Keeping your team briefed on trends and capabilities is important to the success of your Intranet. Knowledge, like an Intranet, needs to be maintained in order to keep you up to date and help you, keeping you up to date and helping you to take advantage of new opportunities.

When we’re on a trend investigation, we start by looking at what’s out there.

The point of this exercise isn’t to focus on what a site looks like, but rather what it does. By analysing features we try to understand what the site or organisation set out to achieve and if they’ve accomplished their goal. We discuss what decisions they made, and what kind of functionality was used to meet their goals.

Your team should spend dedicated time researching Intranets, methods and best practice.

Places to start online :

• Follow thought leaders – be aware of the products they cater towards.
• Subscribing to helpful tips, ideas and blogs.
• YouTube – a tremendous source of great reference
• Discussion forums or LinkedIn groups
• Vendor research or white papers

There are also some great reference points for trends such as Nielsen Norman Group Annual Best Intranets or Step Two’s Intranet Innovation Awards. Use these to benchmark your own Intranet.

These are not the only sources of inspiration, you could also focus on specific subject areas that can be used to improve Intranets, like User Experience or Information Architecture.

Attend showcase events, designed to help you understand what an Intranet can achieve but also give you ideas that can be applied to your own organisation.

Alternatively go on formal training. We’ve been running our own successful Intranet Masterclass for 3 years now. This is designed to help you deliver the best possible Intranet, based on your organisation and user needs.