Best Ten Intranets of 2009

I know what you’re thinking.  Another top whatever list.  But the Nielsen Norman Group released its list of Best Ten Intranets of 2009 last week and, as usual, they provide some interesting reading and great insight. I’ve written here before on what we can learn from others’ mistakes and successes, so why not take advantage of some more free advice from the Nielsen Norman Group. They have been evaluating intranets for nine years now, so they have some pretty good advice to give.

Because this list rates intranets, we can’t see what makes them award-winning without purchasing and downloading the full report. At 473 pages with 241 screen shots for just over 200 bucks you may want to do that. However, I think some of the trends the Nielsen Group notes in the study summary are as interesting as the details. Here they are in a nutshell.

Intranet teams are growing

Companies appear to be taking more ownership over their intranets and building them with users in mind. This takes (wo)manpower, so budgets and headcount for them are trending upward. If you don’t have those types of resources, no worries. Nielsen says most companies use a combination of in-house talent and outside consultants to build great intranets.

Today, the predominant approach to running intranet design projects is to engage one or more consultants and external agencies to contribute parts — and only parts — of the design, while keeping overall control inside the company itself.

Intranets are playing a strategic role in supporting work processes

According to the study, intranets are becoming “important, strategic tools for doing business more efficiently.” For the first time, a winning intranet team (ERM) reports directly to the company chair. While this isn’t a trend itself, (most still report to Corporate Communications or IT) this year does show more executive visibility.

This executive involvement typically results from companies viewing the intranet as a collaboration tool and appreciating the increased business efficiency that a good intranet brings.

Intranets are using social networking and collaboration tools

The classic view of intranets being the place for HR forms and departmental policies is on its way out. While those housekeeping-type features still exist, award-winning intranets host wikis, forums, sophisticated search tools, and CEO blogs.  One winner (Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu) has a YouTube-like space for workers to upload videos to an internal “TV” channel.

CEO blogs have become vastly popular on the best intranets, with one winner’s blog (HSBC Bank-Brazil) enjoying 2 million views since 2005 and 8,000 employee comments.

Clearly,  (CEO blogs are) a well-established feature. What’s new this year is the sheer prevalence of this communications tool; we now have enough good examples to specify 9 guidelines for an intranet CEO blog.

Intranet customization and personalization improves productivity

Personalizing intranet features such as news, favorites, and links so users have quicker access to only the information they need or want for their jobs eliminates hours of wasted time.

Simple customization can often generate sizable productivity wins. For example, at McKesson, sales people can create a My Product List and My Favorite Reports, freeing them from having to wade through the much longer lists of all available options. Much appreciated when you’re on the phone with a customer and would prefer to focus your mental resources on closing the sale, rather than navigating the intranet.

Many intranets are improving usability by including multilingual interface features as part of its personalization options. BASF, one of this year’s winners, has 13 language options for its main features.

Intranet platforms are becoming more uniform

The hippie-rebel in you might cringe at the sound of the word Sharepoint, but like it or not, half the winning intranets for 2009 used it. However, there were several other great software vendors that winners used.  But the move toward better, single platform solutions that support the features users demand is evident.

Among the winning intranets, many are built on a single intranet platform that integrates most of the supporting features they need — including a content management system (CMS) and search. Some winners supplement their main platform with a few selected tools for specialized purposes — mainly Web analytics.

Intranet design is increasingly user-centered

Top intranets are employing usability tests and usage metrics to determine ROI and seeing great results when sites are designed around users.

Across this year’s winners, the average increase in intranet use was 106%. This is about the same as we’ve seen in previous years: The average usage increase in the 2005–2008 winners was 110%. So, roughly speaking, improving an intranet’s usability will double its use.

LLBean’s award winning site increased its usage from 67% on its old site to 88% for this year’s. Redesigning the site with users in mind has helped them cut the time it takes to perform certain tasks by more than half.

It’s easy to understand why top management sees a well-developed intranet as a strategic way for organizations to improve productivity on day-to-day tasks. It’s also the best internal marketing tool an organization can have.  We spent a lot of time in the late 1990s creating vision and mission statements, but those ideals had a long way to travel to reach our workers.  In the intranet 2.0 age, we can hear and see those ideals in action using tools like internal webcasts and blogs. So not only do our customers get the right message, so do our best marketers–our workers.