Intranet Management Software Blog

During early phases of intranet deployment, we are frequently asked by our clients “what do I need to prepare or plan in advance to guarantee a successful of intranet deployment project”.

In our opinion, an intranet project is all about dialog. It’s a dialog between ‘us’ the software vendor with our expertise and know-how and ‘you’ who know the most about your business or organisation.

Step1. Setup a Goal

The first step is determining the goals of your Intranet project. Why do you want an intranet? Some typical reasons:

• Improving and providing a communication and collaboration tool.
• Our existing Intranet is old and dysfunctional.
• Distribute corporate news (electronic newsletter)
• Providing self service staff contact details which are always up-to-date
• Make our company policies and procedures available online
• Sharing documents online instead of using shared drives
• Enabling staff to work from home
• Better searching and easier way finding key documents

Step2. Define the scope & audience

Have you got an answer for these questions?

• Is it just an Intranet for staff or it is also an extranet for partners and contractors?
• Do you want to allow your staff access to the intranet even when they’re at home or client’s site?
• How about mobile access?
• Have you asked representative from each department on what they want to see or get on the Intranet?
• How people currently finding information, which you think should be on the intranet? What are their common pains?
• Would you like to store sensitive information on the Intranet such as payroll ?
• What about chat and commenting? How open is your company culture?

Step 3. Build a SiteMap

Build a sitemap, using your favorite tools such as Visio or simply hand drawn, create draft of Intranet sitemap, typically the main branch are represented by each department, you can see various examples below:

Example Sitemap with colour coded permission

Example of Intranet Site Map using colour to identify launch phase

Step 4. What are key application do you want to use?

This step is simply determining what are the main application do you want to use on the Intranet, Claromentis provide these following applications,  you can simply choose which one to use.

News and Blog– Share and distribute company news and blog
Documents – Document collaboration with version control
Publish – Page creator, a content management system
People – Self service personnel database
Calendar – Shared company calendar
Image Gallery – Corporate image database
Bookshelf – Online Policies & Procedures
Policy Manager – Managing lifecycle of the company policies
Holiday planner – manage corporate holiday and absence
Room booking – book a meeting room and office facilities
InfoCapture – Electronic e-forms builder and workflows
Project – Manage project online
CRM – Opportunity Management

Outside these applications we built many other bespoke applications to suit your need

Step 5. Understanding Permissions

Permission Group & Role

A scalable intranet should have a strong permission system, it also helps to distribute information easily. For example you may want to have area where only people in your department can produce or edit its content while everyone else simply just view.

This can be done easily by setting up permission, ie : Roles, Group and Sub-Groups.

To make our job easier when configuring your system, have you got a Company org-chart available?

Step 6. Create Homepage Wireframe

As you know the homepage is the first page everyone is going to see, it’s worth the extra effort to design this carefully after all it is a gateway to all other content within the Intranet. Look at several examples for inspiration and decide what you want to see on the homepage, my advice is to keep it clean and simple.

UBS Intranet homepage wireframe

Colchester NHS Intranet wireframe

Step 7. Budget & Resources

How many users will be using the Intranet? Many Intranet software vendors  price their products by number of users.

Hardware, who is going to provide you with the hardware?  If you don’t have any we’re happy to source this for you or you can take the SaaS model.

Have you got an internal project team?  Usually we recommend a project sponsor, an internal project manager as the main contact, a technical contact, and a rep from marketing or communication as a minimum team - smaller companies might have fewer people involved.

Step 8. Timeline

Plan your project timeline carefully.  Each company is different - an Intranet can be deployed from 2 weeks up to a year, these are some key points worth considering which may cause delays:

• Sourcing hardware
• Getting access through your office network
• Finalising design
• Updating user list
• Content population
• Content migration.

Like everything else in life, execution is quick, preparation is the key so do your homework!

Step 9. Future plans (keep evolving!)

I’ve seen many intranet projects loose momentum after the initial launch phase. A successful intranet is something that grows over time, start simple and add new features gradually. Learn from  user feedback and implement user requests wherever feasible.

Small improvements can make a huge different - it’s like the breath of fresh air. Keep the original team and meet regularly for project reviews and brainstorming of new ideas.

Here are some ideas to think about once you have your initila intranet.

• Is there any business processes which can be done electronically?
• Such as overtime request, time cards, new hire.
• Is there a database, which is currently in Excel, and you think it will be much better if it is an online application?
• Any existing system, which can be better integrated with the Intranet?
• Thinking of deploying corporate micro-blogging? Online videos?

Step 10. Do it now!

This final step is the most important of all. You can make all the planning you need but without execution it is still a plan. Get the ball rolling now, gather your team, email them now, start researching or simply drop us a line to discuss your requirement, or book an online demo!

Good luck with your Intranet project!

