Avenue A | Razorfish has released an intranet best practices report, "Corporate Intranets Best Practices Report: A User-Driven Web 2.0 Perspective," from its Enterprise Solutions practice. As I told Shiv Singh, the lead author, when he gave me an advance copy last week, the report is a “very thorough and informative read. Well researched and supported by sound counsel. The paper provides an excellent framework for understanding the evolution of intranets and the trends that will shape them."

                                                                                        

I like his approach to the evolution of intranets and the interest in social media (e.g. blogs, wikis, etc.) as it relates to the intranet. The Corporate Intranets Best Practices Report analyzes intranets at different stages of maturity across the following dimensions:

 

  • Sponsorship: Funding and executive sponsorship that sustains
  • the intranet
  • Governance: Organizational structures, policies and procedures
  • User Needs: Specific needs of users accessing the intranet
  • Experience Design: Considerations driving the user experience
  • Technology: Deployments of package or custom-built solutions
  • Training: Typical training programs conducted for employees
  • Adoption: Strategies used by intranet teams to fuel adoption and
  • repeat usage
  • ROI Metrics: Criteria established to measure ROI and usage

Shiv is a great intranet mind – one of the best in the business. Like any two experts from vastly different companies (and countries), we do however agree to disagree on some things. I think the value and importance of content is completely understated generally and this is not touched by the report. Ultimately that’s what employees are after – some bit of data, information and knowledge which is represented as content.

 

We also agree to disagree on the importance of ROI. Of course, I don’t have to tell many of the regular readers what I think about intranet ROI (see Intranet ROI).

 

All in all though, a solid report with some good intelligence. The report is free and a worthwhile read. You can download it at: http://www.avenuea-razorfish.com/reports/regReport_popup.html