(TORONTO, ON) It seems that nearly every company I talk to is in some form of “intranet redesign” -which could be a complete overhaul, a design tweak or something in the middle that might include a new technology platform such as a portal or content management system.
One facet of the redesign (by the way I hate that term “redesign” because of course it emphasizes look-and-feel which completely understates the main value and intent of a complex business system – but since its part of our modern vernacular…) that is often overlooked until a problem occurs, is the migration process from old to new. Migration involves a lot… from content to applications to platform. A lot can go wrong with migration.
Paul Chin offers some sage advice in Move It on Over: Intranet Migration Basics on Intranet Journal (no, this is not one of their now all-too-common product announcement or advertorial articles).
Paul’s article summarizes some of the key technical considerations of migration including:
- Component migration
- Multiple environments
- Working with users
- Post-production safety measures
- Rollback measures
- Post-production support
One key thing that is rarely or thoroughly accounted for in the initial plan is the time required for migrating content. If your intranet has thousands or tens-of-thousands of pages or more then full content migration likely will take weeks if not months. It’s not uncommon for some content migration to be phased over a couple of years. Deploying a platform such as a CMS that has ‘batch’ importing capabilities will certainly help, but all content should be reviewed, updated, edited or deleted prior to a migration – and this requires a lot of human effort.
The process of updating or deleting content begins with a content audit – which should be done long before the implementation of a new technology platform. One client at a 750 person company used two summer students armed with a browser and an MS-Excel spreadsheet to track and document all 10,000 pages on their intranet. It took them one month and a half to review and document all 10,000 pages (about 3,000 pages per auditor per month). The good news was they identified all the content and found that only 4,000 of the 10,000 pages were of any value. In one full swoop they wiped out 6,000 pages which saved them a lot of server space and maintenance costs not to mention helped preserve business continuity and accuracy of information.
For more information on content audits, read Auditing your 'king'.
Here’s the key point: a redesign is a face-lift of the look-and-feel, a perfect project for a design agency or PR firm. What most of those design agencies or PR firms have little experience or knowledge of is measures like rollback plans and content audits. Intranet migration to a new site and/or platform (usually one in the same) requires a lot of thought and planning, and an intense commitment to detail and process.
Read the full article, Move It on Over: Intranet Migration Basics.