Web Service Award has just published their yearly “Trend report – How are the Swedish intranets doing?” study for the tenth time. The study covers 274 responses from intranet managers in Sweden and brings out for example quality issues and intranet development plans.
North Patrol is a consulting firm specialized in the design of digital services and information systems. We shape ideas into a vision and service concept, find the best architectural and technological solutions, design a functional user experience, and compete to find the ideal partner for implementation work. We do not sell implementation projects, nor do we sell licenses; we are genuinely on the side of the customer.
Here’s some highlights for you:
There is no difference to other intranets when it comes to the goals of the Swedish intranets. They aim to:
- make employee daily work easier,
- enable communication, and
- support organization’s needs and goals.
Typically the Swedish intranets are built on the Episerver CMS platform (40 % market share). There is no news in there, as Episerver is a Swedish product and very popular among public organizations and especially as the CMS for public websites. Compared to Finland, where the market dominant is group collaboration tool SharePoint (online or on-premise), the Swedish intranets do not have as much ESN capabilities as their Finnish counterparts.
Surprising is that only 17 % of the Swedish intranets are usable with mobile devices, although all of them (92 %) are accessible outside the office. (Note: The reason might lie in the phrasing of the question: it asks if there exists a “mobile site” (“mobilsajt”) of the intranet. I would assume, that most of the Episerver-based intranets are responsive.) 11 % has a mobile app.
The most typical use cases of the Swedish intranets are:
- internal communications,
- quick links to tools & systems,
- distribution of HR instructions,
- personnel contact information / phone book,
- distribution of forms,
- distribution of document templates,
- and distribution of company policies.
It is a pity, that also the Swedish intranets are not seen as strategically important as they should be. For example, most of the intranets (69 %) do not have set goals or metrics to analyze their performance.
Low strategical importance leads to lack of management support and resources for e.g. information management. For example only 1/4 of the intranet managers have a routine for content governance and keeping the information on the intranet up-to-date. Many of the intranet managers see content restructuring as their most important development task for this year.
Development resources should be placed also on the search feature. Based on the study, all Swedish intranets have a search engine, but only 40 % of them have a person or a team responsible of the development of the search. Only 19 % of the intranet managers analyze the search queries returning unexpected results, and 22 % analyze typical search queries used. But these numbers are in rise.
Good news is that resources for the intranet development are in rise in Sweden, says also Pierre du Rietz, author of the study, and continues: 27 % of the Swedish intranets are going to be rebuilt this year!
The full report is available (in Swedish) on Web Service Award’s site.
At North Patrol, we conduct a similar study on the Finnish intranets every two years. The next study will take place around May-June this year – Stay tuned!
In the meanwhile, feel free to check the summary of the 2016 study!
