survey

The State of the Intranet Today

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Executive Summary In this survey, we wanted to find out if intranets are proving their worth

or if they are declining as a corporate “must have” technology.

The survey indicates that intranets are considered important, current

deployments are typically reflective of the lower end of maturity.

If intranets are to be seen as more valuable, then better support

for business processes would be a more direct path to delivering

business value, but we believe that these survey results suggest that

many are failing to fully leverage intranets as a tool for employee

engagement – a significant missed opportunity.

And even where the good technical foundations are in place or are

being upgraded, we are concerned about the lack of maturity around

sponsorship and vision, governance, and measurement. For this

reason, we recommend pursuing practical intranet strategies that

allow businesses to focus on the things that matter and help improve

their maturity.

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This survey considers the question:

Are intranets proving their worth or are they declining as a

corporate “must have” technology?

Clearly the underlying goal of an intranet is to provide business value,

but what does this mean? CMSWire columnist Sam Marshall1 proposes

that an effective intranet is conceptually defined as one that helps bring

systems together:

“Saying that intranet value is about how employees feel may

seem counterintuitive -- surely it is about sales, profits and

customers. Although intranets that quantifiably support strategic

goals are great, in reality most intranets play a low-key but

essential day-to-day role in making employees more produc-

tive, and it is here that the real value lies. Indeed, things that are

core to a business tend to have systems that are more precisely

adapted to need (CRM, ERP and SCM). The role of the intranet is

to bind everything else together and fill the gaps.”

State of the intranet today

1. http://www.cmswire.com/cms/social-business/intranet-value-lies-in-employee-satisfaction-029162.php

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But when participants in another CMSWire survey2 in June 2015 were

asked to define intranet success, they told us that success was measured

in tangible metrics. For example, they said that an intranet is successful

if 60% or more users view content at least once a day or 24% contribute

content of any kind once a day.

We recognize that intranets are complex business tools and this

question has many facets, so we have looked at the survey results

through the lens of an intranet maturity framework.

Our framework considers the following components of a business

improvement initiative:

Vision and objectives

Sponsorship and ownership

Intranet capabilities deployed, which include:

Functions and content offered

Platforms used

Management and support

Improvement planning

Taken together, these components give us the ability to check the

maturity of an intranet and how well it has been adopted in a business.

The survey responses provide insights into each of these aspects,

allowing an assessment of the current maturity of company intranets.

Let’s now look at the topics raised in the survey to check on the

current state.

2. http://www.cmswire.com/social-business/the-million-dollar-question-what-is-intranet-success/

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The intranet’s relative priority

In our survey, the importance ranks highly, with 79% of respondents consid-

ering the intranet to be important, very important, or extremely important.

Forty-two percent considered it to be very or extremely important.

Intranets continue to be considered as important business tools and

if we consider them as a solution within the broader digital workplace

architecture, these results also compare well with CMSWire’s 2017 State

of the Digital Workplace Report3, where over 48% of respondents rank

the digital workplace as very or extremely important.

However, how well are we managing and implementing them so that they

deliver value?

How does the intranet rank in terms of your organization’s priorities?

Q7

Extremely Important

Very Important

Important

Slightly Important

Not Important

15.8%

25.7%

37.4%

16.4%

4.7%

3. https://www-cmswire.simplermedia.com/cw-sv-2017-dwx.html

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Intranet ownership and maintenance

Over two-thirds of companies have a single department owning the

intranet, with IT owning 37% and Internal Communications 27%. No other

departments shows any significant ownership across our survey base.

It is interesting to note that some companies entrust the intranet

ownership to Knowledge Management or Digital Strategy. But it appears

that central functions control the intranet in most companies. We

also noticed that only two respondents indicated that ownership was

Which department is primarily responsible for managing your organization’s intranet?

Q4

Information Technology

Employee/Internal Communications

No single function has ownership

Marketing

Other

Human Resources

Operations

36.2%

26.7%

15.2%

8.6%

5.7%

4.3%

3.3%

Percentage of companies that have no single department owning the organization’s Intranet. (Broken down by company size)

Q8b

Large Companies

SmallCompanies

Mid-sizedCompanies

25%13%8%

Small companies (1-1000 employees)

Mid-sized companies (1001-5000 employees)

Large companies (5001+ employees)

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shared between different functions, and again in both these cases it

was between the two dominant functions – IT and internal communi-

cations. Smaller organizations were also more likely to indicate that no

single function has ownership of the intranet, suggesting this was not a

strategic choice.

