James Robertson from published a very interesting story casting light on his experience delivering high-quality Enterprise 2.0 solutions to large organizations.
Being passionate in expanding the intranet popularity to SMB market I believe James’ opinion requires some clarification why an intranet solution implementation/customization may take up to 18 months. Is it really the case that a typical intranet deployment for an SMB requires so much time and effort? This is obviously something that can scare away smaller organizations from Enterprise 2.0 technologies! Let me share the Bitrix experience to dot the i's and cross the t's on this matter.
18 months? Noooo! 12 months? No. 6 months? This is a rare occurrence. We have implemented hundreds of intranet projects for companies with 100-500 users and our experience confirms that small and medium-sized businesses normally spend only three to thirty days. This timeframe includes the whole range of activities starting from the product evaluation and ending with the intranet launch.
Really? How it can be? Let’s have a look at the typical implementation process using Bitrix Intranet Portal.
First of all, I would like to note that SMBs are getting interested in intranets for task-specific features, not the whole range of Enterprise 2.0 opportunities. Moreover, some of the opportunities are often considered unwanted in the IT environment. For example, social networking and media broadcasting. On one hand, SMBs doubt that such features bring hard-dollar value to the business but will rather distract employees from their duties (common perception). On the other hand, they can achieve social networking results with traditional tools like meeting and talking.
SMBs are mainly interested in simpler things like document sharing, knowledge management, employee directory, news and announcements, business process management, polls & surveys, common documents database and extranet capabilities – all wrapped in highly secure web-based interface. And of course they are very careful with solution TCO: SMBs prefer products that entail minimum overheads associated with qualified IT staff for intranet maintenance, additional software and hardware expenses.
The focus on task-specific features tremendously shortens the process of choosing, evaluating and implementing intranet solutions.
A customer usually starts with evaluating the product in the , which gives them live experience working with Bitrix Intranet Portal. The virtual lab creates an on-demand copy of the product using a VMware environment and guides the customer through the whole process of installation and configuration. One working day is normally enough to understand whether the product meets the requirements.
The next stage features the on-premise installation of the product, which can be done either on a dedicated server or in virtual environment, sharing the same physical server as the e-mail server or website. This is probably the most complex process as it requires OS and web environment installation and integration with legacy applications. Even so, it rarely exceeds five working days.
The most time-consuming process is content population. Bitrix Intranet Portal comes with pre-set design templates, demo data and an intranet structure which reflect the best intranet practices and addresses the SMBs’ common requirements. Now, the most important part of the implementation: customers almost never change the intranet design and accept approx. 90% of the pre-set intranet structure! SMBs are content with the default design schemes and site structure! When starting their intranet, they don’t need a highly customizable platform but rather a fast and easy solution to start squeezing the hard dollar value out!
As a result, data population and intranet customization take from five to twenty working days.
This how friendly modern intranets are to small and medium-sized businesses.
18 months? Well, yes. With only three conditions: you are a large organization, you have very specific business requirements and you are most probably implementing SharePoint!
