4 keys to building and maintaining a successful intranet

A winning intranet is like a snow leopard—rare, mysterious and beautiful.

Beloved intranets are years in the making, built and enhanced slowly over time, supported by active executive champions and funding. Without funding, and the executive sponsorship to ensure it, your intranet will die a slow death.

Maintaining an intranet takes work. The average intranet has hundreds of attributes to be addressed and managed. In addition to design, the priorities are people, process and content.

Notwithstanding the years of work and dozens of strategic initiatives required to build and sustain a great intranet, here are four key elements essential to long-term success:

1. Executive sponsorship

The intranet flounders, and often fails, when there is no clear ownership or governance. A successful intranet invariably has an active executive sponsor supported by clear intranet governance.

Your business is not a democracy, and power and money are consolidated at the top. To succeed, the intranet needs funding, and it needs powerful supporters in upper management.