Doing content migration well is time consuming and politically challenging. It’s tough to get people to step up and do what should be done to improve the user experience.
Many will ask you why, why should we bother? Here’s an experience from one of our client assignments that illustrates the answer to that question. Note that they used the Eloquor migration method and our toolkit.
The Background
The client was migrating content from an old, out-dated intranet, to a whole new intranet platform with brand new design, navigation, etc. Being fans of print, the company had a lot of content that was originally designed to be provided on paper.
We  helped them specifically with the area called Employee Resources for their headquarters team of 800 employees. This area would serve as a prototype for all their regions going forward. While it was not secured from view by those outside of headquarters, it was not promoted to employees outside of headquarters.
This area includes everything an employee needs (both topics and tasks) because they are employees, such as information and processes about:
- Benefits
- Compensation
- Travel
- Facilities (office equipment, physical security, mailing, copy machines)
- Training
- Procurement
- Time off
- Recognition
We worked with them beginning last spring through the first part of the summer. We worked individually with their content developers/authors, teaching them along the way to write for the web. We provided formal training, but also conducted workshops where we looked at some of their content in groups and talked about what was working and what needed to change.
The Results
They relaunched in September 2011. They’ve been tracking their usage ever since and here is what they’ve seen:
- 5,000+ page views per week in the first five weeks after launch (promoting to just 800 employees)
- More than 37,000+ page views in April 2012, 7 months after launch
They’ve had a lot of feedback from users about the tool, which includes some transactional elements (more of these coming online all the time). Most of that feedback has sounded like this:
“Wow! The employee resources portal is great for a central go-to point spanning the HR components. As a manager, I appreciate the thought and organization and navigation functions enables!”
Want to Know More About the Process?
Join me in Chicago on June 26 at the IABC World Conference where I will provide attendees insights into the content migration process and tools we used with this client and are currently using with multiple other clients. With so many organizations moving to new intranet/portal software, it’s an exciting time to improve content for your users. Hope to see you in Chicago!
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