You wouldn’t go to your neighbour to fix a broken leg, or to your grocer for a prescription, so why would you use anyone but an experienced and knowledgeable intranet consultant to develop/improve your intranet?

 

A healthy and robust intranet can rarely be attributed to purely in-house talent and resources. There’s too much at stake, and the intranet is a far too political subject to not take advantage of a non-partisan intranet consultant with relevant expertise.

 

There are a few advantages to doing the work yourself:

    • Costs less cash out of pocket
    • Internal stakeholders are forced to learn the ropes
    • Internal jobs are reinforced

But the disadvantages of doing it in-house are obvious, and outweigh the above mentioned list:

    • Lack of skill and experience
    • Lack of people to execute
    • Internal politics on what and how to do it
    • Time away from day-to-day work

Politics

 

The biggest, and most common, barrier to an intranet’s potential is politics, with technology and budget tied for second place. The intranet is like the flu, everybody knows about it, and nobody wants to catch it, or in this case, be responsible for it.

 

Why? Most intranets don’t grab the attention of executives. The intranet is left to middle managers in communications and IT with limited budget and power. Conflict ensues and the intranet stalls – often for years.

 

Resolving conflict and breaking the subsequent limbo requires senior management support and participation. In organizations where politics runs thick, a collaborative governance model is strongly urged.

 

Tearing down the political barrier often requires a neutral, third-party consultant armed with an arsenal of best practices, lots of expertise and no political axe to grind. If Communications tries to lead the process, the other stakeholders will be suspicious. Ditto for IT and HR. But budget allowing, everyone respects an experienced and capable mediator.

 

People

 

Building or redesigning an intranet requires a lot of work. It can take months or even years. Once the decision to build, or rebuild, the intranet is made, the next step question is who will be running it?

 

Among other things, an intranet requires:

·         Employee input (research)

·         Layout

·         Best practices intelligence (benchmarking)

·         Design

·         Business requirements analysis and documentation

·         Tools

·         Technology implementation

·         Strategic planning (mission, objective, goals, CSIs)

·         Staffing

·         Integration

·         Functional planning (structure, content, etc.)

·         Network and database administration

·         Governance model

·         Policies and guidelines

·         Information architecture

·         Writing

·         Business case and ROI

·         Etc.

·         Content management & migration

 

 

These tasks take time.  Hiring an intranet consultant will allow current employees to stay on top of the day-to-day job they were hired for – the daily news, benefits enrollment, new application rollouts, etc.

 

Finally, does your team have the skills? Have they ever developed a governance model, an editorial policy or an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) integration plan?

 

How to hire an intranet consultant

 

If you have a budget and a work culture that recognizes the value of an outside intranet expert then proceed with caution.

 

Caution:an Internet consultant is not an intranet consultant. Web design firms have deep creative skills, but rarely has any business acumen and intranet expertise. The big-five consulting firms have a lot of very smart people, but are also very expensive.

 

What to look for in an intranet expert:

·         Intranet client case studies

·         Detailed biographies with demonstrated project experience

·         Experienced individuals that will be assigned to your project

·         Client references with names and numbers (not just unnamed anonymous testimonials)

·         Detailed pricing

·         Corporate strength and documented financial viability

·         Proven and detailed project methodologies

   Be cautious if a consultant only has:

·         Screenshots and mock-ups

·         One or two paragraph bios that focus on favorite movies and hobbies with a cute or too-cool-for-school photo

·         People on a team list from some far flung office that won’t actually be working on your project

·         Unnamed and anonymous testimonials

·         Vague pricing and ‘guess-timates’

·         Tiny shops with no documented financials (P&L)

·         Assurance that “they’re happy to work according to your project plan”

 

Identifying the right intranet consultant

 

Prepare a thorough and detailed RFP (request for proposal). Invite companies with proven experience and case studies to respond.  If you don’t know one then look for a recommendation:

 

    • Ask a leading company or partner
    • Check out IntranetBlog – Post a comment and Toby Ward or another reader will help steer you in the right direction
    • Sniff around your local trade associations like IABC or PRS
    • Phone your IT analyst at Garner or Forrester
    • Google the phrase “intranet consultant” or “intranet consulting” with or without geographic locations – if proximity is important to you

The RFP response from any intranet consulting firm should contain the following:

    • Line by line details of every process and deliverable
    • Intranet consulting history and overview
    • Detailed client case studies
    • Solution functional specifications
    • Consulting, licensing (if applicable) AND implementation costs
    • Project team resumes, skills overview & experience
    • Client references and contact information
    • Detailed timeline and schedules
    • Ongoing service & support commitment
    • Solution technical specifications (if applicable)
    • Product demonstration (if applicable)

A final word

 

Before you hire a particular intranet consultant or intranet consulting firm – Google them.  A great intranet consultant is not only experienced, but a thought-leader with published credentials to support it.

 

Top intranet consulting firms:

 

Note: obviously there are far more consultants than this… but actually surprisingly few that focus namely on just intranets. So yes I’ve left a few out, but this is not intended to be a consultant directory but an article.