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Reviews of the full report “This report really helped me shortlist the vendors to speak to. It saved me at least 4 weeks of studying the market. If you are looking for a ‘buy not build’ solution, read this report first.” — Malou Wezemael, Digital Workplace Manager at EDF Luminus, Belgium

“…a tremendously valuable and well-written report. It provides a clear, objective and unbiased assessment of a range of options for implementing world class intranets…” — Andrew Wright, intranet manager and founder of the Worldwide Intranet Challenge, via LinkedIn

“If you are in the position of looking at an intranet in a box product to purchase, I would highly recommend investing in this report to save you the pain later on.” — Jeremy Thake, Senior Product (Office 365) Marketing Manager, Microsoft, via Medium

“A superb achievement in both scope and quality….This is a report that just shouts ‘Read Me!’”

“Each vendor is profiled in a well structured format together with an assessment of its product that could only have been carried out by a team that had substantial experience in SharePoint technology and implementation together with a deep understanding of what users expect an intranet to be able to deliver..”

— Martin White, author of ‘The intranet Management Handbook’ and ‘Enterprise Search’, of Intranet Focus

Contentsv2.0

1 Attini intrAnet owned by Rapid Circle 20

2 AttoLo intrAnet owned by Red Plane 28

3 BonzAi intrAnet for ShArePoint owned by Dynamic Owl 36

4 eASyShAre owned by EasySharePoint 45

5 fLex AUtomAtion owned by ICS Solutions 54

6 GimmAL intrAnet & PortALS owned by Gimmal 64

7 Go intrAnet ACCeLerAtor owned by Habanero Consulting Group 73

8 hAdron owned by Cloud2 82

9 hoozin owned by Prexens SAS 90

10 injio owned by WebVine 99

11 interChAnGe diGitAL WorkPLACe owned by Akumina 109

12 kASAmA owned by Circle T 120

13 kirA owned by CompanyNet 130

14 LivetiLeS ShArePoint owned by LiveTiles 138

15 LS intrAnet owned by Lizard Soft 148

16 omniA intrAnet owned by Precio Fishbone AB 158

17 one WindoW WorkPLACe owned by Portal Solutions 165

18 PortAL Go! owned by rhipe Solutions 174

19 PoWeLL 365 owned by Powell Software 181

20 riSe owned by Perficient 190

21 SimPLify owned by Content Formula 199

22 SP intrAnet owned by SP Marketplace 206

23 UniLy owned by Brightstarr 213

24 vALo owned by Blue Meteorite 224

25 Wizdom owned by Webtop 233

26 Work PLAtform Prime owned by Emgage 242

introdUCtion 4

USinG thiS GUide 6

ProdUCt ComPAriSon SUmmAry 7

ACknoWLedGementS 16

ABoUt CLeArBox ConSULtinG 18

Introduction

Over the last eighteen months, there has been a dramatic shift in how organisations are approaching new intranets on SharePoint. Instead of partnering with a development agency, they are looking for ready-made solutions that can be easily adapted and quickly deployed. In response, agencies which have previously focused on customised solutions per client are now offering branded platforms. This has resulted in an explosion of new product offerings. This report aims to be the most comprehensive independent guide to that trend, reviewing over twenty products in this space

The potential gains are significant: not only are costs much reduced, but several vendors can do a basic installation in a day or two, and configure a workable intranet in a matter of weeks. This reduces risks, but more importantly, it gives much more time to focus on the other aspects of an intranet that we know matter most: great content, collaboration features, proper resourcing and a real focus on supporting adoption. We’re also now seeing that some vendors are offering more targeted solutions, for example aimed at smaller companies.

The shift of focus by Microsoft from SharePoint on-premises to SharePoint Online as part of Office 365 has ignited the ‘buy not build’ trend as companies look to buy software services and outsource maintenance and upgrade demands. Some of the leading vendors in this report are anticipating the next wave by also making it easier to run hybrid intranets. This allows companies to keep sensitive data on-premises, whilst exploiting the cost benefits of a cloud-based approach for things like published news and employee directories.

