So, you’ve been tasked with levelling up your department's intranet?

Recent research shows that 47% of employees find their company intranet difficult to use while a poorly designed intranet can actually decrease productivity.  

Now picture this. Your boss has just told you that you need to migrate to a new Intranet platform, and you are in charge! You might currently be on an old SharePoint version, or moving to Drupal, or another platform. This can usher in a newer, more modern platform, and presents an amazing opportunity. A successful intranet migration, and the ongoing management, has a load of organisational benefits. Think easier onboarding and improved engagement to better collaboration across teams. 

Chances are the new platform you’ll migrate to is going to be Drupal or SharePoint. So if you’ve been lumped with the responsibility to migrate your intranet site, there’s no need to stress. Here are five key considerations to help you run a successful intranet migration project, ensuring a smooth transition for your colleagues and instant rockstar status within your department.

Step 1: first up, you’ll need clear leadership

One of the most critical components for a successful intranet migration is clear, decisive leadership. Without a strong, centralised vision, the project can easily lose direction or stall altogether. Leaders must be the driving force behind the project, ensuring that it has a clear strategy, objectives and the support it needs from all departments. 

For instance, are you aiming to streamline communication? Enhance collaboration? Improve access to resources? Whatever the goals, they need to be clearly defined and communicated from the outset. This establishes the intranet as a single source of truth for all internal communications, knowledge, and collaboration. 

Your intranet should integrate every aspect of your organisation: goals, people, projects, and structures. A good intranet acts as the digital glue of the department. At a minimum, it should include an employee directory, an up-to-date organisational chart and easy access to the most relevant documents. It should also include interactive features that allow staff to contribute, comment, and even update information as needed. 

Clear leadership will help align the team’s efforts and ensure the project stays focused on the end goal.  

Step 2: it’s all about the vibes: creating the right culture for success 

The best intranets are more than a functional tool. They also reflect the internal culture of your organisation.  

Rather than being a static information hub, your intranet should be a dynamic environment where ideas flow freely and feedback is exchanged in real time. Not every idea or piece of content will work perfectly the first time. This is ok. Build a culture where experimentation is encouraged and people aren’t afraid to make mistakes. 

Enable tools that allow staff to update, comment on and interact with content. If they feel they have a voice and can contribute to the platform, they’ll be far more likely to use it regularly. 

The key is to keep iterating based on feedback until you’ve created an intranet that truly serves the needs of your department. 

Step 3: gathering the right team

When it comes to intranet migrations, the people behind the project are just as important as the technology. The team you put together needs to bring a diverse set of skills to the table to cover all the necessary bases. You’ll need a blend of technical experts, content creators, graphic designers and strategic thinkers to ensure that your intranet is both functional and engaging. 

One of the great things about many modern intranet tools is that they’re built to be user-friendly and intuitive, with drag-and-drop functionality for most tasks. This means you don’t need to have highly technical staff for day-to-day content management, but it is still important to have someone who can manage technical aspects, such as integration with existing systems and user permissions. 

The key here is to build a collaborative, curious team that’s willing to take risks, learn quickly, and adapt. Fail fast and fail often is a mindset that will help the team keep moving forward, experimenting and, ultimately, finding the best solutions. 

Step 4: choosing the right platform

With your old platform on its way out, one of the first decisions you’ll need to make is which platform to migrate to. Drupal is a popular choice across the government sector, thanks to its flexibility, scalability, and open-source nature. The majority of government departments are already using it for their intranet systems, and with good reason; it’s a powerful platform that can handle everything from content management to complex integrations with existing systems. 

However, Drupal isn’t the only option. There are other platforms out there, including SharePoint (for those opting to upgrade to newer versions), and a range of other content management systems that offer varying degrees of customisation and functionality. The key is to choose a platform that not only fits your current needs but also allows you to scale as your department’s needs evolve. 

When choosing a platform, consider factors like training requirements, ease of updates, and how nimble the platform is in terms of content creation and collaboration. Will it be easy to update and maintain? Who will be responsible for owning the platform once it’s up and running? 

At the end of the day, you want a platform that’s working for you and your team. Not the other way around.  

Step 5: building clear processes to maintain momentum

For your intranet migration to succeed, you need to set up clear and simple content management processes from the outset. Think about how your intranet will be updated, who owns the content, how often it will be refreshed, and who will be responsible for approving new content. 

If you want your intranet to remain engaging and relevant, it’s important to regularly update it with fresh content. Rather than focussing purely on text updates, incorporate images, videos, and interactive content to keep users engaged. Create templates and guidelines to streamline the content creation process, ensuring that updates are quick, easy, and consistent. 

Consider Meta (Facebook). When it launched it was a great example of how simple platforms can drive engagement. It was intuitive to navigate and, whether through a status update or an album of a night out, even easier to share content. Your intranet should aim for the same level of simplicity, making it as intuitive as possible for staff to navigate, update, and interact with. 

Migrating from your old platform to a new intranet platform doesn’t have to be overwhelming. With the right leadership, culture, team, platform, and processes in place, you can build an intranet that supports your department’s goals and keeps your employees engaged.  

As you move forward with this transition, you may consider partnering with experts who can guide you through the complexities of migration (*cough, we may know some of these experts…). Along with everything we’ve already discussed in this article, they’ll also be across considerations around accessibility, governance and branding that will ensure your intranet is a deep well of information and resources rather than a dirty pond.