By Janus Boye
Brian Tomlinson is Head of Digital Communications & International Enablement at Engel & Volkers in Hamburg and has been leading the selection of a new intranet for the past 3 years
Choosing an Intranet. The project that makes you feel as if you're on a five-year hamster wheel. Is there a better way?
Brian Tomlinson at Hamburg-based real estate firm Engel & Völkers has spent the last few years trying to find a modern, best in class intranet solution that avoids the cyclical hell that we all want to avoid - and has managed to learn a thing or two along the way.
In a recent member conference call, he went through his process for finding and selecting a solution. Everything from identifying the pain points to be fixed to ensuring it has all of the features that you need and finally selling it to the people who hold the purse strings.
It was by no means a master-class, but below I’ve shared my notes from the call and also the slides, the intranet RFP template and messaging framework that Brian shared. Hopefully this will provide you with some useful input for your next intranet selection.
Step 1: Define intranet challenges and vision
First and foremost, Brian recommended that your project should have a clear objective. Ideally something with a business objective and not ‘just’ an engine replacement going from one intranet tool to another.
In the intranet project at Engel & Volkers, the objective was clear:
To deliver a personalised digital workplace, improved communications, knowledge management and collaboration
Going into the initial step, he outlined the challenged that they were facing and he divided them in these two bullets:
General: No mobile access, rogue intranets, fragmentation, no true global platform
Organisational: Not able to find the right people, documents are outdated
As Brian said:
“Many intranets suffer from a lack of use, due to fragmentation”
Too many possibilities - one of the key problems in many intranets according to this slide as presented by Brian Tomlinson in our member call
Brian really wanted to avoid what he considered the typical employee experience in many intranets today, where there are too many possibilities, which confuses the employees. He specifically looking for something that would offer a simple persuasive experience and a single point of entry.
Their new intranet needed to be relevant, so that employees don’t tune out. A big requirement for Brian as the project leader, was to tailor content and delivery to the employees.
Moving on from the objective and the challenges, he talked about the vision for the new intranet. What should it look like in the future?
For Engel & Volkers going to the cloud was the big thing, but looking beyond tech, their vision statement also touched on delivering a personalized employee experience, better integration and a mobile option.
Step 2: Find the right intranet partner
While the initial step lays out the groundwork for a good selection, the 2nd step is about actually selecting your next intranet.
As Brian said, there are many cool providers out there. Some are a better fit for start-ups, while others are a suitable fit for large, complex organisations like Engel & Volkers.
Engel & Volkers specifically narrowed their selection by looking for a managed intranet solution, also to avoid putting all the work on the IT department. To quote Brian:
“We didn’t want a 12 month implementation, but rather a 3 month plug and play project”
Given the pandemic, it was also important to this project to find a partner with a vision for what’s coming towards us in the future workplace, specifically requirements for hybrid work.
They also looked for a partner that could demonstrate an understanding of their requirements. In particular, the requirement to have local intranets in the key markets (US and Germany), was an area where they wanted their partner to have relevant references.
To be extra helpful, Brian shared these 4 intranet vendors for your potential evaluation process:
Finally, and in terms of the less tangible requirements, Brian also shared the example of how they looked at one vendor, where the tool was great, but the sales experience was weak. This gave them a bad feeling, and ‘feeling comfortable’ was quite important to the team.
Consult the Intranet RFP Template (Excel) that Brian shared for more on their requirements.
Step 3: Sell the employee experience
In the final step, it is all about getting the employees onboard with the change. A key part here is to get it sold internally all the way to the top.
As Brian said in the call, putting a new and improved intranet in place is very valuable, but also not cheap. If you factor in all the costs, it’s a substantial investment that should have top management approval.
To get the right message across, Brian has a Messaging Framework (Word doc), which can be used for just about everything. In the example, Brian shared how they used the framework for their new intranet with a filled out controlling idea, big question, problem statement and much more.
As a part of the Q&A in the call, Brian also touched on how a new intranet is really a mindset change. A different way of working with great potential, in particular if you don’t approach it as only an IT project.
Learn more about selecting the right intranet
We’ve written a bit about intranets in the past. Here’s two of our more popular posts on the topic:
Mobile Intranets Kills The Internal Communications Propaganda Machine
Social Intranets Make The Job Harder For Internal Communication
You can also download the slides from the presentation (PDF).
Finally, you can meet Brian Tomlinson in person alongside other peers in our Future Workplace peer groups.