Intranet adoption and usage

Intranet adoption is critical but difficult to assess. Companies often set

their intranet home page as the default web browser start page, but is

just starting the browser with the intranet considered valuable usage?

Our respondents stated that their intranet achieved over 50% usage

daily, with an additional 29% stating usage weekly. This gives 80%

usage weekly or more.

Based on past surveys, 50% daily usage is barely considered success-

ful. 12% of respondents also said they didn’t know how frequently

their intranet was being used – this raises questions about how those

companies measure success.

How frequently do most employees use your intranet on average?

Q9

Daily 52.6%

Weekly 28.7%

Monthly 3.5%

Rarely 3.5%

Unsure / Don’t Know 11.7%

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Integrations with other business applications

Integrating the intranet with other business apps is a key measure

of maturity. A large portion of the respondents have already linked

content-focused applications. There is more limited integration with

other lines of business apps and CRM systems.

Overall, we see bias toward content rather than business process with

less appetite for integrating systems such as Learning Management,

Expense Management, CRM, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and

other line of business transaction systems.

How does your intranet integrate with other employee applications?

Q12

ALREADY INTEGRATED

UNSURE / DON’T KNOW

NOT APPLICABLE

NOT INTEGRATED

PLANNING TO INTEGRATE

Document Management Box, Google Drive, Microsoft O�ce

Enterprise Search

Legacy Knowledge Management ToolsSharePoint, Wikis

Identity & Access ManagementOkta, OneLogin

Social, Chat & Collaboration ToolsSlack, HipChat, Yammer, Workplace by Facebook

HRMS & Human CapitalWorkday, SuccessFactors

Unified Communication & Conferencing Zoom, Skype for Business

Learning Management SystemsCornerstone

Expense ManagementConcur

CRM Salesforce

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or line of business transaction systems

SAP

46.4% 13.6% 35.0% 2.7% 2.1%

46.8% 13.0% 28.8% 7.2% 4.3%

43.6% 14.3% 27.9% 12.1% 14.0%

48.6% 8.0% 23.9% 12.3% 7.3%

34.3% 16.4% 34.3% 13.6% 1.4%

33.1% 10.3% 42.7% 8.1% 5.9%

27.5% 17.4% 42.0% 10.9% 2.2%

23.7% 6.5% 46.0% 16.6% 7.2%

17.7% 7.4% 53.7% 15.4% 5.9%

12.9% 11.4% 54.3% 17.1% 4.3%

10.0% 5.7% 55.0% 18.6% 10.7%

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Intranet technology adoption

The survey considered platform selection. The results showed a clear

distinction between those using SharePoint® (45%) and those using

another platform (44%) (with the remainder using hybrid deployments

or have no defined intranet).

As a single solution, the dominance of SharePoint is clear, although

respondents are using a wide range of versions from SharePoint Online

within Office 365, to SharePoint 2013 and 2010. Some respondents

were also using additional third-party add-ons to create their intranet in

SharePoint, while others augmented SharePoint with other non-Micro-

soft solutions.

While there were no other platforms that registered more than 5% of

the current installed market, we can see there is an active parallel install

base of organizations that do not use Microsoft as the platform for their

intranet. There was also more diversity of platforms at the smaller and

Which intranet platform(s) are you currently using?

Q5

SharePoint

45% 44% 11%

Some other platform

A hybrid deployment /

no definedintranet

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larger organizations, while nearly 60% of mid-sized organizations (between

1,001 and 5,000 employees) use SharePoint or Office 365.

The evolving value of intranets

When considering what benefits an intranet brings to an organization, only

57% thought that the intranet helped worker productivity by providing

content and training. This means that 43% of respondents felt there was

no contribution to productivity with content delivery. Even less (50%), felt

that the intranet helped foster a sense of engagement to the organization.

There was very slight benefit for on-boarding or connecting coworkers,

although delivering company communications showed some benefits.

Which of the following do you consider the two most important benefits of an intranet?

Qsharepoint

Sharepoint / O�ce 365

Other

Engaging employees and

fostering a sense of

connection with the

organization

50%

40%

Improving productivity by managing and

sourcing critical content

and training

53%

45%

E�ciently administering

mandatory company

communica-tions

13%

23%

Helping employees find the appropriate

coworkers to connect with

17%

8%

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Some respondents called out additional benefits, such as knowledge

management and collaboration, although these were not frequently

reported. We also found some curious differences in opinion between

organizations using SharePoint and those using other solutions: Those

using SharePoint were more likely to indicate they value employee

engagement, productivity, and connecting people; non-Microsoft

based intranets were more like to value the management of mandatory

communication than their Microsoft-based peers.

