10 Best Intranets of 2019

This year’s Nielsen Norman Group Intranet Design Annual contest and report showcases winners and offers an abundance of sound advice and scores of creative design examples that advance their users’ digital workplace. Following are the organizations with the 10 best-designed intranets for 2019:

• 3M (US), a global science company
• Anthem, Inc., (US), the largest for-profit managed health care company in the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association
• BHP Billiton Limited (Australia), a leading global resources company
• Duke Energy (US), one of the largest electric power holding companies in the US, supplying and delivering electricity to approximately 7.4 million US customers
• European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) (UK), an international, multilateral development bank that provides financial instruments and advisory services that strengthen economies on three continents
• Flight Centre Travel Group (Australia), the world’s largest independent travel company, specializing in vacations, tours, and corporate travel
• The International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) (US), an American multinational technology company
• Lamprell Energy Limited (United Arab Emirates), a leading provider of fabrication, engineering, and contracting services to the offshore and onshore oil, gas, and renewable energy industries
• Messer Construction Co. (US), an employee-owned commercial construction company
• Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization (Norway), a shared services organization within the central government of Norway

The United States Continues to Supply the Most Winners

Of the 10 winning teams, 5 hail from the US (which is likely because Nielsen Norman Group is based in the US). For the first time in years, Canada has no winners this year. Of the remaining 5 winners, Australia has 2, and Dubai, Norway, and the UK each have one.

Utilities and Government Have the Strongest Showing This Year

We broaden the definition of “utilities” to include mining and other natural resources; given that, utilities remain the most winning industry, with 31 winners (17%) since the start of this contest. This year, three utilities companies are among the winners.

Two government agencies—the Norwegian Government Security and Service Organization and EBRD—are among this year’s winners. (EBRD also qualifies as a financial institution.)

Technology and finance continue to be strongly represented industries, and each has one winner this year. While certainly good, the representation of tech and finance is less than we saw in the first decade of this award and indicates that a broader range of industries are now taking intranet design and UX seriously.

Rapid Intranet Development

From 2001 to the present, the overall average development time is 33.1 months (2.8 years). But the more interesting story is the consistent and significant drop in this average starting in 2014. From 2001 to 2013, the average was 23.5 months (2.0 years), while the average from 2014 forward was just 15.9 months (1.3 years). Last year, the average winning intranets’ development time dropped even further, to 14 months (1.2 years), and it held at 14 months again this year.

The approach that teams take to an intranet “redesign” has also changed. Today’s redesign may include restructuring the IA, auditing content, revamping search, and changing the look and feel. However, Agile development has removed the sense of finality of a released design. Teams still plan major components, but they deliver them in waves, often after the big redesign goes live. Thus, the great intranets are always improving. In consequence, the redesign time measured doesn’t include all of the design work on the intranet. It simply can’t, because redesign is an ongoing project.

Further, good intranet-creation tools can expedite development. For example, two of this year’s winners used intranet solutions that let them go live in just seven and nine months, respectively.

Large and Mid-Size Organizations Winning

The median company size of this year’s winners was 33,000 employees. On average, winning organizations had 72,330 employees, ranging from 1,200 employees at Messer Construction Co. to 380,000 at IBM.

Larger Core Teams

This year’s average team size for the winning intranets was 20 members — the second largest we have seen. Team sizes ranged from as few as two members at Flight Centre Travel Group to as many as 50 at IBM. Four teams — Anthem, Inc., BHP Billiton Limited, Duke Energy, and IBM— were larger than the average size of last year’s winners (14 team members).

These numbers reflect the core intranet teams, as opposed to extended teams, which might include content authors or short-term project members. Core teams comprised internal and external staff and full- and part-time employees.

It’s encouraging to see an increase in the average core-team size for the winning intranets. For too long, intranet teams have been making do with limited human resources. Creating and maintaining an intranet — no matter how much you automate and build good workflows — is still a manual job in many ways. Including individuals from across the organization always requires deep research, handholding, and political maneuvering.

Further, our team numbers here reflect the number of employees working on the intranet redesign; often, even fewer employees remain dedicated to intranet maintenance, governance, and iterative development after the major redesign effort is complete. Given the intranet’s importance — both for communicating internally and completing daily work — intranet teams should be even more generously staffed.

Intranet Team Size Relative to Number of Employees

The median company size of this year’s winners was 33,000 employees. On average, winning organizations have 72,330 employees, ranging from 1,200 employees at Messer Construction Co. to 380,000 at IBM.

For the winning designs, we also consider team size relative to organization size. Intranet teams are special in that a small number of people can have a huge impact on many people at the organization. For example, the 3M team had 12 people supporting 121,000 users.

As a percentage, this year’s teams comprised 0.037% of company size. That is, for every 10,000 employees, 3.7 worked on the intranet team.

To further explore the relationship between organization and team sizes, we compared team size to company size over the past 10 Intranet Design Annuals. We found that our winning intranets have a similar intranet support ratio, or percentage of employees who work on the intranet team.

The rather complex formula below summarizes the relationship between team size and organization size for winning Intranet Design Annual teams. The intranet support ratio formula is:

Intranet support ratio = 6.689 * number of employees^-0.926

That is, you take the number of employees the intranet supports and raise it to the power of -0.926. You then multiply the resulting number by 6.689 to get the expected intranet support ratio. This ratio, multiplied by the number of employees, results in a team size. (The equation explains 89% of the variability in intranet support ratios.)

As complex at this equation is, in practice, it breaks down simply to team sizes of 8–10 people as follows:

These numbers are likely so small because the teams enlisted agency support. Regardless, we do not recommend having only 7–10 people on intranet teams. In fact, teams should have many more people; this year’s winners, for example, had 20 team members on average. Teams may need many more (or, in rare cases, fewer) people, depending on the circumstances. These numbers are simply a suggested minimum team size.

Bringing in Outside Help

Eight of this year’s winning organizations looked to outside agencies and consultants to help with their intranet redesign, bringing in an average of two agencies each.

Key areas that teams sought help for included:

·         Content creation and editor training

·         Development

·         Discovery

·         Ideation

·         Information architecture

·         Persona creation

·         Journey map creation

·         Project management

·         Prototyping

·         User research

·         Visual design

·         Wireframes

Over the years, many winning intranet teams have engaged external resources to help in their redesign projects, both to fill internal team gaps and gain outside experience and perspective.

Reliance on outside resources is a double-edged sword, however. Many winning organizations have quick development times and iterative practices, which raises a crucial question: When these short-term external resources leave, who is left to iterate, maintain, and continually improve the new site?

Full Report

For more information about themes, intranet best practices, and full-color screenshots of the 10 winners, download the 2019 Intranet Design Annual. The report download comes with a folder containing each image as a .png to make it easier to zoom in on and study the designs.