It’s Monday morning. Time to work. The weekend is rapidly fading into a distant memory. You pour coffee into your mug, then reluctantly settle in at your desk, hoping the caffeine kicks in soon so you can begin the arduous task of tracking down the quarterly expense reports. You need to find the expense summary page on the intranet to begin, but you can’t quite remember where that page lives in the intranet.
After firing up your web browser, the familiar, yet clunky and (let’s be honest here) ugly company intranet greets you. Scrolling down the page, you don’t pay a whole lot of attention to the first block of content you see because it’s usually a couple of months out of date and rarely relevant to your needs. Instead, you embark on a quest through a seemingly endless list of links, desperately searching for the one that takes you to the expense report summary.
Credit: Mohamed_hassan, https://pixabay.com/users/mohamed_hassan-5229782/, via Pixabay
Despite your best efforts, the link remains elusive. Blaming your failure on the lack of caffeine, you take another swig of coffee, willing it to magically sharpen your focus. You scroll through the page again, trying to remember if this how you found the page in the past. Definitely not there. Maybe in the navigation? Nope. The few navigation menus aren’t even close to being intuitive with no clear signposts to direct you where the elusive link might be. There are only a few links under each heading, none of which seem like anyone would actually need to use them. Frustration has begun to creep in, and not because you just spilled coffee on your keyboard.
You’re certain that you found the expense summary page somehow last month and wish you’d just bookmarked the page then. “It shouldn’t be this hard,” you grudgingly think as you mop up the last few drops of coffee from the space bar. Maybe you found it by searching? That must be it. You type “expense summary” in the search box and hit enter, ready to get this task crossed off your to-do list. Then you scroll and scroll, and the search results become less and less relevant. Nothing even remotely resembles the expense summary page you’re looking for, and you’re dumbfounded that the search is offering up years-old content.
In a desperate attempt for assistance, you decide to reach out to your coworker, Steve, with an email. Maybe he remembers where that link is. After sending him a quick email, you continue your aimless hunt for the expense summary and forms, buried somewhere deep in the labyrinthine structure of the intranet, hoping to hear the familiar ding of a new email from Steve with a link to the page to put an end to the fruitless search. You stretch your back, then start clicking random links at this point, hoping luck directs you to someplace familiar. You grab your coffee mug for another drink, only to realize that you’re out. Thankful for an excuse to take a break from staring at the intranet, you stand up and head back to the coffee maker. This is going to require another cup for sure.
It's Time
Does this scenario sound familiar? If so, it’s probably time to think about an intranet refresh. Employees waste countless hours each year trying to wade through unorganized and outdated content on company intranets. Bad navigation, unintuitive interfaces, and poorly laid-out pages are all performance-hindering culprits. Imagine the convenience of a direct link right on the homepage to the quarterly expense summary page to begin your work. What if the navigation directed you to this page based on the task you’re trying to accomplish? Or if typing “expense summary” in the search box actually gave you a link directly to the correct page right at the top of the results? Wouldn’t it have been a lot more convenient if you had been able to send Steve an instant message instead of waiting for him to email back?
These ideas are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to an intranet wish-list. Many organizations are still stuck on older platforms that might not offer enough in terms of organization or aesthetic appeal. Sometimes, older intranets were rolled out without much consideration for organization and user interaction, much less the look and feel. Oftentimes, the company intranet is an unappealing utilitarian application that just stores documents (badly) and doesn’t promote any kind of resemblance to the company’s brand. In other words, some old intranets are just plain ugly on top of being disorganized.
But an intranet upgrade should be more than an update to the way it looks. An intranet refresh is also about addressing shortcomings of older, outdated platforms. These older intranets often function solely as document repositories and lack any capability to promote collaboration, communication, and productivity for employees. An ideal intranet refresh involves embracing a modern digital workplace that leverages a robust ecosystem with powerful tools, such as SharePoint Online and the Microsoft 365 (M365) suite. By making the transition to a modern intranet in the M365 platform, organizations can unlock a wide range of features and functionalities, facilitating seamless collaboration, document management, and information sharing.
Further, building a modern digital workplace in Microsoft 365 provides employees with a full set of tools to make their work-lives easier. Microsoft Teams, Viva Engage (formerly Yammer), Lists, file management, and real-time online collaboration with the familiar Office products. Microsoft Teams serves as your organization’s central hub for teamwork and file sharing, providing individual and group chat and video meetings. Viva Engage is your organization's social presence, fostering employee engagement by allowing them to ask questions, share ideas, and build connections across the organization in ways that they might not otherwise have a reason to do so.
Get Help!
Moving an old intranet into SharePoint Online and M365 isn’t a quick and easy process. Careful planning and consideration are needed to ensure you don’t end up with the same disorganized content on a new platform. In most organizations, the Information Technology department is often “in-charge” of the intranet but is often burdened with other tasks that make it difficult to find the time to focus on a large initiative such as upgrading the company intranet in the best possible way. Because of this, it’s often essential to work with a partner or consulting firm that specializes in intranet setup and upgrades in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. You will want to make sure that consulting company knows the new platform inside and out and has a track record for successful implementations – like Pait Group! Our company has been around for over a decade and has helped hundreds of clients from all types of industries successfully complete intranet setup and upgrade projects. We have a proven process for analyzing the condition of your information, and work closely with you and your employees to find out how your organization can best benefit from having a new intranet built to meet your needs.
A new intranet should attempt to address issues that employees have with finding content. At the same time, anything that is functional and useful on the old intranet should try to be preserved in some way to not remove working functionality. This is part of Pait Group’s process – we conduct focus group meetings and provide questionnaires to your workforce to assess the existing system, determine what content would be most beneficial, identify pain points, and develop a comprehensive strategy for intranet transformation. One key aspect of upgrading to a new intranet is figuring out what information is relevant and what outdated content should be archived in the new modern SharePoint site, ensuring a seamless transition and preserving essential information. Pait Group excels in this process, utilizing best practices and efficient migration tools to streamline the content transfer.
Additionally, Pait Group specializes in incorporating your custom company branding into SharePoint, creating a visually appealing and cohesive intranet experience that is aligned with your organization's identity and values. Custom branding helps establish a strong adoption rate for the new intranet and helps align employees with the company’s culture.
Automation can also play a significant role in an intranet, enhancing efficiency and reducing repetitive tasks. Pait Group can help you optimize your workforce by identifying key business processes that could leverage the Power Platform, which includes tools like Power Automate, Power Apps, and Power BI, to automate tasks within the intranet environment. This kind of automation streamlines workflows, increases productivity, and helps free up employees' time for more valuable tasks.
Another critical component of a proper intranet upgrade is training. Often, employees are dumped into their positions with no formal onboarding experience, leaving them to their own devices when trying to find anything on the outdated intranet. Even with a fresh, new, shiny intranet, it’s important to get your workforce up to speed on what these changes mean for them. Training is necessary to maintain the intranet once it’s been established, in addition to the host of new tools employees have at their disposal. It’s not going to do anyone any good to roll out new tools without providing guidance on how to use them. Training is necessary at different levels (from end user to administrators) to ensure a smooth adoption process, and to maximize the benefits of your new modern digital workplace. Fortunately, Pait Group also offers comprehensive user trainings to empower your employees to make the most of their new platform.
If it’s time for an intranet refresh or a complete upgrade, consider working with Pait Group. Once your new intranet is rolled out, you’ll be able to find that link to the expense summary page and have it open before you even need that first sip of coffee!