Volume 6, January 3, 2000

"We were disappointed that all the time and energy we’d put into the intranet project had so little impact on the company." (p. 36) "The remedy for this disappointment has three main elements:" (1) "Intranets must be relevant and useful." (2) Intranets must be updated at lightning speed. Employees should get news there first." (3) Company intranets need to be backed by strong internal communication programs." (p. 36) "The success of an intranet is about 60 percent communication, 40 percent technology." (p. 36) "If the intranet is built by your constituents, and you’ve given them what they want, you’ve increased the odds they will embrace it by tenfold." (p. 36) "The best thing to do is work backward from your customer." (p. 36)

At the Wharton School of Business in Philadelphia, students are shown a screen shot of a previous version and are asked to improve the interface and to suggest new content and features. (p. 37) At Ketchum public relations in New York City, the home page is changed very day. As a result, "it’s become a habit for most of Ketchum’s 1,300 employees to check the network first thing every morning." (p. 38) "Not surprisingly, intranet developers who have high-level sponsorship report much higher adoption rates." (p. 38) "Serious intranet developers tend to create quantitative and qualitative measures for success. Most track the percentage of employees who use the intranet." (p. 38) "We track the top 10 content categories by visit. We want to know what’s being used, what’s not being used. If it’s not being used, we expire it and see what else we can do." (p. 38)