Using SharePoint to Build an Intranet Effectively
Crafting an effective intranet is an important step for organizations as it greatly aids with internal communication and collaboration. Few successful businesses can operate without the aid of an intranet, but if you want to become successful then it is good to implement an intranet effectively. And this requires significant effort, time and resources.
Microsoft’s SharePoint is a successful enterprise collaboration platform that offers a secured, easily managed and customizable solution to the organization. Though investments bring rich dividends, some businesses are actually not satisfied with the ROI from intranets.
Many organizations often struggle to offer an engaging intranet experience and there are many traditional intranet projects that often fail to meet the organizational goals.
In the last decade, SharePoint has evolved as the de-facto intranet platform and has also gained significant traction within organizations of varied sizes. It has in fact accounted for a majority of top ranked intranet in the past two years, and today many organizations are choosing to migrate to Office 365.
This guide will help you to understand some of the common reasons for intranet failure and also adopt strategies that can help to be successful.
Why Intranet Fails?
There is no one cause that can be considered as a perfect contributing factor for any intranet failure. Since every organization is different, the reasons also vary and here I have stated some few traits to discuss.
Inability to find content: The intranet search experiences are bad when they are compared with any search engines like Google, Yahoo and etc. The performance and relevance when combined with the lack of content strategy, it is difficult to find content through search.
Bad user experience: There are many intranets that offer a poor user experience and this leads to frustration and abandonment of the site. The users actually have high expectations and when they show inability to drive great user experience through various devices, it results in intranet failure.
Outdated information: The content should also change with time, otherwise the users will lose interest and stop visiting. Proper and regular update is needed to be successful.
Company culture is not considered: Intranet solutions fail to incorporate the company culture and so they often fall flat. Understanding the culture to adopt the intranet strategies is prime and the company should also embrace new methods of working.
No measurement of results: Anything that can be measured can always be improved. And measuring the result and incorporating the strategies is critical to intranet success. the ultimate goal is to make relevant content more available irrespective of the fact where it resides.
Office 365 As An Effective Intranet Platform
Office 365 is an outstanding platform that offers best of breed solutions like OneDrive, SharePoint Online, Skype for business, PowerApps and many more. The platform develops tremendous value to business and helps in powerful coordination:
The Potential of PowerApps with SharePoint
Value: No other product is available in the market that offers as much for business organizations. Office 365 encompasses every aspect of collaboration, messaging tools and productivity.
Extensibility: SharePoint Online offers a great level of extensibility to create solutions that can leverage what Office 365 has to offer.
Interconnectivity: SharePoint also provides various enterprise tools that help to seamlessly communicate because they share a common security model and common login.
“We at IDS Logic, help to leverage SharePoint to offer a modern intranet experience and make the information accessible from a unified intranet experience.”