We are starting a procurement process and planning to introduce a new CMS for our Intranet. Does anyone have any useful lessons we could learn from? We're looking for something platform neutral, so Sharepoint has been discounted/excluded.

Also, we are keen to introduce some web 2.0 technologies. Does anyone have any evidence (anecdotal or otherwise) about the benefits and/or difficulties of doing this, particularly in an internal context.

Finally, we are looking for how to explain the concepts and benefits of CMS to non-technical stakeholders. I'm just starting the research into and writing of this so pointers and links would be useful.

Thanks in advance if anyone can help.

Hi Sebastian, we managed a deployment for a small public sector organisaton with our own content management solution which they were already familiar with, as they had used it for their main website.

We then integrated WordPress into the overall look of the intranet to give it that web 2.0 community content feel.

The main content providers (heads of departments and outreach) within the organisation use the CMS, while everyone else has access to put up their own blog news postings. This can range from internal news about the way they do business to which pub they're all going to after work on Friday.

We were a little skeptical about the take up of the blog element, but it seems that there's a posting every couple of days and it really is the homepage for everyone within the organisation.

The development from here is to give everyone within the organisation space to say something about themselves and list any of their blog postings. We're looking at Elgg to enable this, as it's important for us to stay within the PHP/MySQL environment to transfer data.

Hope that's on the right track.

Dan Frydman
Managing Director
Inigo Media | http://www.inigo.net

Hi Sebastien,

From my experience, Intranets work best when they are kept as simple as possible.

5 years ago a former employer of mine did an intranet for a large UK charity. Every department wanted a section, and all the people in all the departments wanted their own page to explain what they did. In theory, it could have been an interesting place to get information, but in reality it turned into a monotlithic mess which nobody used.

For an intranet to be successful it must be used by people on (roughly) a day-to-day basis. Putting information up there that can be used everyday, e.g. a phone book or a blog (as Dan suggested), will give you a greater chance of implementing a successful intranet.

Sorry, no suggestions for any CMS's, as (a techies favourite answer coming up) it depends.

Bon chance.

Kelv.

On 10:55:08 19 September 2007 SebastianCrump wrote:

We are starting a procurement process and planning to introduce a new CMS for our Intranet. Does anyone have any useful lessons we could learn from? We're looking for something platform neutral, so Sharepoint has been discounted/excluded.

Also, we are keen to introduce some web 2.0 technologies. Does anyone have any evidence (anecdotal or otherwise) about the benefits and/or difficulties of doing this, particularly in an internal context.

Finally, we are looking for how to explain the concepts and benefits of CMS to non-technical stakeholders. I'm just starting the research into and writing of this so pointers and links would be useful.

Thanks in advance if anyone can help.

Hi Uta

If you drop me an email, I will send it across.

robin.smith<at sign>auros.co.uk

Reobin

On 17:45:00 19 November 2007 utaniendorf wrote:

Hi Robin

as we are just going through the same process of vendor selection I would be very interested in your requirements document.

Thanks,

Uta

On 09:15:16 20 September 2007 robinsmith wrote:

Hi Sebastian

The first thing to consider is what tier you are looking to procure from.  In essence there are three tiers:

1) Enterprise - Interwoven, Fat Wite, Morello, Vignette etc

2) Middle Tier - Immediacy, Contensis, EasySite, RedDot (pricing more tier 1)

3) In-house solutions - Agency organic builds, Pepperio etc

We have a requirements document that we have compiled over the last few years which may be of interest.  It lists 100+ questions we are frequently asked, when tendering for the provision of a new CMS.

If you would like to chat further, drop me a line.

Regards
Robin Smith

Business Development Manager

www.auros.co.uk

On 10:55:08 19 September 2007 SebastianCrump wrote:

We are starting a procurement process and planning to introduce a new CMS for our Intranet. Does anyone have any useful lessons we could learn from? We're looking for something platform neutral, so Sharepoint has been discounted/excluded.

Also, we are keen to introduce some web 2.0 technologies. Does anyone have any evidence (anecdotal or otherwise) about the benefits and/or difficulties of doing this, particularly in an internal context.

Finally, we are looking for how to explain the concepts and benefits of CMS to non-technical stakeholders. I'm just starting the research into and writing of this so pointers and links would be useful.

Thanks in advance if anyone can help.