There’s also a shift to offerings which are branded as ‘digital workplace’ and offer more apps or third party integrations, although the latter may well require custom set-up from the vendor.

the PoSitiveSAcross the products we saw, the emphasis tends to be on intranets with an internal communications focus. The major gains are:

Comprehensive management and publishing of news

An attractive user experience, including a responsive design that works on mobile devices

Better integration of social features (such as commenting on news) than Microsoft offer

in some cases, enhanced governance for site creation and usage statistics

the neGAtiveSAs you may expect with a ready-made approach, these products require some compromise in flexibility and costs:

the basic styling is part of what you’re buying, so make sure you like it. Company branding and colours may be changed, but most products have a fundamental ‘look’ that is hard to change. the good news is that most interfaces are attractive.

fewer solutions cover the collaboration side of SharePoint. your team sites are likely to remain largely untouched with the budget options.

there are often on-going licence costs that wouldn’t be incurred if you had paid for the customi-sation. Buyers will need to consider carefully the total cost of ownership between a one-off build (with maintenance) and ongoing licensing commitment.

Many of these products are pretty new as branded offerings. This lack of maturity does mean a heightened risk of product issues, gaps in capability or issues with vendor stability.

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INTRODUCTION

Our overall impression is that the positives will outweigh the negatives in the great majority of cases, especially when lower risk and speed of deployment are factored in.

ShArePoint 2016 And fUtUre deveLoPmentSWith the introduction of SharePoint 2016 and Microsoft’s regular release model for Office 365 apps, some may question the need for third party solutions at all. Certainly, changes such as ‘modern team sites’ are very welcome (and one reason why we no longer included this as a scenario). The new apps too, often work well for specific features such as OneDrive and Planner.

However, Microsoft still seems to have something of a blind spot when it comes to corporate intranets. Much of what is offered still focuses on small group collaboration, such as team sites and Office 365 Groups, but falls short when it comes to publishing and web content management. Given the prevalence of SharePoint in the intranet space and the dominance of internal communications functions as intranet owners within organisations, this situation is mildly baffling.

The new team site news, for example, would not scale readily to be a corporate news publishing platform. In turn, the mobile experience for published content and site-wide navigation continues to fall short, and it is things like this that cause many SharePoint customers to turn to third parties to plug the gap. A further reason is that not every company wishes to move to the cloud, and the on-premises feature set of SharePoint 2016 is falling behind. Social features, for example, are unchanged since 2013.

An AttrACtive oPtionOur first report, issued in January 2016, contained just six products. In this version we cover over 25. The range of options we’ve identified is now sufficiently broad that there is a good chance you will find a vendor that matches your location and requirements. If you need to improve your intranet, and it needs to be based on SharePoint or Office 365, then the options in this report are well worth considering.

There is no overall ‘winner’; rather there are multiple strong candidates and the best product will the closest match to your specific needs, budget and location. This is a fast-paced, exciting time which is providing considerable choice for customers.

Sam Marshall, ClearBox Consulting, October 2016

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INTRODUCTION

Using this guide

ChooSinG A ProdUCtWe produced this report to help intranet managers and IT teams with their product selection process. We assume you’ve already developed an intranet strategy (if not, talk to us!) and are looking for the best fit for your needs.

We recommend that you have a clear view on:

the business problems and opportunities you want your intranet to address

the role of your intranet within your wider digital workplace

How your intranet will be used for communication, collaboration, finding, sharing and supporting business processes

Your technical environment (for example, plans for other elements of Office 365 such as Lync, Active directory and exchange)

A clear view on governance and ownership of the intranet

Rather than simply list the features of each solution, we wanted to re-create the typical requirements list that we have seen when working with our own clients on SharePoint strategies. We therefore asked each vendor to give us a demo based on a set of scenarios (See ‘How we evaluated’, below). When talking to the vendors, we recommend developing your own scenarios based on your own requirements gathering.

Armed with clarity on the above, use this guide to shortlist vendors to speak to. Rather than necessarily picking the ones that scored highest overall, the best value may be achieved by matching those who scored well on your priority scenarios.

Some of our clients worry about relying on these smaller vendors on top of any changes Microsoft might introduce, so we have indicated vendor profiles in the report. We have also indicated compatibility with different versions of SharePoint and with cloud-based options.

ChooSinG A vendorAlthough we primarily focus on product features, the relationship you will have with the vendor is also important. Sometimes compromising on features to work with somebody in your time zone can be a smart choice. There are notable clusters of vendors coming out of Australia, the Nordics, the UK and USA.

