that solve more employee problems, the lines between enterprise applications, department specific tools and employee intranets will blur considerably.” Sadly, most corporate intranets are already far too Swiss army-like. A very small few do it well, but the majority (my guess is about 90%) are a complete mess and it will be painfully obvious to the user that there is not just a fuzzy line separating the intranet home page and a specific application but an ugly colored line with poor navigation and design.

 

  1. Intranet ROI will be pushed to the back burner (DISAGREE)

Once again I have to shed a tear because Intranet ROI has ALWAYS been on the back burner – ROI has never been on the front burner. My ROI study (see ROI Remains Guesswork At Most Companies) of 240 organizations found that only 6% of organizations undertake ongoing, specific measurement of the ROI of their intranet. Occasional measurement is undertaken by only 26% of organizations and 51% either do no measurement, don’t know if they do, or only guess at the ROI. 18% are considering ROI measurements. I’ve worked with dozen of intranet firms and only two or three had done any ROI measurement before I met them. I absolutely guarantee you (I wager $1000 for someone who can prove me wrong) that anything has changed. As pathetic as it sounds, most executives don’t give a rat’s ass about the intranet. They have no clue and don’t care. It’s a cost center. For this reason alone, the need to develop a business case and ROI will become more pervasive and in demand. Though most of the time it will be forgotten, ROI will be measured in more than 6% of organizations in 2006.

 

  1. Expect Intranets to become even more pervasive (DISAGREE)

Many of the statistics that I’ve seen show that more than 90% of large and medium size companies have intranets. Small companies that have launched intranets have skyrocketed in recent years. Intranets are already pervasive and their growth rate is slowing simply because critical mass has already been achieved (note the decline in fortunes of companies such as Intranet.com (recently bought out). Singh’s rationale though is correct  “Expect to see many more dynamic, innovative intranets in the near future, whether they’re servicing the board members of a Fortune 500 company or farmers in a developing country. Also, expect to be challenged to deliver more dynamic and innovative intranet solutions for your employees and business partners.” Definitely; the business wants to deliver more innovation and employees demand it.

 

  1. The user experience matters at last (DISAGREE)

Singh is right: users are demanding a better user experience, “Time and again, employees repeatedly ask that their intranet user experience be as simple, efficient and satisfying as their Google experience.” This however has been happening for years. To satisfy this need most companies are redesigning their intranet every year to two years. So, most already believe the user experience matters, hence the redesigns. However, the execution is weak. It’s bloody awful. The crap I see... Perhaps more than anything Singh believes that it will continue to get better. I hope so.

 

  1. The Ajax revolution hits the intranet (AGREED)

Ajax is hot and IT is catching the fever. “There has been a lot of buzz about Ajax in recent months. Ajax is a loose knit of programming technologies that speeds up the Web experience and brings greater interactivity to websites... Expect to see nifty, task oriented, highly interactive Ajax and flex based applications on your intranet fueling the next wave of user adoption.” I agree. I already have one client (a major credit card company) that has a very cool employee locator map that shows the floors and position of employee desks on each floor. Clicking on the desk pulls up employee contact information and can even direct you to the closest meeting room, and then allow you to book that meeting room – all in seconds!

6.     Blogs come and go but RSS will remain (DISAGREE – AGREE)

Blogs are huge and they are exploding on the intranet – and they’re here to stay (see Blogging the intranet and Study: Intranet blogging on the rise  and McDonald’s beefs-up intranet blogs). Some blogs will disappear, for certain. But for every one that disappears there will probably be 3 or 4 new blogs. I absolutely agree that RSS will not only remain but also explode. In fact, it’s because of RSS that blogs will continue to explode.

7.      Wikis gain prominence and get integrated (AGREE)

Definitely – bang on. “Many smaller, less structured companies have embraced wikis as their intranet technology platform. For these organizations with flatter, less formal hierarchies, the self correcting mechanisms of a wiki create the right balance of empowering the employees to share and preventing things from spinning out of control.” (See Wiki The Intranet and Investment banker uses wiki for employee collaboration)

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JOB POSTING:

IT Analyst at Suncor Energy Inc (https://www.linkedin.com/e/G3u7dinv_6UcuabuGfVpNCuq_IIYgagk369Uvzl/vjb/33658/bjob/)

 

(Send your intranet job ops to me as comments or via our website at www.PrescientDigital.com)