Subscribe to newsletterWeb Workplace – a new word for intranet?
We need to find a new word for “intranet”.
Why? Because we need to wake people up, lose the “dead weight” we have with the word “intranet”, help people – especially top management – focus on why intranets are business critical.
I turned to the members of NetJMC & Co, the Intranet manager group I run on Linkedin (over 300 members around the globe), and asked them the following…
“The word “intranet” is out-of-date in my opinion. I’m often asked how I defined “intranet” for the Global Intranet Strategies Survey, and I confess it is getting harder and harder to have a meaningful definition.
I’m considering concepts like “the intranet-enabled workplace” or the “web-enabled workplace” or the “connected workplace”.
I need to find a phrase that embraces all the things intranets do (or could do) for people and for business.
Can you help me find a phrase or word for this?
Ideally we need a term or phrase that also speaks to senior management. “
Here’s the brainstorm that resulted from my question:
- Web office
- Online office
- Online interactive workspace
- Online workspace
- Online interactive website
- Online desktop
- Online workplace
- My workplace available anytime anywere
- Employee Connected Office
- Collaborative Employee Workspace
- Mobile workspace
- My deskspace
- Workspace anywhere
- Employee Portal
- Resource and Collaboration Portal
- Communications and information mangement platform / portal
- Workplace Web – getting business done – Together
- Company information, news and collaboration portal
- Workplace Channel
- Communication and Information Channel
- Workplace Connections
- Web Workplace
- My Collective and Personal Workplace
- Adaptive Workplace
- Intranet Portal
- Workbench
- Online-Desktop
My personal favourite from this list is the Web Workplace. I like it because:
- It is not limited to internal, and expresses the business need to provide workspaces for mixed teams (internal + external)
- It focuses on work, business, what people need to do.
- It can be abbreviated into WW!
I sent out a message on Twitter about my preference, and got the following responses:
Response: “Web workplace. Not bad, but doesn’t really indicate anything internal, to me. Or was that intentional?”
JMC – YES, that is part of the intention!
Response: A “Web workplace” is for Digital Nomads & is intra-extra-internet enabled.
JMC – Exactly!
Response: “Doesn’t get my vote definitely needs to be a one word solution for me”
JMC – I agree, but what…???
Response: “I like it”
JMC – Me too!
Response: “Not sure if i agree with the “web” part… in my company we are creating a new “intranet” based on a RIA application”
JMC – Good point. Could you elaborate a little?
So, the conversation is not yet finished…..
Please give me your ideas on this. I feel it is really an important issue and can be part of the solution for making intranets more meaningful and visible to management, and thereby better resourced and supported in general.
What are your favourites from the list above? Do you have other words to suggest?
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P.S. If you’re an intranet manager and haven’t yet joined NetJMC & Co, drop me an email or click here to request membership: http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/1360277
15 Responses to “Web Workplace – a new word for intranet?”
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Pick and...
April 2nd, 2009 at 3:38 am
Firstly let me say this whole discussion must be seen in the light it is being undertaken, we’re talking about language English to be exact and all the nuances and connotations that words in that language come with.
That said
Up until this point, and for many organisations still, intranets are a thing that provides content, somewhere to go and get other things to do stuff with.
A lot like a library is a thing and a place you go to get other things to do stuff with.
Increasingly intranets are less and less like traditional libraries.
Increasingly they are places to go and get other things AND also places to do stuff with those things.
I am no linguist but it seems that our essential problem is that intranets have changed from nouns into verbs. Like Google changed from a noun ‘I went to google’ into a verb ‘have you googled it’
So in my mind we’re looking for a term that can fit both bills, and which probably doesn’t exist yet, or a word that we can co-opt that is so old or obscure it has connotations to only a few people.
Hence my view that the term should be a single word.
Business value is one of the key things we’re trying to convey so why don’t we work on looking at some root words that convey the following
Business and business value
Connections (as this is where a large part of the value can be found)
I hope this helps.
DorjeM
April 2nd, 2009 at 2:13 pm
I have been struggling with this same challenge while completing some major updates to our company intranet. Internally, we have a name for the intranet that all employees recognize, but it doesn’t specifically embody the spirit of the intranet. I really like the “resource and collaboration portal” concept, but it’s a little long to be easily used. Still, it pulls together the fact that our intranet is about sharing resources and collaborating with other employees. Thanks for opening up the discussion about what terms could replace the outdated intranet.
