Most intranets are published once and quietly abandoned. The ones that work are treated as products: owned, maintained, structured around tasks people actually perform, and searchable enough that finding a policy takes seconds rather than a message to a colleague.
Almost never because of the technology.
Pages were published by people who have moved on. There is no review cycle, so staff learn not to trust what they find and stop looking.
Without metadata and structure, search surfaces dozens of near-identical documents with no way to tell which is current or authoritative.
Navigation mirrors departments rather than tasks, so finding a policy requires knowing which department owns it — which most people do not.
Versions are managed by filename convention, approvals happen by email, and proving which version was current on a given date is genuinely difficult.
An intranet is a product, not a project. Without named content owners and a review cycle, any launch decays within a year — which is why most organizations are on their third one. Without named content owners and a review cycle, any launch decays within a year
Baselined against current search behaviour, content age and document control practice.
Typical reduction in time spent locating policies, forms and documents once structure, metadata and search tuning are in place.
Every page and document set with a named owner and review date, so accuracy is maintained rather than assumed.
Retention and disposition applied by policy rather than manual housekeeping, satisfying records obligations without staff effort.
Approval workflow and version control replacing filename conventions, with a defensible record of what was current when.
Target proportion of staff using the intranet weekly, measured through analytics rather than inferred from launch enthusiasm.
One authoritative location per document type, eliminating the copies that create version disputes.
How to read these: the figures above are typical ranges we plan and measure against, not guarantees. In your first engagement we agree the baseline, the target and the measurement method in writing, then report against them.
Building a new intranet, rescuing one nobody uses, or bringing document control under proper governance.
Navigation, page structure and search designed around what people come to do, tested with real staff before launch.
Version control, approval workflow, retention and disposition applied consistently rather than relying on convention.
Ownership, review cycles, analytics and training so the intranet stays current after the launch enthusiasm fades.
Scoped individually. Search and structure work often revives an existing intranet without rebuilding it.
Identifying what people actually come to the intranet to do, which is the basis for navigation, search and page priority.
Structure, navigation, page templates and branding built on SharePoint, designed for mobile and accessibility from the start.
Metadata, managed properties, result sources, promoted results and refiners tuned against real queries rather than assumed ones.
Library structure, content types and metadata that make documents findable and enable retention to be applied automatically.
Review, approval and publishing workflow with audit trail, replacing email-based approval and filename versioning.
Retention labels and policies applied automatically by content type, with disposition review where regulations require it.
Diagnosis of why usage collapsed, content audit and cull, structure and search fixes, and a governance model that prevents recurrence.
Regulated policy management with controlled distribution, read acknowledgement, version history and evidence for audit.
Content and ownership first, because the platform is rarely the reason the last one failed.
Analyse current usage, search queries, content age and ownership, and interview staff about what they come looking for.
Agree the content model, ownership structure, governance rules and retention obligations before design begins.
Navigation, templates, metadata and search designed and tested with real staff performing real tasks.
Build, migrate content selectively with a deliberate cull, train authors and launch with communication.
Review analytics and search queries, fix findability gaps, and enforce the review cycle so content stays current.
Migrating everything is a mistake. Most intranet content is obsolete. We audit and cull deliberately before migration, because volume is precisely what makes search useless.
Intranets are easy to build and difficult to keep alive.
Navigation is validated with real people performing real tasks before launch, not signed off from a wireframe by a committee.
Metadata, managed properties and tuning against actual queries — the work that determines whether people find things or give up.
Retention and disposition are configured by content type from the start, so compliance does not depend on manual housekeeping.
Named content owners, review cycles and analytics, because the reason your last intranet decayed was governance rather than design.
Illustrative engagements, written in the structure we use for real case studies.
Staff could not find policies without knowing which department owned them. Task-based navigation and search tuning changed usage substantially.
Regulated policies were distributed by email with no reliable record of who had read the current version. Controlled publishing solved both problems.
Demo content: the organizations and measurements above are illustrative placeholders written to show the structure of a real story. Replace them with verified client results and approved references before publishing.
Material for teams whose content nobody can find or trust.
Metadata, managed properties, result sources and tuning against real queries — the practical steps that change findability.
Read moreContent ownership, review cycles and task-based navigation: the three things that determine whether an intranet survives its first year.
Read moreHow to assess content age, ownership, accuracy and usage before migrating, and what to cull rather than move.
Read moreAnalysing search queries and content ownership usually explains exactly why the current intranet is not working, and what would fix it.
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