Insight
SharePoint intranets: why most fail
They assign a project manager, they spend three months picking a colour palette and a set of tiles, and they launch a "Digital Hub" to the entire organisation with a celebratory email.
Two months later, the usage stats are abysmal. Employees still send attachments over email, the "Knowledge Base" is a graveyard of outdated PDFs, and the intranet has become a place where information goes to die.
Why do so many SharePoint intranets fail? Because they are built as websites, when they should be built as experiences.
The Storage vs. Experience Gap
The root cause of the failure is a fundamental misunderstanding of what SharePoint actually is.
SharePoint is a world-class document management system. It is incredible at version control, permissioning, and storing millions of files securely. But it is a mediocre UX platform.
Most businesses make the mistake of treating SharePoint as a CMS (Content Management System) like WordPress or Craft. They focus on the "look" of the homepage, but they ignore the "findability" of the data.
An intranet is not a website: it is a navigation layer over a data repository. When you focus on the tiles and the banners instead of the information architecture, you are building a pretty shell over a chaotic warehouse.
The Three Pillars of Intranet Failure
When I audit corporate digital platforms, the failures usually fall into one of these three buckets:
1. The "Dump and Hope" Strategy
This is the most common failure. The business creates a folder structure that mirrors their org chart (e.g., "HR", "Finance", "Operations") and dumps every document they own into those folders.
Users don't think in org charts; they think in tasks. A user doesn't want to "go to the HR folder"; they want to "find the 2025 leave policy". When the structure is based on who owns the document rather than who needs it, the intranet becomes a maze.
2. The Governance Vacuum
Many intranets start with a "wild west" phase where every department is allowed to create their own pages and libraries. Within six months, you have four different versions of the "Company Brand Guidelines" and a dozen redundant "News" sections.
Without a central governance framework, including rules on who can publish, how content is tagged, and when it is archived, the intranet quickly becomes a source of confusion rather than a source of truth.
3. The "Digital for Digital's Sake" Trap
This is where the business implements a feature because SharePoint can do it, not because the employees need it. They build complex workflows and social feeds that nobody uses, simply because it was part of the "Modern Experience" template.
If the tool doesn't solve a specific employee pain point (e.g., "I can't find the latest project brief"), they will ignore the tool, regardless of how modern it looks.
How to build an intranet people actually use
To fix a failing intranet, you have to stop thinking about "the site" and start thinking about "the journey".
The "Task-First" Approach: Instead of asking "What folders do we need?", ask "What are the ten most common things an employee needs to do every week?". Then, build the navigation to serve those ten tasks.
The Governance Layer: Establish a "Content Owner" for every primary section. Their job isn't to "update the site", but to ensure the information in their section is accurate and current.
The Utility Test: If a piece of content doesn't save an employee time or reduce a frustration, it doesn't belong on the homepage. The homepage should be a launchpad, not a magazine.
The bottom line
SharePoint is a powerful tool, but it is not a strategy. If you use it to simply "digitise" your existing chaos, you will just end up with digital chaos.
The goal of an intranet is to reduce the cognitive load on your employees. It should make the right information effortless to find.
If your current intranet is a "ghost town" or a "data dump", you don't need a redesign: you need a structural audit. The website health check is designed to find the friction in your digital platforms and build a roadmap to one that actually supports your people.
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