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Usability expert Jakob Nielsen has weighed in again on the 10 best intranets in the world, and his picks reveal that the trends toward knowledge management and productivity tools continue. The vital importance of a good search tool was also highlighted.

The Nielsen Norman Group (NNG) and Mr. Nielsen recently released their 365 page report, which names this year's world's best intranets, derived from the eighth-annual intranet design competition.

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The winners span six countries, seven industries, and run the gamut in size with the smallest being 200 employees and the largest well over 100,000 employees. They include from the U.S.: Bank of America, Barnes & Noble, Campbell Soup Company, Coldwell BankerReal Estate Corporation, IKEA North America Service, LLC. Other winners included: Bankinter S.A. (Spain); British Airways (U.K.); Ministry of Transport (New Zealand); New South Wales Department of Primary Industries (Australia); and SAP AG (Germany).

What do these Intranets do that sets them apart? According to Kara Pernice, co-author and director of research at NNG, these companies invest the time and resources in good planning. "They learn who their users are, what they want to do, and take the leap to design what works for them," Pernice said. The commonalities among the winners are not new ideas but rather an ongoing continuous raising of the bar that seems to be happening year after year. For instance, company news is not new to intranets by a long shot. Yet the winners show that it is being taken more seriously. Commitment to almost real-time updates and the steady growth in the use of multimedia makes company news newsworthy again.

Another standout is in the area of quality and polish of the winning Intranets. Employees are no longer willing to trade their rich internet experience for a vapid tool during the workday that is years behind the times. They demand quality, convenience, personalization, productivity for everyday work, and ease of use. Single-sign-on is a strong determinant of employee satisfaction and productivity. Yet, a true single-sign-on remains hard to achieve and often does not work as well as promised.

Content remains king, and many of the top intranets rely on content management systems to wrangle the wieldy information beast. Standard design templates that wrap around the content and give the intranet its brand are key to maintaining standards and consistent user experience. As Campbell Soup Company's profile indicates -- maintaining standards across the board can be challenging when there are strong individual brands, but it can be done.

Intranets are no longer a "nice to have" or a side project of the technical staff. They have a strong productivity focus and are used extensively to support everyday, mission critical activities.

Guess what? There is no one technology platform secret to success, the report found. Despite what software vendors like to tell us, there is no one golden egg when it comes to successful intranets. In fact, the 10 winners used 41 unique and different products for their platforms.

Of all the common themes among the winners, the one that stands out most to Pernice is that so many are taking on the challenge of personalization.

"These companies are taking the risk of undertaking the involved and expensive project of personalization. The intranet is no longer viewed as a wasted-time tool of the old days. Stale, inaccurate information is no longer acceptable."

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