Strategy for Intranet?

What could be the best strategy for an effective intranet?

Not many of us are used to browse the company's intranet. Yes at times when we are bored we casually browse around to find something interesting. May be recent pics of an event or may be an article. Is this true with every other company out there?

No..Companies like IBM have invested huge effort in perfecting their Intranet Strategy. Why? Because the cost of every penny spent on building an effective Intranet is directly proportional to its benefits.

Lets look at a typical scenario. Raj logs into his computer at 10AM in the morning. He does a variety of tasks or forced to do a variety of tasks.

1. He opens his Outlook ¹ to check his emails. He replies, forwards and flags mails.
2. His manager calls him to tell that the timesheet² is not filled. He opens the timesheet system to update the same.
3. His manager again calls him to inform that there 3 tasks pending ³ for today's deliverable.
4. The NSS group mails him an URGENT message ⁴, asking him to update his VIRUS patch.
5. Academy ⁵ sends him a bunch of emails requesting him to enroll for soft skills
6. His manager calls him again to tell him that he has not updated his leave request ⁶in the system.
7. Raj finds that he needs to update his Visio software ⁷ to the latest version. He finds the portal that helps him log a request and does so.
8. Beyond all this he has to WORK ⁸and intermittently attend meetings⁹ !!

There are 9 different things to do and he has to attend to all of this. And ONE of these is of course WORK.

So how does an effective intranet helps improve this scenario? Lets see. Raj logs into his computer at 10AM. He opens his intranet dashboard. It gives him the following view:

1. WORK PORTLET: Who is Raj, whats his role, which project he is currently in, what are his project's tasks that are pending, whether his timesheet is upto date and his oncoming tasks

2. CALENDAR/MAIL PORTLET: Recent UNREAD mails, Flagged mails, various tasks, Calendar and his appointments/meetings for day/week

3. HARDWARE/SOFTWARE PORTLET: Raj's machine configuration, his virus updates, his recent requests, status of requests, pending/closed requests, Pending software updates etc.,

4. LEARNING CORNER PORTLET: What has Raj been reading recently, what courses did he complete, what is available for him, Any overdue books that he borrowed from library, courses that he registered to, upcoming courses.

5. MASHUP: A Mashup could be a mix of above stuff that Raj can configure/personalize. It shud also provide him a view in his handheld device.

So does this all sound techy? No not at all. Its just more subtle productive ways to make sure that the Cost Benefit ratio for an employee is well justified. Companies pay the employee for every minute/second he spends in his work time. So lets make that time productive