Implementing an Intranet in a Global Organization

A study was undertaken to investigate the issues involved in the implementation of an intranet within a global organization, using data obtained from a case study based on The Economist Group, a leading global provider of information about financial tools with staff located across the Europe, Asia and North America/South America. The study took place as part of an exercise to create a Group intranet from a disparate collection of small intranets, each with its own layout and design. The existing intranets were developed with minimal resources and relied on the IT department to update them. They also suffered from the drawback that they had no particular structure and no agreed standards on design and content, making them difficult to navigate and with no search facility. A consultant produced a group intranet requirements document by interviewing key staff across the Group and ensuring that these were representative of the interests of the different businesses within the company, the different job functions and the different officelocations. The implementation of the intranet was conducted through a Project Board, set up for the purpose and consisting of key members of the Economist Group management committee, and Steering Group. The intranet aims to provide: an improved search facility and URL agent tool; calendars; better presentation of ‘‘my things to edit’’; housekeeping and archiving; picture archive; and discussions. The layout of the final Economist Group intranet consists of a homepage plus sections covering: news;staff directory (skills, areas of expertise); knowledge base provided by the business units; Group resources; applications, links; and social items. Enhancements made to the homepage include: a search box for users to look upa person in the staff directory; a search box for quick searches by word orphrase; a rolling list of new content added to the intranet; and locks showing the time in each of the main offices of the Group (London, Hong Kong, and New York).