Home Claromentis, collaboration, Design, extranet, intranet, intranet consultancy, intranet development, intranet project manager

Having involved with many projects in various scales, I can see that in general there are 3 types of projects:

1.  A project with no vision

A project with no vision is a bit like life without a purpose. The project exists for the sake of having the project itself. It is almost destined to be doomed even with enough resources to make it happen. There are too many IT projects failures, many of which are due to this problem. Of course no one wants to admit there is no vision, of course they can pretend they have a vision or basically borrow one from someone else - but normally they are just too abstract and meaningless.

2.    Project with vision but no execution

Good, now we are one step closer. We have clear vision for the project but the problem is we don’t know how to execute it. Having a vision without plan and execution is just like having a good idea with no outcomes.
We know how hard it is to execute good idea, and a good idea remains just a good idea until it has been executed.

3. Project with vision and execution

Right, I think we nailed it this time; we’ve got the clear vision and know exactly what needs to be done to execute it.  As we all know having a clear plan and the right resources to execute it is a great recipe to a successful project.

At the end of the day the outcome of successful project heavily depends on execution and control.  We all know things aren’t work according to the plan. Determination, passion and continuous control is perhaps worth more than the vision itself in the real world. The Japanese called this “Kaizen” (Continuous Improvement).

Services development vision, internal customer communications, intranet project manager

I find the latest programme overview page, and the resulting additions to the project application dashboard page, to be really useful.

Above is the new programme overview, with the programme traffic light that the software sets according to the RAG lights in the individual projects.

If we look at the improved dashboard :

the difference now is is that on the right I can see the automated status lights for all the programmes I have permissions to, on the same page as the filterable list of projects.

These screens really do provide an extremely useful top down view of the projects and programmes across the company, enabling really rapid reviews at project meetings.

I will also be interested in whether clients find the automated calculation of the programme traffic light to be useful - I certainly do but it might be that programme managers would rather set it manually.

Prod-Project intranet project manager

Since I posted just a couple of weeks ago about the latest project management functionality for resource allocation management there are many new improvements – including our first look at resource calendars and the special project management view of resource profiles.
Whereas the normal intranet profile view provides a very configurable set of metadata about any user – such as career, location, interests and any other general data required by the company – the RAM view of that user provides information automatically gathered by RAM itself.

Project Resource Profile

This includes current loading graphs and tables of current tasks, Upcoming tasks, the users skills by category ( in relation to project task skills ) and a history of completed tasks.
This view is currently being continuously improved but already it provides great information for project  resource managers when deciding between alternate resources that RAM declares as available to work on a task.

Prod-Project intranet project manager

We are getting important requests from customers that now would like our new Project Management Application to deliver ever more powerful functionality so that it becomes a serious product in it’s own right – and no longer a functional  add on for our clients whose primary need is intranets and collaboration frameworks.

This is an interesting challenge for Claromentis – what percentage of our R&D should be devoted to project management software? Increased investment, combined with feedback from our existing client base, will generate a product appropriate to large scale deployments where the primary need is web based project management for complex programmes – as opposed to fit-for-purpose functionality targeted at existing intranet/extranet/document management customers.

Our current thoughts are to embrace this challenge and to aggressively build on our current release to provide a best in class programme management collaboration portal.

Feedback welcome! Is this a direction that we should pursue? Or should we focus back on enhancements to our core collaboration applications?

Prod-Project intranet project manager

With the Beta Programme well underway with clients, I thought it would be fun to look at the newest Project Management code - dealing with Resource Allocation Management.

I experimented with manual allocation of resources according to task skills - and I have to say that I was impressed with how easy it is to define tasks skills and allocate resources accordingly.

Prod-Project intranet project manager

As I have discussed before on this Blog -  by delivering a complete web based project management product we are providing the logical move from collaboration to execution within one comprehensive intranet framework.

But as previously reported, with the planned process manager integration within project manager – we are adding totally configurable form based workflows to the execution side of our software.

It will be extremely interesting to see how this is used by our clients. Will we be providing a generic library of e-form process manager solutions applicable to project management – risk management, material requisition, change management for example -  or will each client prefer to use the ability to generate their own form based workflows for each individual project need?

Products intranet project manager, process manager

Having just returned form a week of training in one of new USA clients, I am again reminded of the difference a single talented project manager from the client side makes to the value the customer receives from Claromentis software.

We have seen this in some of our very largest, as well as our smallest clients. A single, talented individual who has the right skill sets and knows the internal politics and goals for the client can make a fantastic system that really delivers value, as opposed to a deployment of intranet technology that is significantly underused in helping the client to meet their business goals.

It is true that a client project manager needs to devote significant time to the project – and therefore increases significantly the total cost of ownership – but in my view this is the best investment our clients can make in our projects.

Services intranet project manager