Search

Buyer's Guide to Intranet Projects

Technology and vendor neutral advisor for digital workplace projects

Open Search

Content planning best practices for intranets and digital workplaces

Intranet is a service which essentially exists due to the information it contains. However, not all information is relevant for every user group. On the other hand, some of this information is relevant for everyone – oftentimes it is even “pushed” in front of everybody’s eyes. Then again, some of the content is utilized actively every day – and some of it only once a year. Moreover, keeping the content up to date should be super-easy.

Challenging requirements for intranet concept planning? Three-function framework for intranet content strategy provides a helpful tool for content planning and managing the explicit organizational information inside an intranet – or a digital workplace.

Continue reading “Content planning best practices for intranets and digital workplaces” →

0

How are the Swedish intranets doing?

Web Service Award has just published their yearly “Trend report – How are the Swedish intranets doing?” study for the tenth time. The study covers 274 responses from intranet managers in Sweden and brings out for example quality issues and intranet development plans.

Continue reading “How are the Swedish intranets doing?” →

0

Are there any teamwork solution alternatives for Office 365?

As concluded in my previous post, there are many alternatives for building a communicative intranet. However, when we take a closer look at document-centric teamwork solutions, it seems as if O365 has won the game already. For instance, in the article written by the online security firm Bitglass a couple of years ago, it is mentioned that Office 365 had already overtaken Google Apps when comparing enterprise adoption of cloud applications. And they certainly have kept up the pace in the past years. So, are the other alternatives even worth considering? Sure they are. Continue reading “Are there any teamwork solution alternatives for Office 365?” →

0

Are there any alternatives for Office 365 intranet?

Here in Finland, we have seen venerable marketing efforts by Microsoft and its partners for quite some time already, and the results are clearly visible in intranet project request for proposals responses. At times it feels like companies have purchased Office 365 licenses first, and only then started thinking about the fun things that could be done with them. Sure enough, O365 tools are perfectly fine for a lot of things, but it is recommended to take a closer look at the other alternatives as well before deciding on the technology platform. Continue reading “Are there any alternatives for Office 365 intranet?” →

0

Intranet, ESN, and digital workplace conferences this fall

24.10.2017

There are still excellent chances to get prepared for next year’s intranet, ESN, or digital workplace development or redesign. We picked up some tips on conferences in Europe. The following conferences will give you inspiration, ideas, hot new knowledge on the topics, as well as great colleagues to network with.

Continue reading “Intranet, ESN, and digital workplace conferences this fall” →

0

Case: Citycon – Yammer cleared the way for new communicative culture and made business visible

12.10.2017

Citycon is the shopping centre industry leader in the Nordic and Baltic countries. Citycon owns 50 urban, grocery-anchored shopping centres in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Estonia, and Denmark. In addition, Citycon leases and manages 13 shopping centres in Norway on behalf of other owners, and owns two other retail properties. They have 250 employees in five countries, total asset value of 5 billion euros, and market capitalisation of 2 billion euros.

Redesigning Citycon’s intranet had been on the radar for quite a while already. The old intranet, based on SharePoint 2007, surely served its purpose of distributing common policies and instructions, but it was neither social nor visual.
Continue reading “Case: Citycon – Yammer cleared the way for new communicative culture and made business visible” →

0

Finnish intranet products are conquering the world – introducing Valo

6.9.2017

Lately there has been a lot of talk about the competetiveness of the Finnish economy. One thing is for sure: in the intranet market we aren’t doing badly at all! Two Finnish products designed for intranet and digital work – Valo and Universe – are churning out outstanding sales figures around the world. In the spirit of our centenary year of independence, we decided to introduce these two top export products.

We interviewed representatives from both Universe and Valo, giving them the freedom to praise their own products as they see fit, but we also asked them to evaluate the competition and describe their product development philosophy. So, in this article we shall focus on Valo.

Continue reading “Finnish intranet products are conquering the world – introducing Valo” →

0

Finnish intranet products are conquering the world – introducing Universe

6.9.2017

Lately there has been a lot of talk about the competetiveness of the Finnish economy. One thing is for sure: in the intranet market we aren’t doing badly at all! Two Finnish products designed for intranet and digital work – Valo and Universe – are churning out outstanding sales figures around the world. In the spirit of our centenary year of independence, we decided to introduce these two top export products.

We interviewed representatives from both Universe and Valo, giving them the freedom to praise their own products as they see fit, but we also asked them to evaluate the competition and describe their product development philosophy. So, in this article we shall focus on Universe.