Some of the products have been around for several years, others are relatively new and evolving fast. The impact of this may not be so visible in the product per se (after all, a bespoke development is by definition v1.0) but in how well the vendor has shifted from a project mind-set to a product support one. Each review includes details on version numbers, the company background and their support arrangements.

hoW We evALUAtedEach vendor gave a demonstration of their product, and answered a questionnaire about the key features of the product, technical requirements, their client support model and details on how the product can be launched within a business.

The companies interviewed were asked to demonstrate how their product supports eight different scenarios. These scenarios were picked as they reflect real needs we have seen with our clients but also are areas where generally SharePoint out of the box struggles or where we believe these products can add value.

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INTRODUCTION

The scenarios are not intended to cover everything an intranet might do, but to be a representative sample. If we missed any real areas of strength, then vendors had a final ‘wildcard’ option to demonstrate this.

Vendors were given the opportunity to correct any factual inaccuracies in their review, but not to influence scores or opinions.

The eight scenarios selected are:

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

News publishing

Branding, look and feel

Two-way communications

Mobile access

Community spaces

Analytics

Transactions

Wildcard

Each of these scenarios is covered in more detail below.

We gave a score out of four for how each product coped with each scenario and to ensure consistency, each score was checked again by two other reviewers.

Product comparison summaryHere are our ratings for all the products across the different scenarios.

Score WHAT IT MEANS

Product performs this scenario very well

Can deliver most of the scenario, some improvement needed

Delivers scenario with limitations

Only capable of some elements of the scenario

N/A The product does not attempt to address this scenario

These scores are inevitably a snapshot of capabilities. Some products are evolving quickly, but for consistency we only rated features that are available now, and not those in development. Please see below for an explanation of costs.

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INTRODUCTION

CoStSCosts are always difficult to evaluate because there are so many associated dependencies. However, we have tried to make an approximate costing comparison, by asking vendors to quote for both 500 and 5000 users over three years. Use the icons as a guide to selecting vendors that are roughly in your budget range.

We picked three years as a realistic lifecycle for an intranet, and also to smooth out comparisons between per user per month pricing models and those that have a high initial fee but low ongoing maintenance costs. Where vendors had multiple price options we have matched the pricing to the version we reviewed. For example, if a product scores well for a scenario because of an add-on module, the price rating will include that module.

SCenArioS in detAiL

1. news publishing

AVERAGERATING

3.4Delivering news is a central activity for internal communications functions and a key capability of the intranet. Most organisations want the ability to target communications to different groups of employees, making messaging more impactful. We wanted to check out the experience of creating a news story and then publishing it to a specific audience.

Ideally this involves a central news repository where stories can be prepared, approved via appropriate workflows and then published to different channels. We were also looking for the ability to target audiences, for example using metadata to show some stories to all employees, with other content only delivered to a particular business unit or location.

We were also interested in any features supporting content editors, such as scheduled publishing, image editing and approval workflow.

In general SharePoint intranet accelerator products are doing well in this area. This is perhaps not that surprising as news publishing is one of the most basic gaps in SharePoint for internal communicators. It is also a market that many of the digital agencies and vendors involved are comfortable with. The best products come with ready-made templates for news articles, including subheadings, author and expiry fields. They are also flexible in how stories are rendered, for example, adapting the same item to work in a carousel or thumbnail version.

2. Branding, look and feel

AVERAGERATING

3.2Of course we were looking for an attractive intranet design, and generally the products we reviewed delivered an engaging front end. However, design is also an area where organisations frequently want as much flexibility as possible. When reviewing we wanted to see how easily the intranet could be adapted to company branding and in-house stylings.

We were looking for flexibility in how a brand could be applied more broadly, for example accommodating a brand palette beyond the banner, and applying it consistently in other parts of SharePoint such as team sites.

All the products we reviewed could apply a corporate brand to the publishing part of an intranet, but far fewer carried it thought to areas like team sites in any meaningful way. Some had real disconnects where there was a clear break point between content in their system and visiting native SharePoint, leading to a fragmented use experience.

We also wanted to see whether products could support sub-brands, for example where part of the organisation has a distinct identity, such as a joint venture or acquisition.

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INTRODUCTION

This element highlighted where the enterprise scale products showed their strengths. Although more expensive, complex organisations that need to reflect distinctive brands across the intranet estate will need to invest in the right solution, particularly where content is to be shared across sub-brands.

