Planning an Intranet: 5 Steps for Success

Is your company or organization planning to select an intranet platform? Review these five tips to take you from starting fresh up to the point where you will be ready to write a Request for Proposal (RFP). With RFP in hand, you will be ready to communicate with potential vendors who can help implement an intranet for your organization.

Step 1: Develop a Features List and Scope

If you currently have an intranet

You will need a thorough evaluation of the platform: who uses it, what they say about it and analytics. You need to get to the core of why people are dissatisfied and what issues come up frequently. You need to see from analytics what parts of the current intranet are frequently used, and which ones are not. What seems to be working and what is not. You need to know who manages it day-to-day and their roles. Interview these people and find out their pain points. Document everything.

If you do not have an intranet

You will need to be clear on the business reasons why your organization wants one and the problems having an intranet is supposed to solve. You need to have conversations up and down the organization: with stakeholders and leadership; staff who will use it day-to-day; staff who will manage it.

From these conversations you will develop a list of features and requirements. Your job will be — with further research — to distill these requirements into a technical and design scope which identifies hard requirements and which features are nice to have but not essential.

Step 2: Review Various Platforms

With features list in hand, you will need to educate yourself on options and what people are saying about them. A good next step at this stage is online research. Make a list of intranet platforms and read reviews. Ask people from other organizations if they are happy with what they have. Ask questions in online communities and get advice. In online forums, you will likely encounter vendors chiming in eager to potentially offer their services. Take this opportunity to ask questions and get their feedback as technical experts.

Document the results of your research in a table which compares the pros and cons of each platform. Make sure to note information on the cost of implementing the platform, long-term maintenance, and the staffing and skills needed to run it.

Step 3: Formulate a Budget

Once you have done your research and documented potential costs (financial and otherwise) it is time to formulate a budget. You will need enough to cover building the platform and customizing it for your organization’s needs. You will need to account for long-term maintenance and enhancements to design and functionality over time. Many vendors who specialize in implementing intranets also provide training and documentation on how to run their platform. Make sure the cost of training and documentation are included in budget planning.

Step 4: Determine Staff Capacity

Plan for how people in your organization will use the intranet and having a team to manage it. Your review of different platforms should give you an idea of what types of skills or specialized knowledge are needed.

You will need to know the skills and capabilities of staff in your organization who will upload and maintain content. You will also need to know the skillsets of the team who will manage the intranet. Determine user roles and permissions for each and map out who will fill these roles.

Step 5: Pre-evaluate Vendors

Your research in Step 2 should have given you an idea of vendors who specialize in implementing different types of intranet platforms. Initiate conversations with them and try to gauge which ones might be a good fit for your needs. As a potential client, many firms will be very helpful and friendly towards you. They will offer free advice and will want to meet or have conversations. Take them up on their offer. Give them a candid overview of your project, what your requirements are and the technical skills and experience of your staff. Get a feel if you would like to have them in the pool of vendors to receive the RFP.

Wrapping Up: A Solid Foundation

If you’ve done the steps above, you will have a good idea of platforms, vendors and a ballpark estimate of how much these can cost. You would have a budget formulated. You will know the skills and technical aptitude of your staff and mapped out roles and permissions in a new intranet. You would have had several conversations with vendors and gotten a feel for who might be good potential partners.

You will now have a solid foundation to help you write an RFP. This document will be the driver of your process to help select the right vendor for your intranet project.