A guide to successfully implement an intranet
In March 2016, Office Vibe surveyed 1,000 companies to better understand the internal processes. Overall it was the number of employee and overall size of a company that determined internal operations. According to the study, 65% of surveyed companies with about 20 employees did not have any type of collaborative work platform. The percentage slowly drops as 40% with more than 250 employees do not possess a corporate intranet and only 20% of surveyed companies with more than 500 employees.
The percentage decreases with the size of the company because larger organizations want to standardize their practices, increase internal communication and improve human relationships within their society. The implementation of an intranet portal allows them to address these three issues.
The digital workplace is a universal point of access to all the necessary content to work for your employees. It is a tool that can benefit all employees in any sized company. The trick is creating one that employees will love to use. Powell 365 makes it easy to do with fully customizable solutions. Here is our five-step guide to successfully implement an intranet.
Step One- Analyze & Define your Needs:
The very first step is to analyze company needs and define your strategic objectives. Why do you want to implement a collaborative intranet in your company? The easiest way to figure out your answer is to find and identify key issues that currently exist in the company. Do you need to improve your internal communication, find information faster and thus increase productivity, increase employee collaboration? This is a conversation that must be had to figure out the scale of the project.
You cannot plan the layout of your corporate intranet without knowing the size of the project. The size of a project determines how much time and effort the company needs to devote to the initiative. Is this a major project that completely redesigns internal operations or a simple update to the existing framework?
TIP – SELECT A PROJECT SPONSOR – The person who will drive the operation by providing his/her view and officially validates all stages of the project.
Step Two – Design:
The design phase is where you determine the functionality of your future collaborative intranet. Set in place a governance hierarchy and main management rules. Then identify, what we call, “quick wins”. A quick win is something that quickly and easily allows the team to obtain a marketing or financial gain. Remember to also define your deployment strategy (pilot, global opening, etc …). With Powell 365 this is a simple and fun process! The Powell 365 team accompanies you through each step and are always available to answer your questions.
Step Three – Change Management:
Change management should be done in parallel with the conception phase. In order to drive innovation within your company set up a communication plan associated with the launch of your new intranet portal. Establish a training plan for the new tools and an adoption strategy for your employees. Make sure to continuously follow up on the portal after the official launch. Without fresh content a portal can quickly become irrelevant.
Florence Geraud, manager at ConvictionsRH advises that “Coaching staff has always been essential in times of change. It is even more important in a context of crisis, amid tight budgets and increased pressure.”
Step Four – Implementation:
After designing your collaborative platform, the next logical step it to deploy it to your environment. The implementation stage is kind of like a test run. This is when we can identify where adjustments need to be made and then define the new corrected process. Once all changes are validated, the intranet should be ready to launch!
When you work with Powell 365, we provide functional teams to guide you through this process. Through special workshops, you can determine the best processes for your collaborative intranet with the help of the Powell 365 team.
Step Five – Launch:
It’s time to give all your employees access to the portal. You should make a big deal over it and motivate your employees to take part in the launch.
The Powell 365 team is always available during a launch. We like to ensure that adoption is done in the smoothest and easiest way possible for an enterprise. This is a big accomplishment for the company! It is important that the everything goes well. When first deployed, there will be a lot of traffic and usage. After the launch, make sure to follow employee use statistics via Google Analytics or Tryane Analytics (for a fee).
TIP – DEVELOP A ROADMAP – We recommend that you develop a roadmap with a functional consultant. This will allow you to set an evolutionary strategy of your intranet.
As time passes, employee participation can vary. Therefore, an intranet must be evergreen and constantly evolve with a company and its employees. Make sure to maintain employee engage and grow internal communication week, months, even years after the launch. Successfully implementing an intranet, can be done successfully in just a few steps, nevertheless keeping employees engaged after the launch is the most important part!
For more information about Powell 365 intranet solutions and our implementation project process contact us today!