Publication Date: September 20, 1996

Related articles - Net Asset: Intranets Have Much To Offer Businesses and Corporate America Goes Intranet Shopping

20 Intranet Lessons Gleaned From Major Companies

Author and consultant Mellanie Hills offers this list of lessons learned by the 13 companies that participated in her books Intranet Business Strategies and Intranet as Groupware (John Wiley & Sons). The names of the companies appear after the list.

1. Start it as a grassroots effort.
2. Have a champion and/or steering committee to push it forward.
3. Have business goals drive it.
4. Choose your technology early and carefully.
5. Get the network in place as soon as you can.
6. Plan capacity ahead of demand.
7. Determine who owns the intranet and how much the IT folks should be involved.
8. Involve all stakeholders and get them to work together.
9. Have someone in charge.
10. Decide if you want standards and, if so, then create them.
11. Start small and start quickly—you can always change it later.
12. Create the support structure early.
13. Focus on compelling content.
14. Modify the processes from paper-oriented to on-line.
15. Develop the skills you need.
16. Promote and advertise it.
17. It isn't easy to keep content up-to-date.
18. Beware of legacy applications.
19. Be prepared for concerns and fears.
20. Make sure the business knows what's possible for the intranet.

The participating companies were: Amgen Inc.; AT&T Corp.; Bell Atlantic Corp.; Booz Allen & Hamilton Inc.; EDS; J.C. Penney Co., Inc.; Rockwell International Corp.; SAS Institute Inc.; Silicon Graphics, Inc.; Texas Instruments Inc.; Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.; United Parcel Service of America, Inc.; and one anonymous company.

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Mellanie Hills is the founder of the consulting firm Knowledgies, in Plano, Texas, and a featured speaker at DCI's Internet Expo. For more on this topic, please see Net Asset: Intranets Have Much To Offer Businesses and Corporate America Goes Intranet Shopping.

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