Measuring success

The results show that usage, survey scores, and the number of pages

visited are the most popular measures.

There is limited focus on time to locate pages and support calls, which

may reflect the difficulties of collecting or analyzing this information. More

critically, 30% had no success measures in place, although only 11% of large

enterprises reported this versus 34% of small and mid-sized organizations.

Percentage of companies that don’t measure their intranet success.

Q10

32%of small

companies

39%11%

of mid-sized companies

of large companies

Small companies (1-1000 employees)

Mid-sized companies (1001-5000 employees)

Large companies (5001+ employees)

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Top intranet challenges

A range of challenges were offered in the survey, and the top two

reported by 50% of respondents were:

Complexity of use driven by multiple siloed systems of record

The inability to find content

To a lesser degree, the limited ability to integrate solutions and provide

integrated collaboration was also seen as an issue. Indications of limited

management interest were reflected in the responses for stale content

and low engagement by 30% of respondents.

16%

33%

13%

7%9%

14%

36%

30%

34%

Which of the following are your organization’s top three intranet challenges?

Q11

12%13%

7%

31%

24%

16%

33%35%

22%

16%17%18%

Heavy dependency

on IT resources

to maintain

18%17%

23%

Integration among various digital

workplace solutions

Cumbersome content

publishing process &

tools

16%.

26%

23%

Low engagement & adoption

Multiple siloed

systems of record

(databases, CRM, ERP,

Records Manage-

ment)

OtherFunctional limitations in current

platforms / technology

Stale and outdated content

Di�cult to search &

locate content

Small companies (1-1000 employees)

Mid-sized companies (1001-5000 employees)

Large companies (5001+ employees)

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We also noticed that large enterprises were more likely to report problems

with integration among various digital workplace solutions, while mid-sized

organizations were more constrained by functional limitations and difficul-

ties with search.

Current State Commentary

Although the survey indicates that intranets are considered important,

current deployments are typically reflective of the lower end of maturity.

Size is a factor, the average company is delivering content and training, but

not neccesarily using it as an engagement tool. While we think that support-

ing business processes would be a more direct path to delivering business

value, we also believe that failing to fully leverage intranets as a tool for

employee engagement may be a missed opportunity in many cases.

It may be that the higher maturity objectives – like employee engage-

ment - are well down on the list because of the fundamental difficul-

ties many are still experiencing with content focused capabilities and

because they lack sophisticated measures to demonstrate the real

impact their intranet is having.

Considering this, it is not a surprise that we saw less interest in integrat-

ing business systems, like CRM and ERP. Respondents were more evenly

split for HCM and Unified Communications integration. This is probably

because HR is usually a shared service and collaboration is a business-

wide use case, making them a natural fit for intranet integration.

However, the fact that almost half of the respondents told us that they had

selected a new intranet in the past year or were expecting to replace their

intranet within the coming year could be taken to express two possible

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scenarios – on the positive, intranet managers are able to secure funding

for platform renewal, but on the negative this high level of churn may

reflect a broad dissatisfaction with the technologies being used.

This dissatisfaction with technology outcomes may be a challenge for

mid-sized organizations, who reported a much higher use of SharePoint

but also were more likely to nominate functional limitations and difficul-

ties with search as one of their top three challenges.

What does the future look like?

Do the following statements reflect workplace trends impacting your

organization?

We posed several questions to capture trends affecting the intranet.

Our respondents noted the biggest challenges were:

Too much searching

Engagement

Looking more closely at these results, we found that small and mid-sized

organizations were generally more concerned about search, whereas

larger enterprises were equally concerned about search and employee

engagement.

These were closely followed by the growing remote workforce and the

complexity of the application environment. It was felt that working with

multiple generations in the workforce was significant but that the move

to contingent workforces is less significant.

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Similar themes were seen in CMSWire’s 2017 State of the Digital Workplace

Report, which also ranked ‘culture and change’ and ‘search and information

findability’ in the top 5 digital workplace priorities.

Our insights

The employee engagement environment is getting more complex, and

it is unclear if many intranet solutions are ready for the changes that

are happening now. Even where the good technical foundations are

Do these statements reflect workplace trends impacting your organization? (Percentage of “yes” replies)

Q6

Increasing use of

freelanceand

contingent workers

make collaboration more di�cult

33%37%38%

Multi-generational

workplace makes

employee communica-

tions challenging

46%

59%

43%

Employee engagement

is a challenge

69%67%

59%

Employees spend too much time

searching for necessary

content

69%72%

67%

The abundance

of workplace software

applications is becoming

counter-productive

48%

.

