Review your Intranet Killer Application: The "Who-Is-Who"
Intranet managers often wonder how they can spice up their Intranet with new content, applications and features in order to generate more visits from the organization's staff. But in their quest for new "killer applications", they forget there is some low hanging fruit available: the "Who is Who" application (aka "staff directory", "people search" , "company white pages", ...)
Research has shown that the large majority of the Intranets out there, do have a "Who is who" application. In most cases it was one of the first applications made available when the Intranet was launched. Unfortunately, the state of the typical "Who is who" has remained pretty static over the lifecycle of the Intranet: they only provide a simple search box and the available content is often limited to: name, job title, phone number, and e-mail address. Pretty dull and in some cases also hard to use: problematic usability (e.g. number of clicks to access it, well hidden or not on the homepage) and poor search functionality.
The latest generation of staff directories are much richer applications: they hold additional information about people which might be valuable for knowledge sharing and discovery, e.g.: picture, short profile, key expertise, projects involved in, team members, possible publications, hobbies and interests, etc. What type of information you should capture depends on the type and culture of the organization, but a rich "Who is who" with quality information is a true driver for renewed Intranet success. Offering different search options (e.g. "Quick search" to look up a phone number or an "Advanced search") has also proven to be very effective.
So if you are an Intranet manager wondering how to improve your Intranet: have a critical look at your "Who is who" and think of how you could rework it to make it more useful and usable for your staff.
Multi-site web content management
An increasing amount of organizations are starting to launch multiple websites or they want to consolidate the management of these different websites into one central content management environment. But even more than 10 years after the arrival of web content management systems on the market, very few of them address these multi-site management issues.
(CMSWatch)
Multi-site web content management
An increasing amount of organizations are starting to launch multiple websites or they want to consolidate the management of these different websites into one central content management environment. But even more than 10 years after the arrival of web content management systems on the market, very few of them address these multi-site management issues.
(CMSWatch)
The Search still does not work!
For website/intranet visitors, one of the most frustrating things is the lack of a properly working search engine. Even with today's state-of-the-art search technologies, organizations do not seem to be able to get it right. This article provides some hints on how to improve findability and gain back the confidence of the visitors.
