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Processes and Productivity

Building an Intranet Business Case: Measuring Success

If you are pursuing an intranet project your stakeholders are going to want some assurance of success. Part two of our "Building a Business Case" series provides examples of how to measure outcomes against business objectives.

5 minute read
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Drawing on the objectives we’ve already outlined, it’s now time to look closer and determine what goals you want your intranet to help you achieve. In other words, it’s time to learn how to measure intranet success.

As mentioned before, you are likely to be asked what the tangible outcome of the proposed intranet is. And as great as stronger employee engagement is, your decision makers are going to expect something more concrete and measurable.

Most people understand the value of employee engagement, improved communication and collaboration, and increased knowledge share. Unfortunately measuring these things is a different beast. Not that it isn’t possible to measure, but it’s certainly not as obvious of a measurement as something like accounting software.

We talked in part one about the common reasons most organizations choose to acquire intranet software. Now let’s look at how each one of these objectives can be measured. This will not only help reinforce the frustration that likely got you to this point, but it will also help your decision makers recognize the specific outcomes of what you are proposing. It will also help you measure intranet success.

ThoughtFarmer has analytics built into the platform, making it easy to measure a lot of the below KPIs. We also suggest running an additional survey about six months after your intranet is launched to further reaffirm the success of your goals and objectives.

How to build an intranet business case

Interested in reading every step in the series? Download our whitepaper to learn more.

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Building an Intranet Business Case, cover

Knowledge management

We’ve already established than an intranet can facilitate and improve knowledge management. This can be measured by baselining how employees share new ideas and then measuring once an intranet is in place. You could also measure how many of these ideas were implemented. Discussion forums are ideal for generating ideas. An intuitive intranet with a user centric information architecture and a robust search engine will also help staff find content faster and save time.

Overall objective: Increase the amount of knowledge within an organization

Target KPIs:

  • Employees are sharing knowledge
  • Employees are commenting on content

Communication

Communication may feel like a broad objective, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be quantified. For example, if your organization is struggling with email overload, you may choose to pursue a goal related to reducing email traffic or its burden and cost on servers. For example, you can measure intranet success by how many all staff emails were sent right before launch, and then measure again six months later.

Overall objective: Improve internal communication throughout the organization

Target KPIs:

  • Employees are reading corporate newsletters
  • Email usage is down
  • New content is being created

Collaboration

The definition of collaboration is two or more people working together towards shared goals. But how do we measure this? Collaboration can be measured by counting things like the number of teams or groups created, or through the number of files added or shared to these groups. You can also measure collaboration through comments.

Overall objective: Improve collaboration company-wide

Target KPIs:

  • More groups are created
  • Comments have increased
  • Updates are being shared

Employee engagement/Workplace culture

We often think of culture and employee engagement as a touchy-feely thing that cannot be measured. However what happens when your employees feel engaged and included in a strong culture? They stay longer. In other words, you can relate your objectives to employee turnover. Include how turnover is currently calculated, what it is now, and the associated reduction of costs by lowering it.

Overall objective: Improve workplace culture

Target KPIs:

  • Employees express satisfaction
  • Decrease in turnover
  • Employees are liking content
  • Employees are praising other employees (e.g., Shout-outs, comments)

Business Efficiency

Measuring business efficiencies should be fairly straightforward. You will want to begin by baselining current processes (like submitting a vacation request via PDF form), and how long that takes from start to finish. Once your intranet is up and running, you can measure again, and calculate the ROI based on time saved. Automating business processes (including forms) is one of the best ways to achieve immediate efficiency.

Overall objective: Improve overall internal efficiency

Target KPIs:

  • Employees can easily find information
  • Employees are creating and sharing content
  • Intranet usage is increasing
  • Employees are viewing/downloading content

The KPIs mentioned above are based off thousands of hours of research, discussion, and work by our internal professional services team. They may not apply specifically to your organization, but they should give you enough inspiration and ideas to hit the ground running, and hopefully help you measure intranet success.

This is just one step of seven in building an effective intranet business case. The full guide is available for free! Download your copy now to ensure the best possible outcome for your intranet project.