Strategic Librarian

If you are interested in a quick but thorough list of why managing your intranet strategically may fail, you may want to purchase the Intranet Benchmarking Forum (IBF) report, Intranet Strategy and Governance: The State of the Art, written by Helen Day and John Baptista, June 2007.  Day posts data on the IBF blog from the research they did for the report.  Her posting titled Intranet Strategy; The Intranet Manager’s Challenge was posted to the IBF weblog, Intranet Life on July 23, 2007.     The following challenges are listed as reasons a strategy may fail:

• Many intranets do not have a clear, documented strategy
• If there is a strategy, it is rarely communicated clearly to leaders
• Organisations struggle to align intranet strategy with broader business objectives
• Senior sponsorship or ownership of the intranet is often lacking
• While standards for static content are generally good, enforcing standards can be tricky
• Implementing consistent standards for transactional content is particularly difficult

Day follows this list with a list of key factors for success:

• Develop a formal strategy that shows the strategic value of the intranet to the business
• Communicate strategy upwards and downwards
• Develop a governance model with clear roles and responsibilities
• Enforce standards and guidelines
• Ensure clear ownership of the intranet at board level
• Involve all relevant stakeholders

It looks like the rest of the report may be interesting as well.