Building an intranet can seem like an exciting opportunity to boost productivity, collaboration, and communication within your organization. However, before you decide to tackle this project on your own, it's essential to understand the complexities involved. While the DIY route might appear cost-effective initially, the risks and hidden challenges can lead to unexpected setbacks and long-term costs.
In this guide, we’ll explore the key considerations that business leaders should keep in mind when deciding whether to build an intranet themselves or partner with experts.
Defining the Intranet’s Purpose and Goals
It may seem straightforward to outline the goals for your intranet—communication, file sharing, and team collaboration. However, defining these objectives requires a deep understanding of how your organization operates and how different departments will interact with the platform. Each department may have unique requirements, and failing to identify these can lead to a disjointed and inefficient intranet. Moreover, an intranet that doesn’t align well with business goals can quickly become an underutilized tool, ultimately wasting time and resources.
Key Considerations for Defining Goals:
Identify Department Needs: Ensure that all departments' unique requirements are considered.
Align with Business Goals: Make sure the intranet supports your broader organizational objectives.
Plan for Future Scalability: Design with growth in mind to accommodate new employees and evolving processes.
Planning the Structure, User Roles, and Permissions — Security Risks of DIY
Establishing a well-structured intranet involves more than just creating an intuitive layout. The way information is organized affects both usability and security. Designing a structure that supports efficient navigation requires a good understanding of how information flows within your organization. You need to decide on what sections to include, how to categorize content, and how to make sure employees can quickly find what they need.
User roles and permissions are also critical. Without experience in setting up these permissions, you could end up with a system where sensitive information is accessible to unauthorized users, leading to potential data breaches and compliance issues.
It's not just about restricting access—it’s also about enabling employees to easily access the resources they need without unnecessary barriers. Balancing security and usability is challenging, especially without professional experience, and mistakes in this area can have significant consequences for your organization.
Designing Your Intranet — The Risk of Poor Adoption
A well-designed intranet must reflect your brand identity while being easy to navigate for all users. Customizing an intranet to align with your branding while ensuring functionality can be challenging without professional support. A visually appealing, mobile-friendly, and user-friendly intranet encourages employees to engage regularly. On the other hand, a cluttered or confusing interface can lead to low engagement, turning your investment into a wasted effort.
Consider these design elements to enhance adoption:
Brand Alignment: Ensure the intranet accurately reflects your organization's branding, including colors, logos, and visual style, to create familiarity and reinforce company culture.
Device Adaptability: Design the intranet to be fully responsive across various devices, such as desktops, tablets, and smartphones, so employees can access it seamlessly, whether they are in the office or working remotely.
In-Office vs. Remote Needs: Consider the different needs of in-office and remote employees, ensuring the intranet is designed to support easy access for everyone, whether they are on-site or working remotely.
User-Friendliness: Keep navigation simple and intuitive by organizing content logically, using clear labels, and minimizing unnecessary steps, ensuring that employees of all technical skill levels can easily find what they need.
Content Creation and Management
An intranet is only as effective as the content it holds. Establishing a content management strategy that ensures information is relevant, accessible, and updated regularly requires a long-term commitment and expertise. Without a solid content management plan, your intranet can quickly become cluttered with outdated information, making it difficult for employees to find what they need. This can reduce overall engagement and erode trust in the content that is valuable or current.
To keep the content valuable, you need to define clear roles for content ownership—deciding who is responsible for creating, reviewing, and updating content. This ensures that the information remains current and that outdated content is archived or removed. Maintaining high-quality content is a continuous process that requires oversight and regular evaluation to keep the intranet effective as a tool for your business.
Building and Customizing Your Intranet — Technical Pitfalls
The actual building of your intranet involves configuring infrastructure, establishing security protocols, and implementing custom integrations. Each of these technical components comes with its own set of challenges. For instance, improper configuration of security protocols can leave your system vulnerable to unauthorized access, potentially leading to data breaches and significant legal implications.
