Is It Time For Your Intranets Annual Performance Review?

8th July, 2010 - Posted By Sean R. Nicholson - 8 Comments

It never ceases to amaze me how few people trust their organizational intranets. A tool that was designed specifically for the purpose of helping employees do their job better and faster is often the joke of the water cooler. Yet organizations knowingly ignore the fact that employees don’t use or trust the information stored on their intranet.

Periodically, I have the great opportunity to sit in front of a group of employees and ask them about their intranet experiences. Often, it’s in anticipation of an intranet revamp, so the need for a “do-over” or an evolution has already been defined at some level. While the individual users and comments might be different, they usually go start with something like this:

Is ECM Going The Way Of The Dodo? Or Maybe The Way Of The Intranet?

20th December, 2009 - Posted By Sean R. Nicholson - 12 Comments

Is Enterprise Content Management going the way of the Intranet and becoming an outdated notion? Will better federated search technologies negate the need for a central repository? Are organizations better off investing in the functional elements of ECM like document management, records management, and business process management instead of buying the whole enchilada?

It’s 2AM, Do You Know Where Your Organizational Information Is??

21st October, 2009 - Posted By Sean R. Nicholson - No Comments

The reality is that organizations are generating more and more information on an hourly basis. Take a moment and think about all the documents, spreadsheets, presentations, emails, voice mails, and sticky notes you generated on a daily basis just 3 years ago. Now, add modern day blogs, tweets, text messages, forum posts, comments, status updates, videos, podcasts, and wiki posts to your list and what do you get? More information? Definitely! But the larger problem is the fact that the information is now spread out in more places, making it harder for other employees and customers to find it.

Intranet Best Practices – Provide Users With An Advanced Search Option

26th August, 2009 - Posted By Sean R. Nicholson - No Comments

Searchability is key in allowing your users to find content on your Intranet. While most users are happy with conducting a simple keyword search using a single text box, an advanced search feature allows users to find information and find it faster.

Intranet Best Practices –
Building A Federated Search Strategy

17th August, 2009 - Posted By Sean R. Nicholson - No Comments

If you haven’t figured it out already, it’s a Google kinda world out there and your Intranet users expect your search functionality to provide them with accurate, relevant results to their search queries. With that in mind, if you haven’t already begun the process of building a federate search strategy, it’s time to do so.

Intranet Best Practices –
Driving User Adoption

29th July, 2009 - Posted By Sean R. Nicholson - 2 Comments

Over the years, I have been privileged to work on a variety of Intranets ranging in shapes and sizes. Some were for large corporations, others were for small non-profits. Some were heavily governed, others were driven by user content. Even though each of these Intranets were unique in their own ways, they had one key element in common – strong user adoption. Without a strong user community that recognized the value of the Intranet, each would have failed.

Top 10 Must Haves For Every Good Intranet

9th April, 2009 - Posted By Sean R. Nicholson - 15 Comments

Okay Intranet fans, here it is…the 2009 completely unofficial list of must have functionality for every Intranet:

{drumroll please….}