Your Firm's Single Most Useful Website (Or Is It?)

In the Paleolithic Era of the Internet, one of my favorite destinations was "Really Useful Sites."  Here one found an updated-daily list of sites where one could actually accomplish something—from an online thesaurus to (shock and awe!) being able to buy a book to one of my favorite all-time champs, MapQuest.

The most important Really Useful Site that a firm should maintain is its own intranet.  But does yours measure up?  According to the "usability" guru, Jakob Nielsen, most businesses' intranets are deplorable, at a cost in wasted time and motion of $5-million/year for, say, a 10,000-employee firm.   If he's even remotely correct, where have we gone wrong?

• search functionality on intranets remains primitive; compared to how search has improved on the web itself in the last 10 years, intranet search tools are typically medieval;
• no senior management buy-in:  For example, if filling out timesheets and expense reports is something you can do on your intranet (you should!), has any senior partner ever actually done it themselves?  Would they encounter aggravation if so?
• no coordination: You probably don't have an "intranet czar;" rather, each practice group or office often generates its own materials.  Most important:
• organizing information according to where it comes from and not according to what people need to accomplish with it.

Nielsen is always worth a read.