Implementing custom integrations is also a complex task. You need to ensure that all integrated tools and systems work seamlessly together and that employees can use them without excessive training. Without sufficient technical expertise, misconfigurations can occur that negatively affect user experience and overall productivity. These technical pitfalls can be costly to fix after implementation, making it crucial to understand the complexities involved before starting.
Testing, Launching, and Promoting Your Intranet
Testing and launching an intranet requires more than simply making sure it works. Usability testing with different user groups helps identify potential issues before a full rollout, ensuring that the platform meets the needs of various departments and employee types. Skipping or rushing through the testing phase can lead to issues that could have been addressed early, resulting in negative first impressions and low user adoption.
Additionally, promoting adoption involves more than a simple announcement. You need a comprehensive plan that includes training sessions, user guides, and ongoing support to make sure all employees understand the benefits and are motivated to use the new system. Successful adoption requires effort, planning, and resources, which are often underestimated in a DIY project.
Training and Support for Intranet Users — Ensuring Long-Term Success
Training and support are essential for successful intranet adoption. Employees must understand how to navigate and use the intranet effectively. Without proper training, even the best-designed intranet can go unused. Training should be continuous, with regular updates and refresher courses as features evolve. Diverse resources—manuals, tutorials, and help centers—ensure all learning preferences are met, supporting long-term adoption.
Training and Support Strategies Include:
Ongoing Training Sessions: Conduct regular training sessions to keep employees updated on new intranet features and functionalities.
Diverse Learning Resources: Provide user guides, video tutorials, and help centers to cater to different learning styles and preferences.
Refresher Courses: Offer periodic refresher courses to reinforce intranet usage and ensure employees remain confident in their ability to navigate the platform.
User Feedback Channels: Encourage feedback from employees to identify areas where additional training or support might be needed.
This combination of ongoing support and diverse training methods helps ensure that your intranet remains a valuable resource for your employees, contributing to better engagement and overall productivity.
Choosing the Right Platform and Hosting Options — The Last Step, Not the First
Only after defining your goals, planning the structure, designing the layout, and preparing content should you choose the right platform and hosting option. Selecting a platform without fully understanding what your intranet needs to achieve can lead to a poor fit that either lacks essential features or is unnecessarily complex and expensive.
Platforms like SharePoint offer robust capabilities, but you must consider several factors:
Scalability: Will the platform grow with your organization?
Integration: How well does it integrate with your existing tools?
Data Security: Does it meet your security requirements?
Cost: Is it affordable both now and as you scale?
Cloud-based solutions offer flexibility, while on-premise hosting provides more control—each with its own benefits and challenges. Careful evaluation is essential to ensure that your chosen platform meets both current and future needs.
Continuous Improvement and Evaluation
An intranet is not a set-it-and-forget-it tool. The needs of your organization will evolve, and your intranet needs to evolve with them. Regular evaluations, user feedback, and updates are critical to keeping your intranet relevant and valuable to your employees. Additionally, having robust reporting capabilities is important for gaining real-time insights that can drive informed decisions. However, ongoing improvements require both time and specialized skills, which can be challenging to manage without dedicated resources.
So — Should You Build Your Own Intranet?
Building your own intranet may initially seem like a cost-saving option, but it can come with hidden challenges and risks that might end up being far more costly in the long run. Every aspect—from platform selection to content management and security—requires careful planning and technical know-how. Without the right expertise, it’s easy to end up with an intranet that doesn’t fully meet your needs, leading to underutilization or even costly rework.
By partnering with Synergy, you gain access to a team that brings expertise in every aspect of intranet development—from planning and design to implementation and continuous support. We specialize in building intranets that are tailored to fit your organization’s culture, workflows, and specific needs. Our solutions are designed to integrate seamlessly with your existing technology stack, ensuring a smooth transition and minimal disruption.
With Synergy, you'll have a custom intranet solution that boosts productivity, collaboration, and employee engagement, while avoiding the risks, inefficiencies, and setbacks that often occur when you build your own intranet.
Ready to create an intranet that works seamlessly for your business? Contact Synergy today for a consultation and let us simplify the process for you.
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