In the Paleolithic Era of the Internet, one of my favorite destinations
was "Really Useful Sites." Here one found an updated-daily
list of sites where one could actually accomplish something—from
an online thesaurus to (shock and awe!) being able to buy a book
to one of my favorite all-time champs, MapQuest.
The most important Really Useful Site that a firm
should maintain is its own intranet. But does yours measure
up? According to the "usability" guru, Jakob Nielsen, most
businesses’ intranets are deplorable, at a cost in wasted time and
motion of $5-million/year for, say, a 10,000-employee
firm. If he’s even remotely correct, where have we gone
wrong?
- search functionality on intranets remains primitive;
compared to how search has improved on the web itself in the last
10 years, intranet search tools are typically medieval; - no senior management buy-in: For example,
if filling out timesheets and expense reports is something you
can do on your intranet (you should!), has any senior partner ever
actually done it themselves? Would they encounter aggravation
if so? - no coordination: You probably don’t have an
"intranet czar;" rather, each practice group or office often generates
its own materials. Most important: - organizing information according to where it comes from
and not according to what people need to accomplish with it.
Nielsen is always worth a read.
