For an organization to operate effectively, corporate communication should be positioned at the forefront of cross-departmental information exchange. Communication is not just about fostering a functional network of employees—it’s also about bringing them up to speed on every piece of news delivered by top-down management. 

Building a new intranet may seem daunting at first. Companies have many moving parts, and consolidating them into one intranet that is easily navigable for employees to quickly find what they need requires planning.

Even more, building an intranet that employees want to visit and use is also challenge. Maintenance and updates can become convoluted. Employees may not have proper training in its use. Admins may get confused in how the thing actually works. The list goes on. All of this leads to an intranet no one wants to visit or update.

But DO NOT WORRY. We have summarized all the considerations you should make while planning, building, and implementing your new intranet to ensure its success. 

You’ve researched the benefits and decided it’s time to get down to brass tacks: What does a company intranet cost?

Last week Microsoft started releasing hub sites for Office 365. Hub sites are a long awaited feature in the new Modern Office 365 experience. The introduction of Communication sites and Office 365 Groups sites has brought about a new flat architecture for building sites within SharePoint. While sub sites are still available, it is now becoming common practice to build new sites as separate site collections (Groups & Communication sites). However, when you build sites without a hierarchy, it's often difficult to understand which sites may be connected or even how the sites are connected. Hub sites will fix this issue by allowing admins to create a "hub" or a collection of sites under a single global navigation with some very cool content roll-up features. To learn more about hub sites click here.

Is your SharePoint intranet struggling to stay alive?

Have you ever looked at a string of emails and said to yourself, “This should’ve been a phone call?” 

Of course, you have. We all have.

Over-reliance on email has become a real problem in the workplace. We’ve somehow decided it’s socially acceptable to have real-time conversations there, and the result is not good. We get a bloated inbox where important information is hard to find, and we spend hours every week trying to manage it all.   

If you’ve decided on implementing a SharePoint intranet for your company, you’ll soon face a dizzying array of options for communicating with co-workers. 

Between Microsoft Flow, PowerApps, and the ever-expanding suite of Office 365 products, the possibilities for customization are nearly limitless. This can be a blessing and a curse when it’s time to divvy up the real estate on the most precious of resources -- the SharePoint homepage.

If your SharePoint is several years old, there’s a good chance your teams are doing a few things the hard way.

Like everything in tech, intranets evolve fast. As things change, some standard practices start to fade from importance, eventually joining the great beyond where all outdated intranet features are laid to rest.

“How much should I budget for a new SharePoint intranet?”

I wish there was a quick and easy answer to that question. 

The truth is, costs vary based on several factors, but you can start crafting a budget by making a few decisions about what you need from your platform. Here are some of the biggest considerations that will influence what you spend.

Has your company become a victim of its own success with an intranet?

If documents are piling up faster than you know where to put them – you might know what I’m talking about.