SharePoint’s UI has a poor reputation for user friendliness. We were interested in improvements to standard elements such as team sites and user profiles.

We also wanted to know how products support customer-specific navigation needs and whether clients can set up their own menu hierarchy, and change it easily. How would this work for divisions that need their own local menus too? Example solutions might be a mega-menu, or search-based navigation.

Some products such as Gimmal and Rise stood out for us as offering very friendly ways to manage the menus so that they could be changed without technical knowledge, while others were more complex. One thing to look out for is products that use non-menu approaches such as lists of tiles instead. It is similar to Microsoft’s own shift visible in Delve and the ‘waffle’ menu, for example, but it may not appeal to more traditional work cultures.

3. two-way communications

AVERAGERATING

2.7Everybody wants to leverage the social features on their intranet, for more engaging internal communications but Microsoft presents a messy set of options. For example, Yammer is not available for comments on news articles in native Office 365.

We wanted to see how the products supported employee comments on content, for example on news stories or blogs, as well as likes and shares on videos and pictures.

We also asked vendors to show how integrated their approach to two-way communications was. For example, if Yammer is used, do all comments appear in the Yammer feed? Can you see from someone’s employee profile what news stories they like and share?

Unsurprisingly nearly all the products provided at least the ability to comment on news stories. The best products such as Bonzai tended to replace all social elements with their own system, a plus for companies where a cloud solution like Yammer is barred. Other vendors offered a fairly lightweight ‘embed’ of a Yammer feed on the homepage without integrating it with news stories or other elements. It looks superficially good, but falters when, for example, comments on news or a video don’t appear as a Yammer activity.

4. mobile access

AVERAGERATING

3.2Thankfully it is now rare that an intranet is launched without giving thought to mobile access. However, SharePoint and Office 365 both give a mixed user experience, especially around mobile for published sites. We were keen to see if the products filled this gap and give an attractive experience on a small screen, perhaps using responsive design. And did it also support full or near-full functionality, such as supporting commenting on news?

For those products offering their own mobile app, we wanted to check that much of the intranet can be accessed from it. We also wanted to know how it sat alongside Microsoft’s own family of Apps such as Delve.

Nearly all the products we saw have responsive design. Many of these are working really well for news and published content, but less so for other aspects such as document libraries. One thing to watch out for is controls that are not touch-friendly: on a mobile, the images get smaller but the buttons need to get bigger. We gave the highest scores to products that had gone the extra mile and produced a dedicated app, such as Unily and Valo. One point to note though, is that on employee phones the dedicated app is likely to have the vendor branding rather than your company one.

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INTRODUCTION

5. Community spaces

AVERAGERATING

2.5Community spaces are a key use case for intranets and related social platforms. We wanted to find out what support was offered for online Communities of Practice (CoPs). These spaces should encourage peers to come together around a common topic, sharing information, updates, insights, questions and resources. Moderation features such as promoted topics and badges can be useful features. We also asked providers for a mobile view of a community space, because the most valuable

contributors to communities can sometimes be field or front-line workers.

Although Yammer offers many elements of a community space, communities need a curated content area as well as a Q&A section and Yammer doesn’t provide this well. Some clients would also prefer an on-premises solution and Yammer is cloud-only. We wanted to know if vendors offered a viable Yammer alternative suitable for CoPs.

Community spaces are an area where there is considerable room for improvement. Not all vendors attempted to address this scenario, particularly as there is always the option to use SharePoint’s own community or team site features, although these are clunky. We were most impressed where real thought had gone into creating an attractive space that was about membership, knowledge assets and discussions. Hoozin focused on this dimension more strongly than anyone.

6. Analytics

AVERAGERATING

2.3We know how important analytics is for internal communications and for intranets in general so we wanted to see what the products provided for intranet managers to help measure and improve effectiveness. In general, SharePoint’s own tools are very poor and this is an area where accelerator products can potentially add value.

Within the analytics offered we wanted to find easy ways to track news publishing and social interaction with that content. Ideally we also wanted to see breakdowns of statistics too, for example demographic views by department, geography or role. We also asked vendors if they had any analytics to support governance and the content lifecycle, such as unused or expired content, trending search terms and ‘liked’ content.

Although a number of products do not support analytics and rely on third party tools, overall this is one area that has really moved on since our first report from early 2016.

A number of vendors are investing in their own tools to make measurement more accessible. Logging data from Microsoft’s Azure Insights tool and then presenting it in the Power BI product is a popular route, used by Akumina and LizardSoft for example. This is a welcome development and we hope to see further evolution. In particular, further thought needs to go into what makes a useful set of reports on intranet use; it ’s not enough to just gather the data and overlay it on maps, for example.

Download ClearBox’s

free rePort on Intranet Analytics.

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INTRODUCTION

7. transactions

AVERAGERATING

2.6Fundamentally intranets should help employees get things done. We wanted to see whether the products we reviewed offered any support for creating workflows or common employee processes. We were interested in anything from tools for building forms and workflow, to more complete ready-made modules or ‘apps’ to support absence booking, room booking or IT Helpdesk management. We also wanted to see dashboard views that help employees, for example user-friendly

views of pay, pensions or holidays remaining.

Not many vendors have explored this space, and there is room for evolution. Those providers targeting enterprise customers pointed out that SAP, Peoplesoft, Workday and so on tend to fulfil these roles, so were not part of their own products. These systems might also necessitate a more custom approach to building integration with the intranet. All the same, we would have welcomed some friendlier, integrated interfaces to these common tasks, especially where the product is positioned as a ‘digital workplace’.

Other vendors said they would integrate with Nintex Workflow, and again this is a reasonable approach for organisations needing powerful custom forms, but buyers should factor in this additional cost. Note that although Nintex works with SharePoint and Office 365, it isn’t necessarily an option that will integrate with all of the products here because some build their user interface outside of SharePoint (e.g. Unily and Akumina).

In the end it was actually products aimed at smaller and medium-sized organisations that tended to do better in this scenario with offerings like Injio and SP Marketplace providing a more comprehensive library of modules out of the box.

8. Wildcard

AVERAGERATING

3.0The last scenario was something we left for each of the product vendors to choose. We wanted to see something that differentiates the product, for example as a unique feature or something it does particularly well. An example might be built-in product training, gamification, new employee on boarding or ideation features.

We weren’t sure what to expect in this area. Several vendors demoed very nice site provisioning tools, with both Flex and Gimmal having strong governance features. Wizdom stood out for its example of a Kanban board and ideation management as an illustration of its many add-ons. Live Tiles also showed an innovative idea for real-time wireframing as a way to develop designs collaboratively with users. These sections gave us a flavour of the capabilities of these intranets and value-add features which are emerging as these products mature.

teChniCAL reqUirementSWe have indicated some of the basic requirements for each solution, such as SharePoint version compatibility and hosting options. We would encourage buyer IT teams to talk though other standards and constraints with vendors, such as authentication needs and data sovereignty concerns with cloud solutions.

One aspect that may not be immediately apparent is the range of architectures used by the different products. The majority work purely within SharePoint by customising web parts and style sheets. But some, such as Hoozin and Unily, have created quite separate applications that ‘talk’ to SharePoint data. Others are more of a framework, such as Akumina and Live Tiles. Each of these options have implications when introducing them to an existing company IT landscape and how they are updated so IT departments need to be involved in the evaluation of any software. A useful directory is maintained by James Dellow, one of our contributors.

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INTRODUCTION

Summary of technical requirements

Product Vendor SP online

office 365

other cloud SP 2010 SP 2013 SP 2016

Attini intranet rapid circle

Attollo intranet red Plane

Bonzai dynamic owl

easy Share easy SharePoint

fleX icS Solutions

Gimmal intranet Gimmal

Go intranet habanero

hadron cloud2

hoozin hoozin

injio Webvine.au

interchange Akumina

Kasama circle t

Kira companynet

livetiles SharePoint live tiles

lS intranet lizard Soft

omnia Prescio fishbone

oneWindow Portal Solutions

PortalGo! rhipe

Powell 365 Powell Software

rise Perficient

Simplify content formula

SP intranet SP Marketplace

unily Brightstarr

Valo intranet Blue Meteorite

Wizdom Webtop

Work Platform Prime emgage

What about non-SharePoint solutions?There are many good intranet platforms other than SharePoint available. Typically, we find they trade flexibility and scope for ease of deployment and ongoing ownership. Usually this is a fair trade off, but it is important to know what you need from an intranet. Our Strategy Consulting services can help you determine this.

There isn’t really anything as comprehensive as SharePoint (let alone Office 365) if you need all the elements of publishing, collaboration, application development and system integration. Below we list some alternative platforms that are worth considering. Please do contact us if you’d like help on selecting an intranet product.

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INTRODUCTION

Interact

OrchidsoftSORCE

Jostle

JIVE Software

Iris

Simpplr (SalesForce)

Open

Atrium

Igloo

Intranet

Connections

Bitrix

Liferay

Thoughtfarmer

twine

SharePoint alternatives

the inevitABLe CAveAt And diSCLAimer At the time of writing (September-October 2016) all details were accurate as far as we know. We asked vendors to check the details in our reviews but ultimately they are independent write-ups. Vendors are working hard to improve these products and it may also be that details have changed by the time you read this, so please confirm any details with them before making a final purchasing decision.

In most cases screenshots have been provided by the vendors and may be subject to copyright.

The opinions and information in this report is for guidance only. Any decision around acquiring software should be considered carefully with reference to your intranet strategy, organisational needs, risks and technology landscape. Don’t be afraid to ask us to help, we’re always happy to have a no-obligation introductory chat.

our vendor neutral PolicyAs a consultancy, we think it is essential that we act with our client’s interests foremost, so ClearBox has a strict vendor-neutral policy. This means that we do not enter into any agreements with vendors that would bias our recommendations to clients. We don’t take payments for referrals or to write reviews. We don’t sell any software or licenses. We only write the reviews we want to and we fund them ourselves (including all the work that went into this report).

This doesn’t mean that we won’t talk to vendors though: we are keen to keep up to date with developments in the intranet and digital workplace field and enjoy a good relationship with many of the companies involved in this report; we thank them for their time and co-operation in putting it together.

Need help choosing an intranet platform?

ContaCt us

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ShArePoint for internAl coMMunicAtorS

“The workshop was extremely helpful and informative. The feedback from the group has been very positive.”

– Simeon Lewis, Head of IT, WSPA International

“Very well done and enjoyable”

-Tom Colley - HSBC Internal Communications Exec

What participants say about ClearBox Workshops

BUSineSS-foCUSed trAininG thAt exPLAinS the ‘Why’ PArt of ShArePoint

our training is delivered in-house and tailored to meet your needs

the trainer:

What you’ll learn:

find out more

or

+44 1244 458746 | hello@clearbox.co.uk | ClearBoxTeam on Twitter

How leading organisations get the most

out of SharePoint for internal communications

Strategies for governing SharePoint and showing

business value

Effective ways to use SharePoint and Yammer for

engaging employees

Tactics for SharePoint adoption

Good practice and pitfalls when collaborating with

SharePoint

Simple ways to explain “what to use when”

Workshops are run by Sam Marshall, owner of ClearBox Consulting. He has specialised in intranets and the digital workplace for over 17 years, working with companies such as Unilever, AstraZeneca, AkzoNobel, BT, Sony, SABMiller and Rio Tinto. He is a regular columnist at CMSWire and is a regular keynote speaker at international conferences. In 2015 he was given the Intranet Now award for remarkable contribution to the intranet community.

Download the SharePoint for internal

communicators brochure

Contact us for Booking details

INTRODUCTION

Acknowledgementsreport director

Sam Marshall is the owner of ClearBox Consulting and has specialised in Intranets and Knowledge Management for over 17 years. His current activities focus on intranet strategy; the growth of the digital workplace; the business side of SharePoint and the use of social media tools for collaboration and communication. He was responsible for Unilever’s Global Portal Implementation, overseeing the roll-out of over 700 online communities to 90,000 people and consolidating several thousand intranets into a single system.

follow on @sammarshall

reviewers

A long-term associate at ClearBox, Wedge Black was an in-house regional and global intranet manager before becoming a consultant. He specialises in the user research necessary to build navigation, structure, and home pages that meet employee’s expectations. Content and internal communications will always be close to his heart, even as the intranet develops into a task-focused digital workplace.

Wedge is the founder of the Intranet Now conference, and tweets a lot about intranets

follow on @Wedge

James Dellow is a freelance human-centred designer and a technology strategist, specialising in technologies that help people connect, communicate and collaborate with each other. He brings more than a decade of experience working in intranet and knowledge management roles and as a consultant with a wide range of government, professional and blue chip companies. James has helped clients with intranet vendor selection and has worked with SharePoint as a consultant advising on strategy, governance, information architecture and content management.

