Blog | 30 November 2023
To use or not to use the intranet
Two years ago, the intranet was heavily questioned and had to fight for its right to exist in many places as many felt that Teams could meet their needs and then some. Today, the intranet is doing better, but the question is whether it is time to move on? At this year's Sitevisiondagarna, intranet evangelists Anna-Karin Jungander and Johan Nilsson talked about the intranet's being or not being and sought answers to the question of whether we are doing ourselves a disservice by clinging to the concept of "intranet"?
But first, how are today's intranets doing?
The annual trend report "How is Sweden's intranet" by Web Service Award has for several years shown a declining interest in the intranet among the country's management teams. In the report, around 300 intranet managers answer several questions about the organisation's work with the intranet – and in this year's report, only 36 percent respond that they have measurable goals for the intranet. Of these 36%, only 18% report to management on how they are doing against the goals.
The report also shows that only 10% will change the CMS for their intranet, which is a significant drop from the previous year when 29% would change CMS.
These figures indicate that the intranet is not a particularly high priority within our organisations. The question is whether this may be due to outdated and outmoded associations with the concept of intranet, as the increase in hybrid work actually places even greater demands on a digital workplace?
The role of intranets in 2023
Today's intranets tend to be either a standalone platform of information or a platform with ambitions to take greater digital responsibility in areas such as productivity, engagement and wellbeing.
Let's take a closer look at the latter option, which has become a hot potato in the market and is often baked into the concept of digital employee experience. A concept where the intranet is seen as an enabler to support more elements and areas than just internal news and information.
Among other things, we see that many modern intranets build or integrate various SaaS products in analytics, gamification and digital learning to support critical business moments.
This is a result of democratised digitalisation, where multiple parts of the business collaborate and benefit from the same technology. Already in 2022, for example, HR gained more attention and resources for digitalisation, causing the market for employee surveys, digital learning and onboarding to explode. This was important for attracting and retaining talent, as well as for continuous skills development.
But, should we invest in a new intranet?
Answer: Yes. With the rise of hybrid working and the global marketplace, the need for information and collaboration has never been greater. But the question is whether we should stop using the term 'intranet' and instead refer to it as a business system to get the right attention from management.
If we can instead derive how our systems and applications support our business processes and contribute to the core business, we create much better conditions for getting the right resources for digitalisation. If we can also spice up the value of the intranet with "new" elements such as digital learning or onboarding, we also get support and assistance from HR and can meet several needs in the same solution.