Intranets in 2011: A turning point - highlights from the Global Intranet Trends

A few days ago Jane McConnell of NetStrategy/JMC blogged on the highlights of her just released 2011 Global Intranet Trends report,you can read that blog posting here:


Intranets in 2011: A turning point


Jane says she has so many highlights to discuss, she has written 3 posts, but go to that link to start your journey.


To get your own copy of the report and make your own analysis of the trends, or to sign up for next years survey hop on over to: http://www.global-intranet-trends.com/


I will just give one direct quote from Jane's blog post: 

"An over-arching strategy for the intranet, collaboration and social media is a pre-requisite for ensuring a  coherent and effective “workplace web”"


Well amen to that ! As I have said for a long time, especially when I was a consultant working for clients who would normally hire us under the auspices of the internal communications group or department, your strategy must be holistic. If Communications 'owns' the "traditional" intranet (the publishing platform), IT owns the 'collaboration platform' and HR owns the 'self service' applications, then each has an important stake in the workplace web, and the governance structure must include all these departments (and possibly more, depending on the organization). 


This does not automatically mean analysis paralysis is the name of the game, with governance by committee tacking on a highly bureaucratic "we talk a lot, but achieve very little" feel to it. With a clear governance framework, a high level (VP, Director etc) committee should be able to agree on strategy, with the chair of the committee signing of on it and then passing down to those who do the work to execute the strategy. 


This links in to trends for intranet staff - and the questions about what exactly is the role of "Intranet Manager" and what is evolving into ? The Intranet Manager needs to be an organizer, a project manager capable of liaising between the different stakeholder departments, someone who can form the relationships needed to get things done and enable the holistic strategy - sounds like fun role to me !