From quite a long career in market research I learned that the more value a participant gained from completing a survey the more likely they were to do so. In the case of NetStrategyJMC’s annual Digital Workplace Survey participants receive a copy of the complete report in October, just in time to use it in 2012 planning discussions.  That is quite a win-win. This year the themes include

• Mobile strategies and approaches
• Collaborative and social aspects
• Search
• Governance and management
• Business value
• Future scenarios

You will notice that this year the title has changed from the Intranet Trends Survey to the Digital Workplace Survey but the results are still absolutely of relevance to intranet managers in organisations of all types and sizes.

I’m especially interested in search issues, and this year Jane McConnell is repeating some questions that she last included in 2009. The initial analysis that Jane has shared with me is quite alarming. In 2009 15% of respondents were very satisified with their intranet search application, but this has now dropped to 10%.  The 2009 figure for moderately satisified was 50% and that has dropped (provisionally) to 40%.  So at present half of all respondents find their intranet search application is less than satisfactory. Perhaps the reason is that 65% of respondents have less than one full-time person supporting search.

Do please consider completing the questionnaire.  It will only take a cup of coffee to complete because of the care that Jane has taken over the design.  You get to see the full results to help make your business case for investment, and the global intranet community are able to gain reassurance that others face the same problems of a lack of resources and a lack of management vision but still deliver intranets that make an impact on their organisations.  The closing date is 31 August.

Martin White