1. Determine Purpose

Before conducting any research, determine why you’re seeking an intranet solution and how will you implement it. Here are some questions to ponder on:

• Which business goals do you intend to achieve with your intranet?

• What does your ideal intranet look like?

• How do your employees get information? Is it effective?

• How do you picture your company in the next few years?

2. Look at Other Intranet Examples

To give you an idea of how a good intranet looks like, we suggest looking at the best examples of intranets. This will help you determine which features should be on it, how you should design a balanced intranet homepage, and how you can personalize it according to your company culture, goals, and vision.

3. Plan a Roadmap

Choosing an intranet provider is just part of the process. What you should focus on is planning on building your intranet. This would mean developing project plans, a site map, building a platform identity and editorial calendars. 

When your intranet is ready to be launched, consider beta testing to give your employees an opportunity to use or experience the intranet to uncover any issues or bugs before the actual release,

4. Decide on Must-Have Intranet Features

When you’re building your intranet, consider the features that will help your company and employees. Some intranets are unsuccessful because it contains features that employees do not need. Developing criteria will make this process easier. Here are a few things to consider:

•  User interface

• Integrations

• Engagement tools

• Quick links

• Social feature

• Productivity tools

• People 

• Search

5. Start Simple and Don't Overcomplicate the First Version

Be patient when designing your first intranet because it will eventually change and improve over time. Overcomplicating your intranet can lead to intranet adoption failure.

6. Conduct an Employee Survey

Still unsure if your intranet design will drive employee adoption? 

Try conducting a quick and simple survey. You can use Google form to conduct a survey to help determine what your employees need and want.  They will also identify areas in which the business has a lack of knowledge across the board and how this can be addressed using our full digitakl workspace intranet tool.

7. Appoint Intranet Champions

Unlike many other systems in a business (say Finance or Sales) intranets are truly cross-functional and provide the backbone background knowledge of the business for all employees, new and old.

At the very earliest onset of embarking on such a plan, you should seek to find key stakeholder voices around different areas of the business. This team of people should not necessarily be the most senior people but rather people who understand the business day to day,  that have good knowledge of the inner workings of the business and the problems that can occur with a lack of information.

 They will be able to provide you with input on what is required initially and subsequently on your Intranet as well as form the nucleus of the team to help you carry through the project once you have actually selected a provider and decided on the right approach,