Over the last five years Jane McConnell at NetStrategyJMC has transformed our understanding of the intranet world through her annual Global Intranet Trends survey reports.  The work involved in developing, testing and analysing the survey questionnaire is considerable, but what is notable about Jane’s commitment to the survey is that each year there is a blend of core questions that provide trend information and new/revised questions that deal with emerging issues.  Some of the key topics this year are mobile strategies and approaches, collaborative and social aspects, search, governance and management, business value and future scenarios for intranet and digital workplace development.

Last year 440 organisations completed the questionnaire, and this year Jane would like to achieve 550.  The questionnaire is very well designed, and probably takes no more than around 40 minutes to complete. The web survey application that Jane uses enables respondents to complete the survey in stages, useful when it may be necessary to check with colleagues about a response to a particular question. All respondents receive a copy of the report, which will be available in time to use the results in intranet planning for 2012.

The survey form for this year has just been released and I would very strongly encourage you to participate.  Just the process of responding to the survey may well prompt ideas about the ways in which you might improve your own intranet, or identify a topic that needs to be discussed with your colleagues within your organisation. The report itself will be of significant value in benchmarking your intranet and supporting business cases for investment to ensure that your intranet is matching the capabilities of those in organisations where the intranet is now making a significant contribution to organisational performance.

Martin White