Continue reading “Finnish intranet products are conquering the world – introducing Universe” →

0

Case: Paulig – Bold new intranet implementation supports culture development

27.6.2017

Paulig Group is a family-owned, international enterprise in the food industry. Their portfolio includes strong brands such as Paulig, Santa Maria, Risenta, Gold&Green and Poco Loco. The Group has about 1,900 employees in 13 countries. They are working in four business divisions and common functions.

Paulig has grown via acquisitions and they wanted to redesign their intranet structure to support productivity and their internal Paulig Way culture development towards ‘one company with several brands’ better than before.

Continue reading “Case: Paulig – Bold new intranet implementation supports culture development” →

0

The intranet market in Finland

13.6.2017

Intranets in Finland are used for organizational, HR, and strategic communications, and to communicate company policies and guidelines. On top of these two traditional roles, most of the intranets are also tools to facilitate the forming of a common organizational culture and sense of community, our latest study on Finnish intranets reports.

Continue reading “The intranet market in Finland” →

0

SharePoint Online in mobile devices

6.2.2017

One of the most important benefits of SharePoint Online is that it contains well-designed tools for shared creation of documents within teams and projects. If it is mandatory to be able to open Office documents directly from the intranet and for multiple users to edit them simultaneously, scale is often tipped towards SharePoint right from the beginning when selecting the most suitable technology for a new intranet implementation.

But when intranet usability on a mobile device is taken into consideration, the choice is not so obvious anymore. Yes, SharePoint Online is available as a cloud service from outside the organization’s own network, but SharePoint’s proprietary page templates and themes are not responsive, and using sites designed for desktop screens is far from inviting on a mobile device. What are the remedies, then?
Continue reading “SharePoint Online in mobile devices” →

0

Sustainable communality grows from the community itself – supported by the intranet

Nov 3, 2016

After organizational communication and work instructions, the third most important task for an intranet is “creating communality” (Intranet Services in Finland 2016 survey). In practice, this happens in two ways. Continue reading “Sustainable communality grows from the community itself – supported by the intranet” →

0

How much does Office 365 intranet cost?

Oct 26, 2016

Setting up a simple Office 365 intranet is a rather straightforward task. With the appropriate license, basically anyone with SharePoint administrator rights may click their way through setting up one. In the fortunate event that one actually knows what they are doing, the result may actually be a very good intranet. This is what we used to do at North Patrol in the past, and this is likely what is currently being done in many smallish organizations where working is greatly focused on documents. Convenient for sure, especially since there are no costs in addition to licensing.
Continue reading “How much does Office 365 intranet cost?” →

1

The three functions of an intranet

Sep 14, 2016

Intranet renewals typically involve pondering whether or not workspaces are part of the intranet, and should collaboration in the workspaces be implemented on the same technology platform as the communicational intranet . Yes and no – both are possible.

When we look at the intranet from the perspective of its communicational nature and communicational features, its functions within the organization fall into three main categories: Continue reading “The three functions of an intranet” →

0

How to start intranet renewal

Apr 6, 2016

There are several potential needs for intranet renewal. The technology platform may be rotting away, the intranet in its present form does not meet today’s needs, the organization has changed in mergers and acquisitions, a new strategy combines formerly independent units into one global actor with the resultant intranet needs, or the intranet has just become so stale that the best solution is to start again from scratch and launch it under a new “brand” to make it useful to the organization. Continue reading “How to start intranet renewal” →

0

Office 365, Slack and other intranet technology trends

Mar 7, 2016

I held a two-part presentation at a conference in Oslo last year, the first part of which discussed typical intranet concepts and technologies in the Nordic countries. The second part was about intranet conceptualization methods and things like various workshop techniques. In this story, I’ll summarize the topics of the first presentation through five assertions.
Continue reading “Office 365, Slack and other intranet technology trends” →

0

The role of the intranet in the internal communications channel mix

Nov 25, 2015

An intranet is able to replace many traditional communications channels inside an organiozation: bulletin boards, weekly newsletters, email lists, and staff magazines. It may function as a channel for personnel briefings, or it can be a unofficial meeting place like a real-life lunchroom. An intranet harmoniously conveys employer’s strategies and instructions regarding off-duty periods, procedures for different processes and information on changes and successes in all levels, as well as offers a platform for the whole organization to discuss these. Continue reading “The role of the intranet in the internal communications channel mix” →

0

Intranets in large enterprises

Oct 13, 2015

Genuinely large corporations constitute their own special group in the field of intranet technology. With thousands of employees working in many different countries and business functions, designing an intranet concept is not entirely straightforward.For such complex organizations, intranets are essential business systems – often in many ways. Continue reading “Intranets in large enterprises” →

0

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