Governance Hierarchy: How roles can help to

govern your intranet

Owner, Champion, and Steering Group

Intranet Manager

Intranet Team

Content Owners and Editors

Intranet Users

Publishing models for different requirements

•Flexible approach on who is responsible for publishing, updating and managing the content

•Third parties will normally publish and manage content on a day-to-day basis

•Content owner or editor is responsible for publishing, updating, and managing the content

•Central team responsible for publishing, updating, and managing the content

Centralised Decentralised

HybridOutsourced

Publishing model factors• Type of organisation your intranet will be supporting:

o Smallo Dynamico Largeo Complex

• Culture will help you choose a model to meet strategic aims• How you manage all your intranet content and applications• How your governance framework needs to operate• How you will improve your publishing and user experiences

Publishing models for different requirements

•Flexible approach on who is responsible for publishing, updating and managing the content

•Third parties will normally publish and manage content on a day-to-day basis

•Content owner or editor is responsible for publishing, updating, and managing the content

•Central team responsible for publishing, updating, and managing the content

Centralised Decentralised

HybridOutsourced

Centralised: strengths• You can set right direction and monitor progress. Strategy

coordination is strong.• You can make changes to your governance quickly.• Your training costs are minimal with small team to publish.

You train people quickly so they become productive. • Knowledge shared easily across a small team.• Shared understanding of how governance supports publishing

and user experiences.

Centralised: weaknesses• May quickly outgrow this model if organisation expands from

a small number of tightly knit people in one location to many. • Increasingly difficult to know everyone risking delays. • Frustration between content owners and central team. • New people mean new ideas on how the strategy and

governance could be improved which central team may resist. • Growing risk of being isolated and detached from changing

needs of business areas/functions as organisation expands.

Publishing models for different requirements

•Flexible approach on who is responsible for publishing, updating and managing the content

•Third parties will normally publish and manage content on a day-to-day basis

•Content owner or editor is responsible for publishing, updating, and managing the content

•Central team responsible for publishing, updating, and managing the content

Centralised Decentralised

HybridOutsourced

Decentralised: strengths• Helps you separate day-to-day publishing needs from strategic

and governance responsibilities. • You are able to manage the look and feel of your intranet

design using publishing templates and governance features. • No need for content owners to spend time designing or have

high technical skills to use templates.• Content owner is responsible for publishing, updating and

managing the content. • Compliance with publishing standards will be your core team’s

responsibility to check and inform content owners.

Decentralised: weaknesses• You, your core team, and business area/ function representatives

may not agree on strategy and governance priorities. • Delays, wasted effort, and conflicting approaches pursued, cause

confusion and poor user experience. • Your organisation may not see the intranet contributing to its key

priorities or adding any value. • It may want to review intranet’s purpose, strategy, governance

framework, publishing model, and roles and responsibilities.• Risk your team communicates and coordinates in a confused or

fragmented way. Aims of core team and publishers may conflict.

Publishing models for different requirements

•Flexible approach on who is responsible for publishing, updating and managing the content

•Third parties will normally publish and manage content on a day-to-day basis

•Content owner or editor is responsible for publishing, updating, and managing the content

•Central team responsible for publishing, updating, and managing the content

Centralised Decentralised

HybridOutsourced

Outsourced: strengths• There can be significant cost savings made by outsourcing the

publishing and managing of your intranet’s content. • Possible to improve speed of publishing with rigorous service

level agreement covering publishing speed & content quality.• Dedicated team of outsourced people helps, developing an

understanding about how your organisation’s custom and practices and language used (acronyms, etc.).

Outsourced: weaknesses• Expected savings may not always be achievable with extra

costs, previously hidden, included in contract. • It may take longer to do the same activity, removing savings. • There may be more errors, adding hidden costs, with delays in

the publishing or lowering of the content’s quality. • Goodwill between people within organisation may disappear

with service level agreement.• You may outsource more than is needed. If contract stopped

prematurely it may cause extra costs not budgeted for.

Publishing models for different requirements

•Flexible approach on who is responsible for publishing, updating and managing the content

•Third parties will normally publish and manage content on a day-to-day basis

•Content owner or editor is responsible for publishing, updating, and managing the content

•Central team responsible for publishing, updating, and managing the content

Centralised Decentralised

HybridOutsourced

Hybrid: strengths• Gives opportunity to test out and combine approaches before

adopting publishing model that works best.• Helps prevent the unnecessary extra costs that would come if

you took an approach that has major problems. • Working with your core team, business representatives, and

content owners and editors help to adopt right approach. • With goodwill from everyone, it helps to ensure the overall

publishing and user experience is consistent and strong.

Hybrid: weaknesses• Risk of testing different approaches is that the overall

strategic direction for your intranet may be overlooked. • Pragmatic approach risks delays to critical areas needing

urgent attention and action. • Your approach may need consensus. Some things will never

be agreeable to everyone. Organisations are not democratic. • May open up divisions that have an impact on other ways you

manage your intranet or the direction it is moving in. • May create a fragmented experience as you adopt each phase

Which publishing model is best for you?

•Flexible approach on who is responsible for publishing, updating and managing the content

•Third parties will normally publish and manage content on a day-to-day basis

•Content owner or editor is responsible for publishing, updating, and managing the content

•Central team responsible for publishing, updating, and managing the content

Centralised Decentralised

HybridOutsourced

Centralised is best forA smaller organisation that is stable in size and culture or an organisation using an intranet for the first time.

Decentralised is best forAn organisation based in many locations. It is large enough to support a core team with business area and business function representatives to manage the intranet. You should consider a decentralised publishing model for a digital workspace, benefiting from its extended reach and added complexity.

Outsourcing is best forAn organisation that has budget challenges and a mature intranet is more suited to outsourcing its activities. The outsourcing will normally cover the publishing and managing of content on a day-to-day basis. It rarely covers the strategy or purpose of the governance framework.

Hybrid is best forAn organisation that has a culture where the direction is set from its centre and accepted after consultation is more suited to a hybrid version of a publishing model that is adapted to meet your requirements