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By Paul I. Tao Competia.com 

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Introduction

What on earth do you do when you need to communicate and share company-wide information to a diverse corporation spanning several countries? Well, you could get seven thousand paper cups and two hundred-fifty thousand miles of string but how messy would that be? Bell, Marconi, and Gutenberg have made communication and information sharing easier for the world and sent countless carrier pigeons to the unemployment line. Intranets can do the same for your corporation if the project is handled right.

When you have a large pool of information to share among hundreds or perhaps thousands of employees, an Intranet is an invaluable option in cutting the cost of producing multiple hard copies, future addendums, magazine and trade paper subscriptions, and anything else that would normally have to be circulated by conventional means.

When you have an Intranet, information is available 24/7 to all employees at the click of a mouse. This is a huge advantage over having your employees duke it out with one another or wrestle each other in some sort of Greco-Roman gladiator pit when Mr. X wishes to take the last copy of a report with him on his two-week trip to Tokyo.

Information stored on a corporate Intranet can be updated as quickly as it is made available by simply updating the contents of the Web server. This is quite a contrast to hard copies which must be reprinted and redistributed each time.

Jumping in with both eyes wide shut is not a good idea, though. There is a fair amount of planning involved so you will have to do your homework before even placing your first page online.

While different companies have different needs and invest in Intranets for various reasons, there are a few general guidelines which should be followed, regardless of what field your business is in.

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Defining your goal and mapping out your plan

"They have one, so why shouldn't we?" is not the best reason to develop a truly useful Intranet site. All too often, I have seen people build Intranets simply for the sake of having one. These sites usually offer nothing of value to the user community and at best may provide about five minutes of diversion during your coffee break.

One of the first things you must do is to determine what your Intranet's raison d'être is and who your primary users are. Is it to simply eliminate the overhead and cost of printing hard-copy employee manuals, newsletters and corporate information or are you looking for a site which will help your business in its decision-making process? (If you are interested in knowing more on this subject, check our past article on the "Five steps to implement an Intranet to Manage Strategic Information."

It is sometimes useful to visit other companies which have implemented their own Intranets to get an idea of what is possible. Often, seminars are given by companies relating how Intranets have been developed and maintained at their sites. Speaking to members of these companies may help bring to light some of the growing pains associated with a project that you may not be all too familiar with. In fact, it might even help you to avoid encountering some of the pitfalls they themselves experienced. However, do not be overly swayed by what you see in other companies. These presentations can give you a practical example but their Intranet may not necessarily work for you. You have to ask yourself what your goal is. If you cannot answer this question, you may as well build a house without a foundation. It may stand but it will eventually collapse under its own weight.

Once you have figured out the purpose of your Intranet site, you will have to determine the scope of the project. If you underestimate the size of the site, you may run into a navigational nightmare where nothing is consistent. However, if you overestimate its size and do not have enough content to properly populate the site, you will end up frustrating your users with the all too common "under construction" notice.

It cannot be stressed enough that an Intranet site must be mapped out beforehand. We have all seen site maps on the Internet but far too often it is sketched out as an afterthought once the site has been completed. In order to maintain an overall smooth and consistent feel to your Intranet site, the map must be drawn out so that you take into account all of the sections and options you wish to make available.

Your site can very easily get out of hand if you are constantly forced to say, "Oh yeah, I forgot about that..."  once the site is underway. This may sound obvious but it happens more often than you think!

If you fall into this trap, you will find yourself spending much of your time correcting mistakes rather than making improvements to your site. Chasing after your site like a runaway train is one of the hallmarks of a poorly implemented Intranet site and it will show to your end users. Soon, an originally good idea may turn into Frankenstein's monster and the last thing you want is to be chased down by angry villagers wielding torches and pitchforks. Remember, you should be running your site, your site should not be running you.

 

Building your business case

Okay, so now you have an idea of what your site will look like and what you wish to accomplish with it. However, no matter how good your initial plan may seem to you, if you do not get buy-in and support from your senior management you may as well not bother.

The one single phrase with as much weight and significance as the whispering of Citizen Kane's "Rosebud" is "How much is this going to cost me?"  Here is where you will have to prove your ROI.

The biggest obstacle you will have to overcome is probably going to be the corporate and business culture. Although Intranets are not new, few know how to make the most of them and many still feel more comfortable with hard copies. I have seen cases where a company spent millions of dollars to set up a corporate e-mail solution only to have some employees ask their secretaries to print out all of their e-mail messages! These are the people you will have to convince. Technology is not something to be afraid of!

A major selling point when trying to get buy-in from senior management is that an Intranet is dynamic. It grows, can be modified to suit changing needs, is searchable, and can contain one thing that a magazine cannot... multimedia. Why read a president or CEO's quarterly report results when you can watch and hear the actual presentation on your Intranet site with the click of a mouse button.

Changing your company's culture is by no means an easy task. You will have to determine your target audience and how comfortable they are with the Internet.

 

Developing in-house vs. contracting

Once all the planning has been done and there is buy-in from senior management, you will have to decide what, if anything, will be contracted outside and what will be done in-house. Before you make up you mind, consider the following: