Introducing new software or systems into your company can be very challenging. Any change for most people is somewhat painful and a new intranet will certainly provide plenty of opportunity for change. The fact that this change will allow for more effective communication and collaboration as well as streamlining business processes won't matter a lot in itself… There is still change involved and most people will resist change.

While good planning is obviously the first button on the shirt there a three key areas we have found that will help your SharePoint Intranet Thrive; Top Level Buy-in, Identifying Champions and Training, Training, Training.

Top Level Buy-in

Over the years we have worked with some companies who tried to develop an intranet organically. Typically there was a department or business unit within the company that needed the advantages a SharePoint Intranet would offer but the rest of the company and or top level management had not "bought in" that this was a need for the entire company. While this method has been effective for the specific department or business unit, it has rarely succeeded in gaining traction throughout the rest of the company. A key component to Intranet success is upper management buy-in. A new SharePoint intranet will provide a wide range of improved functionality and process improvement but that also means a new way of doing things. Upper management must cast a vision that this is 'our' new way of doing things and identify the benefits for the organization and its employees.

Identifying Champions

As the intranet project progresses you will want to have identified 'Champions' who will drive the project. These individuals believe the change will make a positive impact on everyone involved. Some companies select champions from upper management, while others designate champions within the power user com-munity. Your approach should depend on your company's culture. Top-down cultures find that champions from upper management work best because they have the power to drive change.

Community-oriented cultures recruit power users as champions because they can convincingly convert fence-sitters and laggards, and they can serve as trainers within the department. One word of caution though: make sure you empower them to drive change and solve department-specific needs.

Training, Training Training

SharePoint Intranets with well trained users thrive! Some clients choose to develop train-the-trainer pro-grams, training key users first. Key users in turn, are responsible for training their respective departments. Other clients have chosen to train their entire company over the course of a week. We recommend training for the "content owners" or department leads that will empower them to not only manage their section of the intranet but have the know-how to create new solutions as they are needed. Our most popular and effective method for training end users is SharePoint Self Paced Training Modules. These short videos are individual flash training modules of your site to guide your users in the "how to's" of your new SharePoint Intranet. The goal is for the end user to watch a short video (3 to 5 minutes) then go perform the action. Some common tutorials are a site tour, working with the document center, setting alerts etc. Here are three samples from our SharePoint online training.