Why your intranet fails (and how to avoid it)

We have spent 14 years watching intranets be born and die. Failure rate does not drop below 70% in the first year according to Microsoft and Gartner. The causes are always the same. If your intranet is one of them, this article is for you.

The 5 causes of death

• Launching without quick wins. The perfect intranet with 800 pages nobody visits.
• Ignoring mobile experience. 64% of internal consumption is from the phone.
• No semantic search. If people cannot find it in 3 clicks, they go to Teams to ask.
• No clear owner. When nobody is responsible, nobody feeds it, nobody measures it.
• No feedback loop. Without a direct channel from users to editors, the intranet fossilizes.

The anti-pattern: intranet as IT project

The intranet is not a SharePoint project. It is an internal communication program, owned by HR/Communication, with enabling technology. When IT delivers it and forgets it 6 months after go-live, it dies. When a cross-functional team delivers it with recurring budget and metrics, it lives.

Metrics that matter

• Monthly active users (% of total employees with M365 account).
• Searches with zero results (% over total, target <5%).
• Average time to find an internal policy.
• Quarterly NPS to a rotating sample.
• Support tickets related to information search.