Almost 1 in 3 users find their company intranet is not useful in relation to daily work, according to the Annual Intranet Research Report by the Irish Computer Society (ICS).

 

Hardly surprising as most executives don’t give a dam about the intranet and are too stupid to see the potential value of the intranet to the greater organization. These are the same dolts that pay cheap lip service to “investing in employees” and the need to become “an employer of choice” in face of the great talent crunch. The intranet is a cost center, and as long as they continue to view the intranet as a “cost” and not an “investment”, the intranet will continue to suffer from chronic under-funding and deliver little value to the average employee.

 

This is not the case in some organizations, but the intranet is sub-par in the vast majority of organizations. The numbers in this report, with a sample of over 2000 companies, prove exactly how sub-par the intranet is:

  • Half of all users find the Search function on their company intranet ineffective.
  • 80% believe navigation and search need improvement.
  • 2 out of 3 company intranets fail to provide an accessible or text only version.
  • 1 in 3 users find it difficult to access the right information on their company intranet.
  • Accessing staff and personal contact details like phone directories represents the most common recurring activity.
  • 70% describe their intranet as 'A communication and information resource'.
  • Almost half say they don't actually use the company intranet to support their daily work.
  • Over 50% say they have remote access to intranet from home or mobile device.

Before you argue and try to convince me that this is only a research report and findings from Ireland only (that is correct), I’ll tell you the findings would almost be identical in North America and most other European countries too. Some in fact would be worse.

 

Tom Skinner, Managing Director of pTools Software, is kinder in his assessment but you can read between the lines: “Although the trend is towards more sophisticated development, getting the basics right is essential for intranet end-users and that the research showed a healthy level of intranet development but also a recognition of the need for improvement.”

 

Here’s another telling quote from the report which I could not say better myself: “The ICS 2007 research confirms that getting the simple things right delivers the most powerful results for end-users and getting them wrong causes the most frustration and dissatisfaction.”

 

View the entire ICS 2007 Intranet Research Report (undertaken by Amarach Consulting and sponsored by pTools Software for CSI).

 

Read last year’s results and my analysis: Slack employees fail to take advantage of the intranet.

 

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