The annual convention of we.CONNECT Global Leaders GmBH on Intranet technologies seeks to close the difference between business need and technology offerings. Its primary focus is on streamlining business processes with help of Intranets and organization-wide social collaboration. Along with the obvious networking opportunities, we, at CIGNEX were also highly interested in the survey that has thought leaders and influencers sharing their opinions on intranet trends, its resources, and performance.
The online survey was conducted with 149 respondents in business, communication, knowledge, human resource and technology management from leading American companies. Here are some golden nuggets of the survey results that can give direction to any company on how integrating intranet can be used to boost workplace productivity and propel cross-division operational efficiencies.
INDUSTRY TRENDS – This module gave a peek into general trends on perception and influence around Intranet
1. Industry Intranet Definition – The following are top definitions of an intranet as perceived in an organization
- Internal Communications – 87%
- Project Collaboration – 47%
- Self-Service Applications – 40%
2. Intranet Sponsor – The below designations/ divisions sponsor an Intranet
- Head of Internal Communications – 63%
- CEO – 16%
- Marketing head, HR head, and CIO, took a joint third place – 12%
3. Intranet Leadership – The below are top three areas/ divisions within the organization that drive development of intranet
- Internal Communications – 64%
- IT – 36%
- Marketing – 11%
INTRANET TEAM – This module shows us the composition of an Intranet team within the organization
4. Organizational Profile – The top three roles which comprise of the Intranet team are
- Content Management – 81%
- Intranet Manager – 59%
- IT – 55%
5. Intranet Team Members Per Category – The below are the number of full time contributors (on average) for the top 3 roles
- Content Management – 10
- Intranet Management – 2
- IT - 2
An interesting observation was that though User Experience roles is 1/3rd of the team composition, it has the second highest number of people aligned to the Intranet team (7 full time contributors on average). This means that many of them are working on the sidelines as a secondary activity. This thought is corroborated in the below findings.
6. Role Classification – Based on two key role classification criteria (support role vs dedicated role), below are how top roles are classified:
- Content Management – 47% dedicated vs. 53% support
- Intranet Management – 59% dedicated vs. 41% support
- Information & Security management - 18% dedicated vs. 82% support
- User Experience - 18% dedicated vs. 82% support
7. Intranet Content Contributors – While only 20% of respondents had 1001+ content contributors within their companies, a majority of them (49%) had between 0 to 100 content contributors.
8. Intranet Unit Status – Here, respondents were probed to see whether the Intranet team should belong to a distinct, separate business unit within their organizations. Only 31% said ‘Yes’ to this.
INTRANET RESOURCES – This module covers how the different factors affect the growth, reach and coverage of Intranet team within their organizations.
9. Intranet Platform Budget Sources – The below are top set of teams where the Intranet budget comes from –
- Internal Communications, IT
- Internal Communications, IT, HR
- Business Support Budget
10. Factors Influencing Team Resources - The below top three factors affect (either negatively or positively) the intranet resources
- Budget allocation – 73% (a pretty obvious factor)
- Organizational culture – 51%
- Intranet adoption across the organization – 41%
11. Critical Resource Allocation Factor Explained – The below are some opinions that respondents feel are most critical factors influencing team resources.
- Organizational Culture: ‘less supportive leading to less resources’
- Budget: ‘because the direct business impact of the intranet is vague we lack support.’
- Intranet Usage and Adoption: ‘We need our employees to access the site because they know the resources they need to do their jobs are there.’
INTRANET PERFORMANCE & STRUCTURE – This module looks at the performance of intranet set up at companies
12. Average Employee Access Rate of Intranet Platform – A healthy 86% of respondents say that more than half the employees access corporate intranet.
13. Intranet Satisfaction Rate – 66% of respondents give 3 or 4 stars out of 5, for current user adoption rate of the Intranet.
14. Intranet platform Purpose – The top 3 purposes for which Intranet is accessed include –
- Information purposes – 76%
- Communications purposes – 71%
- Access other enterprise applications – 47%
15. Governance Structure - The breakup of intranet governance structure options are as under-
- a. Centralized – 39%
- b. Hybrid – 34%
- c. Decentralized – 24%
- d. Other – 3%
If you are interested in utilizing the immense value provided by intranet systems within your organization, do feel free to connect with us at CIGNEX. With hands-on experience in deeply customized intranet portal solutions, we are the ideal technology partners to drive centralized information access and social collaboration that provides information to users wherever they want, wherever they want.