Andrew Gilleran is a SharePoint, Office 365, and Yammer consultant, trainer, and user adoption specialist based in Dublin. He has significant experience in managing and building intranets, internal communications, writing, editing, collaboration, document management, training, usability, social enterprise networking, and web analytics in small businesses and multinationals. His focus now is on ‘sustainable adoption’ for the end user with SharePoint and Office 365 especially for intranets and collaboration.

Katie McIntosh’s focus is all around employee engagement, specifically through digital channels. She now works part time for a national charity in their Internal Communications team. She previously worked with Diageo Plc on their intranet build, later migration to another platform, continual development and overall adoption and effectiveness. Her strengths lie in communications, writing engaging content, developing and delivering training for SharePoint and Yammer and managing creative/technical agencies.

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INTRODUCTION

Sharon O’Dea is a digital communications consultant based in the UK. She has over a decade’s experience as an intranet practitioner, including delivering an award-winning intranet for the UK Parliament, and a social collaboration platform for 90,000 staff of the global bank Standard Chartered. She now consults for a range of clients in the finance, government and professional services sectors.

An intranet thought leader, tweeter and blogger, Sharon is one of the team behind the intranetizen.com blog and a contributor to two books about social media.

report editing

Steve Bynghall is an independent consultant, researcher and writer specialising in knowledge management, intranets and the digital workplace. Steve works independently as well as through the Digital Workplace Group and Step Two. He has written extensively through blogs, articles and books.

Following an MSc in Information Science from City University, Steve worked at accounting firm BDO LLP for over thirteen years, working in various knowledge roles. In 2010 he set up Two Hives Ltd.

follow on @bynghall

report design

Paul B. Florescu is an experienced freelance designer. Having a Bachelor degree in Design and Fine Arts. He specialises in high-end print and web/mobile UI/UX design, and branding.

Portfolio at @bogdanflorescu

vendorsWe are grateful to each vendor for their co-operation in demonstrating their products to us. The products we feature are a combination of companies we approached and ones that asked to be involved in this second edition. If you’re the vendor of a product and would like to be included in the next version of this report, please get in touch.

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INTRODUCTION

About ClearBox Consulting

Who We AreClearBox Consulting Ltd. is a specialist independent consultancy that believes in making the workplace a better and more productive experience. Our goal is to help organisations collaborate and communicate more effectively.

We specialise in intranets and the wider digital workplace, including internal communications, social media, knowledge management and collaboration tools. We understand technology, but we approach it from the people side first.

ClearBox is run by Sam Marshall, former Global Intranet Manager for Unilever, together with a network of associates that can be introduced as-needed. We all have hands-on experience of the realities of introducing change in organisations.

WhAt We doWe bring clarity to digital workplaces. Often our clients want to reinvigorate their intranets or introduce more collaborative ways of working. We help them develop and implement a strategy that supports their business goals but which also understands employee needs.

What makes us different is that all of our consultants have first-hand experience of managing intranets, so we’re not just about the theory. Collectively we’ve worked on over 200 intranets, so we can help you plan effectively and anticipate any challenges.

We are also technology and vendor neutral: we don’t implement any specific tools or get fees for recommending them. That means we help our clients make choices with their business needs in mind.

Our services include:

design of intranet and digital workplace strategy to directly support organisation goals

SharePoint and Office 365 strategy, governance and adoption

Workshops on SharePoint and Office 365 for internal communications, intranet governance and adoption

intranet design and usability

requirements discovery from stakeholders, employees and partners

Launch of intranet, social and collaboration tools to ensure strong adoption

Who We Work WithWe work with organisations that range from a few hundred employees to over 100,000, typically as partners to Communications, IT and HR functions. Our assignments have included projects with both profit and non-profit sectors, including AstraZeneca, AkzoNobel, Sony, Ofgem, Bupa, Rio Tinto, Diageo, TUI Travel, SABMiller, Standard Life, and Unilever.

ClearBox Consulting Ltd.Treliske HouseQueens Park Road, ChesterUK CH4 7AD

Contact: hello@clearbox.co.uk@ClearBoxTeamclearbox.co.uk+44 1244 458746

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ClearBoxCONSULTINGI N T R A N E T S | C O L L A B O R A T I O N | S H A R E P O I N T