Intranet Launch – Considerations for OfficeAbility Roll-out

An effective Intranet launch will affect both the short-term acceptance and the long-term success of your Intranet. There are a number of key considerations, as you contemplate your own Intranet launch.

While these points are only meant as helpful suggestions, the best results will arise when an Intranet launch is approached as a cohesive effort, usually championed by a dedicated group or committee. The following points are provided as a starting point; as food-for-thought.

Brand Your Intranet

Overall satisfaction is bolstered when organizations make it a priority to provide a comfortable work environment; similarily, the way the Intranet is ultimately perceived will influence how your users accept this new technology. Think of your Intranet project as a public relations exercise; how can you get people to accept and want to return to this new place? We have some suggestions for branding your Intranet.

• Name Your Intranet: Come up with a unique name that personifies the business, the culture, and what you would like to accomplish through the new platform. Ensure the name will reflect the culture of your organization; perhaps take the opportunity to gauge that culture by holding a contest and voting to select the new name.
• Familiarity: Design your Intranet in-line with existing company branding; including logo and color schemes.
• Have Some Fun: Introduce some fresh new design modification to reflect special events, seasons, and holidays. Google is a master at this subtle ‘fun’ branding.
• Create a poll for the Home page that simply asks users ‘What do you think about the New Intranet?’ Most people appreciate being asked to provide an opinion and the feedback will be valuable.

Plan the Initial Intranet Content

When launching an Intranet site it will be important that users have ready access and are able to view a site that has some content prepared. A large volume of content is not necessary though we recommend a particular attention to quality, as content will be one of the main factors forming a user’s early impressions of the Intranet.

Some ideas for OfficeAbility:

• Create an attractive Home landing page to introduce the Intranet and the features.
• Add the employee directory to the Contact Manager as a beginning for this global contact database. (Note: Perhaps this is a good time to also introduce a policy to stop the distribution of paper copies.)
• Upload the company Employees Manual, Health, Safety, & Environment Policies, Insurance Forms, etc; make certain to discourage the creation of paper copies.
• Create several discussion threads on the forum, including a thread that discusses the introduction of the Intranet. This is a terrific tool for sharing information with all users and will form the beginning of a very powerful knowledge-base.
• Add some articles that address current company related topics; this may be a good opportunity to get into more detail about the Intranet and related policy direction.
• Add events to the OfficeAbility events calendar; should include statutory holidays any other upcoming events to form the beginning of your Events Calendar.

Again, it is important to focus on quality over quantity. The volume will come soon enough, as the Intranet quickly builds content.

Make the Intranet Easily Accessible

We recommend that one of the early priorities is to have Intranet users set the Intranet site as the default landing page when they open their browsers and to bookmark as a favorite. The Intranet will be the first site the Intranet users see and will save the need to manually enter the URL.

The URL should be easy to remember for the times when users need to enter manually, such as when working remotely. Typically what we recommend is that the company website be set-up with a subdomain (relatively simple domain setting) such as intranet.companydomain.com.

Use the 'Remember Me' feature. 'Remember Me' is set as default for all users and will allow them to return to an open session rather than going through a login process each time a computer is restarted or the browser is shut down and reopened.

Engage Users Early

Engaging Intranet users is important, especially at the early stages of launching a new system. People are social by nature and OfficeAbility provides the means for users to start interacting within the Intranet immediately and with very little guidance.

A logical beginning for launching an OfficeAbility Intranet is to ask all users to complete the user profiles in detail; including uploading their photo. It is likely, especially in a larger organization, that your employees do not know much about one another and the profiles are an excellent means to begin some internal networking. This is fun, invites engagement and will inevitably lead to stronger teams and a more close-knit company.

Building awareness of the Intranet can also serve to engage employees and ensure acceptance. Naming the Intranet was mentioned earlier and the concept of including employees in this process is a great way to build awareness. OfficeAbility polls and forms can even be used to facilitate the employee interaction.

Rather than focusing on the company when launching your Intranet, focus on people. Perhaps write an article about the people involved in introducing the Intranet or start a Blog section featuring the company executives. Include images, have fun, and continue with efforts to keep your Intranet people centric.

OfficeAbility has been developed with a number of social media tools and the intent is to get employees actively engaged in the Intranet. Encourage Intranet users to rate and comment whenever they have an opinion on something. Upload photos and video that will be of general interest. Generate conversations about topics that are important to the organization and then invite all users to become a voice; use the Intranet to empower your employees.

Continuous Intranet Improvement

As the Intranet becomes established, solicit comments from all users. Ask them for ideas and think of ways to improve the Intranet. OfficeAbility is flexible and extensible and all that is required are the ideas and ingenuity.

Continue to promote content that engages. Promote a Suggestion Box application where employees can give input about the features they would like to see on the intranet. Create a home page quick poll, such as “how do you like the new intranet”. This shows employees that you’re interested in their opinions and feedback.

Although your intranet will include content that is generated by one, or a handful, of employees prior to launch, remember the single most important factor in your roll-out plan: allow employees to contribute content on the intranet. Employees want to be interactive with this new social tool, and by giving them a chance to contribute, you are ensured success in meeting your intranet launch goals.

Intranet Policy Considerations

Password Security
OfficeAbility has built in security features, such as SSL encruyption, password encryption, ability to monitor user activity. OfficeAbility provides a single encrypted sign-on process for your Intranet and cannot be breached unless someone has that access information. We recommend that organizations introduce strong Password protocol (such as using a combination of numbers & letters) and that care is taken to protect confidentiality of user access information.

Ease Your Mail Server and Data Storage Loads
The intranet will provide a single point of communication that can all but eliminate the need for global emails. Central storage of photos and video will vastly reduce email loads and PC storage requirements. The entire OfficeAbility system is built to promote internal networking and centralized document storage, this will also reduce individual email loads and the need for external communications platforms such as Skype or Facebook that, while useful, can also be an unwanted distraction.

Let your stakeholders know that there are certain expectations for the benefits provided by your Intranet system. OfficeAbility Intranet can be used to significantly lessen loads on bandwidth or data storage and this should be encouraged.

Cut Costs & Save Trees
One of the greatest advantages of the Intranet is that your organization will have a platform to electronically store documents and serve up-to-date information in a readily accessible format. This is a tremendous impetus to do away with masses of paper copies, publishing costs, mailing and distribution costs. Your Intranet will change the way information is managed and will allow your company to set policies that will help the environment, as well as save considerable cost.

Marlon McMartin is founder and Managing Director of OfficeAbility Intranet software. This article is copyright protected and may only be republished provided there is reference given to the author and a back-link provided to www.OfficeAbility.com (anchor text – Intranet Software, Business Intranet, Hosted Intranet).