Interview: Well-designed intranets prove their worth

Communications expert Paul Miller discusses the do's and don'ts of intranet development

IT Week: As chairman and founder of the Intranet Benchmarking Forum, can you explain the genesis of the organisation?

Paul Miller: When I ran the Empowerment Group around four years ago we were advising firms on their intranet strategy but a lot of them were complaining that they didn't know what other organisations were doing and how their [site] compared. So I said let's form a club which will allow firms to learn from others, and go in and evaluate and benchmark [members' intranets]. We evaluate usability, consistency, navigation, performance, and [the organisation] provides a forum for meeting s allowing people to exchange [ideas] behind the firewall.

How has the IBF evolved since then? Now the IBF 100 has 41 members [from FTSE 100 companies or equivalent] such as the BBC, and in response to requests from [the likes of] Shell and HSBC who only want benchmarking with companies who have the same level of complexity as them, with multiple geographies and hundreds of thousands of employees, we created IBF Global. It functions on the same basis as IBF 100 but has more extensive benchmarking which looks at strategy and governance and business value as well.

What changes have you witnessed in the way intranets are run? When we started out the main issues [we dealt with] were around navigation and site performance, but people have started to solve those. Now the issues are around governance, who should manage it, how it should be resourced [and so on]. Intranets started out [belonging] to the techies and moved on to [become the responsibility of] the operational or communications side of the business, or of steering groups which oversee [the intranet], because they are now fundamental to the performance of an organisation.

How can a well-run intranet benefit an enterprise?
The business value is in money savings and process simplification – once you've got it up and running posting new information on the intranet is not that expensive.
The BBC saved over a million pounds through a central online taxi booking service [through the intranet] and by putting part of new employees' induction procedures on the intranet. In Vodafone stores staff use the intranet to obtain current price plans and models. Staff won't know it's the intranet – that's been a huge change, intranets have really dug into the organisation. They can also help to build an organisation's culture [and provide] the glue that makes employees feel a part of [a company].

What new innovations are permeating intranets?
It has always been a backwater, which is not necessarily a bad thing because it means people have been innovative – it tends to attract mavericks. There is a huge drive to get mobile intranets [up and running] with Vodafone, O2 [and others] delivering the intranet out to people through Blackberrys and other handheld devices. Intranet managers are also interested in what they should be doing with Web 2.0 technologies, [but they are] cautious because there are legal and IP issues involved. Video blogs are also being used by Deutsche Bank by employees who have been out to meetings.

Is security a big factor for intranet managers to consider?
Yes, it has become more of an issue for organisations [because although] there is the view that intranet and extranet will disappear and become one big space, companies such as Shell and Unilever absolutely need to secure their intranet. So firms [must employ procedures such as] giving only certain people access to [the intranet via] handheld devices and ensuring strong user authentication. I'm surprised there have not been instances of huge security breaches through the corporate intranet.

What are common mistakes firms make in their intranets?
Intranet search is still generally very poor, although it has been improved by Google Mini and Google Enterprise, because they have raised the visibility of search and shown it can be addressed without the need to go out and buy Autonomy. I'm surprised how slow many organisations are to cross the digital divide – Tesco and Sainsbury's have large numbers of staff who can't access the intranet and are in danger of creating a two-tier environment. [Another mistake] is spending money on technology but not [understanding] what it's there to do, or not engaging users to test [their intranets]. There is also an overuse of acronyms and jargon from senior management sometimes, and [they often mistake it] as a library of information rather than a place to work.

Paul Miller Biog:
Miller founded The Empowerment Group and Intranet Benchmarking Forum (IBF) after an early career as a UK Business Editor and business author. He has consulted on organisational communication at senior management levels for many blue chip companies.

He is an Accredited Business Communicator (ABC) and has pioneered practical approaches to Knowledge Management and wrote the best selling KM handbook Mobilising The Power Of What You Know.

Miller is also a member of the International Association of Business Communicators