Linda
@lindabeth on Twitter
April 2nd, 2009 at 3:58 pm
The best I have heard yet is Social Workplace. It encapsulates the workside of the Intranet with the fun side.
This can be supplemented with Social Marketplace, which is the external facing world. Both require different approaches and can supplement one another, so the terms work well.
I believe I read those terms in a Whitepaper by OpenText.
Cheers,
Sean
@seanrnicholson
April 2nd, 2009 at 11:12 pm
Most of the Intranets we come accross have thier own private names anyway. Ours is “Reverb” and I read about “Beehive” and son on…
April 3rd, 2009 at 10:51 pm
I like to talk to clients about their ‘intranet ecosystem’ – being a geek who understands that the term was originally used to describe a ‘private network using Internet protocols and technologies’ I think the word works just fine – but having said that too many clients appear to think the intranet is just the CMS that Comm’s use to publish news, not all the other information systems and applications that provide ‘web browser’ based interfaces. How about the Workplace Web instead of Web Workplace… ????
April 6th, 2009 at 7:42 am
I am not sure that the assumption that the term intranet implies “dead weight” is correct.
I think the perception of an intranet varies from each organisation, depending on how the intranet has been implemented at that organisation. So it’s not so much the term “intranet” that has the negative connotation, but how an intranet has been implemented. For example, I know of a number of organisations that consider their intranets to be critical business tools. On the other hand I also know of organisations that see their intranets as not much more than a flashy company newsletter (which unfortunately they are in some cases).
I think the real challenge for intranet professionals – as James Robertson points out on his blog – is not so much to change the term “intranet” but how we change the perception of intranets from a “nice-to-have” communication tool to a “must have” business tool.
In my experience, some ways to do this include:
To accomplish the above, however, intranet owners need to be aware of the possibilities. They need to know that intranets can be more than just an expensive internal communication tool.
April 6th, 2009 at 9:05 am
I agree with lots of the comments above! I’d like to add 2 points to this discussion which I started when I suggested that “web workplace” could be a good term to replace “intranet”.
1. The word “intranet” is not as clear as some think.
In the last 3 years as I have been presenting findings from the Global Intranet Strategies Survey in meetings and conferences in different parts of the world and in different companies, I have yet to meet a group of people who agree on what the word intranet means. This has also been my experience when I work with my clients. Last week I ran 2 workshops for 2 different clients. In both cases, people put quite different meanings behind the word.
My experience has been that many people simply assume that others understand the word as they do. Therefore, using a new word is not necessarily moving away from a commonly understood term.
2. I believe one of the problems is that the word intranet is a technical word rather than a business or user-oriented word.
This is illustrated by the way some people use “extranet” meaning the “intranet” can be accessed over the “internet”. Others use “extranet” to mean a closed space for groups such as clients or suppliers who work with a company but cannot access the “intranet”. The word “intranet” is grounded in a technical explanation in these examples. This may be one of the reasons why the word intranet does not trigger a lot of interest in the minds of senior executives in many organizations. They assume it’s a technical thing that IT will take care of.
April 6th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
There is no amount of correction nor training that has been able to help our users get their mind around the usage of the word portal. We find it being used to refer to at least 5 different things within our intranet and it confuses our users to no end.
Based on this end-user lesson, I’d advise against using “portal” in any way.
April 6th, 2009 at 5:17 pm
I like the term “web workplace”. But I guess that begs the question, what is the definition of a “web workplace”? How would it be different to say a portal or an intranet.
April 9th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
You’re so right about the misconsideration of intrathings by management.
The main (or only) thing they care is work, so why not :
WorkNet ?
Thomas @ Smile
PS : sorry for the english
July 5th, 2010 at 3:37 pm
I like the term enterprise portal but I think that it is a little bit outdated.
I think the name should reflect that the intranet is becoming a web gateway to all the enterprise information as well as applications. It should also outline that it is becoming more and more customized to the employee role. Finally, it should reflect the increasing social&collaborative aspect. Based on that I would suggest names like:
*My Enterprise (enterprise could be replace by the real name of the enterprise)
*My Enterprise gateway
*My Enterprise Online
*My Web workplace
*Enterprise online network
July 12th, 2010 at 10:54 pm
Hi François,
The only negative I see with the “my” is that work is so much based on teams and collaboration that the “my” could feel outdated as intranets and the workplace web (or whatever!) become truly more collaborative and social. What do you think?
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