61%59%

A growing number

of remote employees is a�ecting

internal communica-

tion & connection

61%59%

56%

Small companies (1-1000 employees)

Mid-sized companies (1001-5000 employees)

Large companies (5001+ employees)

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in place or are being upgraded, we remain concerned about the lack

of maturity around sponsorship and vision, governance, and a lack of

success measurements.

Based on the results of this survey, we recommend pursuing practical

intranet strategies that as much as possible allow businesses to focus

on the things that matter and will help to improve their maturity.

This includes:

Placing a greater emphasis on employee engagement – For small

and mid-sized organizations not already thinking about this issue,

it may require shifting from an emphasis on broadcast and static

information sharing, to a more social or rich-content approach (such

as video).

Focusing content management efforts on findability – As well as

providing the right places to store content, it is just as important to

make sure this information can be found by the right people, at the

right time.

Demand access to resources and tools to support better

analytics and insight – Business stakeholders will never be

convinced by basic intranet statistics, but you will need access to the

right tools, data and possibly skills to paint a compelling picture – if

you are replacing your intranet and can argue to spend money on an

upgrade, make you sure include all the supporting capabilities.

Targeting simple business process integration – Taking baby

steps in the short-to-medium term and looking for quick wins or

easy integrations that add value without much pain or complexity.

For more mature intranets already actively focused on the employee experi-

ence, we believe ownership of the intranet should be a consideration moving

forward, if the goal is to provide a truly integrated employee experience.

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About our RespondentsRespondents were invited to respond to an online survey between September

18 and October 13, 2017.

210 responses were collected, including organizations ranging in size from

small businesses to large enterprise employing over 100,000 people.

50,001-100,000 6.2%

10,000-50,000 4.3%

5,001-10,000 9.1%

1,001-5,000 24.3%

What is your organization's size? (In employee numbers)

Q1

1-100 26.1%

101-1,000 21.9%

100,000+ 8.1%

APPENDIX

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A variety of industries were represented in the result, with a particular-

ly strong response from Information Technology followed by Consumer

Products and Health Care, Financial Services / Insurance, and Government.

Which of the following best describes your industry?

Q3

Information Technology

Banking / Financial Service / Insurance

Government

Consumer Products / Health Care

Telecommunication Services / Utilities

Logistics / Advertising / Education / Real Estate

Architecture / Construction

Energy

Primary Materials / Agriculture / Industrial

Other

23.3%

15.7%

10.9%

10.5%

4.3%

3.8%

2.9%

2.9%

1.9

23.8%

APPENDIX

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

James Dellow Passionate about changing the way the world gets work done, James specializes in human-centered technologies that help people connect, communicate and collaborate with each other.

He brings more than a decade of experience working in intranet and knowledge management roles and as a consultant with a wide range of government, professional and blue chip companies. James has helped clients with digital workplace strategy, intranet vendor selection, and has worked with a variety of platforms as a consultant advising on information architecture, governance, user experience, and content management.

James was awarded a Master of Business & Technology in 2005 and is the author of numerous published articles, including on CMSWire.

Robin Wall Robin Wall is an accomplished consulting professional, skilled in strategic consulting, program management, information manage-ment and business transformation. He specialises in digital transformation, taking his clients on the journey to high levels of digital maturity.

Robin successfully gains benefits from transformation projects, by effectively blending improvements in digital technology, data structures, business improvement and people upskilling.

Robin regularly runs public workshops on Information Manage-ment and Information Governance.

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CMSWire, published by Simpler Media Group, Inc., provides news, advice and analysis for professionals driving digital content strategy, management, and marketing for leading organizations. More than 400 industry professionals and editors produce our authoritative and innovative analysis for a community of over 750,000 market influencers each quarter.

Coverage areas include digital and customer experience, digital marketing, social business and information management.

Learn more at www.cmswire.com

Simpplr is a modern employee intranet that drives employee productivity and engagement by creating an intelligent, engaging and integrated digital workplace. We take the abstract out of day-to-day communication, better enabling distributed teams to connect, share, and distribute ideas and information. Simpplr is trusted by leading brands including Box, Workday, DocuSign, Eurostar, and Columbia University to connect, engage and empower their employees. Simpplr is headquartered in Redwood City, CA with offices in the UK and India, and is backed by Norwest Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures.

Learn more at www.simpplr.com

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