Within our Microsoft Practice we spend a lot of time and energy focused on creating great Intranet and Portal experiences for our customers. Over the last 10 years SharePoint has become the defacto platform of choice for Intranets in the enterprise as evidenced by the Nielsen Norman Best Intranets of 2016 awards where 9 out of 10 winners were built on SharePoint. But building a world-class intranet can be a daunting task for many organizations especially as companies are also looking to move to the Microsoft cloud and Office 365. With Microsoft pushing the pace of innovation within Office 365 ever faster, the approach to building an intranet also must change to keep pace. This is the reason that Perficient has built Rise as an Intranet as a Service solution. In this post we will look at 5 reasons why you should consider Rise as an Intranet as a Service to replace your aging corporate intranet.
- Everyone is not a unicorn.
We get it, your business is unique. Your company has been successful based on your unique approach, patented process, and proprietary trade secrets. Yes, all of our customers are unique, but after 1000s of projects we have found that most of our clients have core requirements for an intranet that overlap by as much as 80%. These core requirements include common elements such as: Corporate Communications, Departmental Sites, Search, Enterprise Social, Information Architecture, Branding, Mobility, and more. These items as not unique to any one organization. All companies have News and Events, all companies have Departments with important information to share, all companies have people that need to connect and collaborate effectively, all companies have reams of data that require a robust Search capability to make heads or tails from. So yes we are all unique, but we are also very much the same. Rise addresses these common intranet requirements out of the box enabling you to focus on the requirements that are unique to your company.
- The clock is ticking.
The Nielsen Norman Best Intranets of 2016 took an average of 1.3 years to build. That is a long time and a lot can change during that time. Just as with your core business, speed to market and the ability to rapidly adjust to change is critical to your intranet’s success. Starting with an Intranet as a Service approach enables the lead time for the intranet launch to be dramatically shortened. Allowing your team to focus on content, configuration, and enablement, rather than on development and testing. A Rise intranet can be deployed in a matter of weeks, letting you achieve value faster.
- There is risk in everything.
Any significant project undertaking carries risk. Budget, timeline, quality: these are core principals of project management. We can mitigate risk by hiring the best people and following proven processes but it can never be completely removed. By leveraging an Intranet as a Service we can however significantly reduce the risk for your intranet launch. Budget – Rise is sold on a subscription basis giving you a predictable cost structure to plan your budget around. Timeline – Rise installs quickly and gets you up and running in a matter of weeks. Quality – since the code base is shared among all Rise customers the Intranet as a Service provides a higher level of quality than most custom solutions meaning fewer headaches down the line.
- Delivering continuous value.
In our experience most companies replace their intranet every 3-5 years. In the past this cycle has been tied to the on premise SharePoint release cycle 2007 – 2010 – 2013 – 2016, time to do it again! Most customers invest heavily in Year 1 to migrate to the new platform and deliver new value and features to the organization. Very few companies continue investing in years 2-5 to deliver continuous value, leaving most company intranets degraded and devalued over time. We think that this cycle needs to change, permanently. Rise enables you to deliver continuous value on the intranet through the release of new and innovative features over time, allowing your intranet to get better over time and ending the migration cycle forever.
- Assurance of support.
The intranet is not your core business, but it is core to your business. With the pace of change in Office 365 it is more important than ever to have a partner standing behind your intranet investment. Rise is not just about features and deployment, it is about the ongoing support and success of our customers. Now every company can have a dedicated intranet team that delivers new value and intranet features throughout the year. Now every company can have a dedicated support team for when issues do arise.
Rise is an Intranet as a Service solution offering from Perficient, the 2015 Microsoft Partner of the Year. Rise is built from the ground up to address the 80% of common intranet requirements out of the box. With Rise we are able to measure your time to market in a matter of WEEKS, not Months, or even Years. By leveraging an Intranet as a Service your intranet is up and running quickly with all the common requirements met, allowing your team to spend their time on the things that drive engagement and user adoption. Rise delivers regular release cycles and dedicated support, insuring your intranet investment continues to provide value on a continuous and ongoing basis.
We’d love to speak with you about how Rise can enable you to achieve value with your intranet. Schedule a demo of Rise today!
Learn more in our latest guide: Accelerate Your SharePoint Intranet with Rise.
