Intranet platforms

Choosing the right platform suite is the single most important decision an intranet manager must make

Most intranets are built on a patchwork of individual applications such as a content management system (CMS), search, social media and digital asset management. There may be several versions of the CMS or even multiple CMS applications. The problems of managing a set of applications from different vendors are not visible to the intranet user, but they certainly are to intranet managers, IT managers and content contributors.

Many large organisations already use enterprise suites to manage intranets and digital workplaces.

ECM, OpenText,SharePoint
Websphere, SAP, Jive, Weblogic, Newsgater, Yammer

Considerations for choosing or migrating platforms are myriad, and include:

Factors to weigh in platform selection

The main elements of an enterprise suite that could support the evolution of an intranet towards a digital workplace are:

business intelligence
collaboration
content management
digital asset management

office productivity
search
social media
usability

Timetable – think months or years, not weeks

“The secret of the successful migration/upgrade of a CMS-based intranet to an enterprise suite with social media applications is the amount of planning that takes place before any binding decisions are made.”

Recent resources on intranet platforms

DWG member story: Prudential Financial, Inc.

Prudential Financial, Inc. is an American Fortune Global 500 and Fortune 500 company, whose subsidiaries provide insurance, investment management, and other financial products and services to both retail and institutional customers throughout the United States and in more than 40 ...
Technology-driven behavioural change: Seven key takeaways from the August Technology Exchange

Can you change behaviour with technology? At the DWG Technology and Research Institute we are working to evolve and improve our offerings that will help organizations on their technology evaluation journeys. In our latest Technology Exchange, we borrowed the successful “VOP3: ...
Hilti’s global intranet: a deep dive into the Beezy intranet platform

The intranet “in-a-box” market is now very mature, offering considerable choice for intranet teams, particularly those seeking intranets based on SharePoint Online and Microsoft 365. At a recent Technology Lab organized by the DWG Technology and Research Institute we were ...