Finding the right intranet can be a complex process. If you’re shopping around for one, you’ve probably unearthed a whole bunch of questions you didn’t know you’d have. What features should my intranet have? What exactly is a modern intranet? Is there a difference between an intranet and a communications platform?

This is way more confusing than you thought it would be.

The reason shopping for an intranet is tricky is because the market is huge and the products vary wildly. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and lose sight of why you needed an intranet in the first place. Our first piece of advice: don’t let this happen, don’t lose sight of your needs.

The secret to finding the right intranet

The key to finding the right intranet is knowing exactly what your needs are and having them front and center. What do you actually want to achieve with this intranet? It could be reduced email, stronger workplace culture, or higher levels of employee engagement. Either way, you should have a crystal clear idea of why you need an intranet and what you want the end result to be.

Once you know this, you can set up calls with a number of different intranet providers and find out how their product will satisfy your needs. They will all have slightly different approaches and different features to help you get results. It’s up to you to figure out which is the best approach for you; what works best in terms of usability, cost, richness of features, security etc.

Simplicity is king

At this stage, it’s easy to get distracted by widgets and features. Some may look cool and interesting, but unless they satisfy your needs they’ll become redundant or unproductively distract employees. The goal is not to build a toolkit of every possible intranet feature, but to satisfy your needs with the simplest solution possible.

That’s our second piece of advice: keep it simple.

Intranets can be extremely complex, (fully customized and built from the ground up by an IT expert), or supremely simple, (turnkey solutions that are pre-built by intranet experts). The more complex you make an intranet, the more expensive and time-consuming it becomes to build and maintain. Strive for the simplest intranet that’s still full-featured and rich enough to meet your needs.

Our final piece of advice

We could keep writing for days on the topic of intranets and communications platforms, delving into the details to help you navigate each stage of the complex ideation process. But that would end up as a pretty long blog article.

So, we did something even better. We distilled our knowledge of all things intranet – finding, buying, launching, and sustaining  – into one useful buyer’s guide: the Intranet Success Kit.

This free, handy kit explores the topics this article has touched on and a whole lot more. Its primary purpose is to demystify the world of intranets so you can find the most suitable platform with as little hassle as possible.

We think a good intranet is crucial to the world of work, but understand that the complexity and nuances of intranets can act as roadblocks. The Intranet Success Kit can help you overcome those roadblocks. Click here to get you free copy of this useful tool.