In the first of our series on planning your new intranet, John dives into the discovery phase with stakeholder interviews. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more.

John Scott, UX Director
+ 44 20 7471 8500 | [email protected] | LinkedIn

At the start of most intranet projects, we frequently have to do two things. Firstly, we need to find out more about the business and the things people want to fix and challenges they face. But also, we need to get ‘buy-in’ from stakeholders across the business. These are typically the heads of department or leaders in a particular region or country. For any intranet project to succeed, you need to have the support of these key stakeholders. If they are disengaged or don’t see the value in putting time and resources into the project, then this can be a major barrier.

To address this, we normally kick off an intranet project with a discovery workshop that involves these key stakeholders. This not only includes discussion points and us asking questions about the business, but also case studies and research findings that highlight the benefits of intranets, and how they can effectively support a wide range of business activities – from communicating company culture to automating common business processes.

Once stakeholders have seen examples and learned more about what intranets can do, they tend to become more interested in the project as they begin to recognise how it can help them. At this stage we can move on to the interactive part of the workshop where we ask the participants to name anything in the business that they wish that they could fix.

Further in to the project, we have regular touchpoints with them to ensure they continue to be aligned with the general direction of the project and remain willing to committ the time and energy of their teams.

View John’s next video: end-user interviews.
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