Budgeting for a New Intranet

This always feels like a liminal time of year to me, whether it’s because of the equinox, or because this is the back-to-school period from (many!) days gone by. But this is also a great time to think about budgets and projects for the coming year.  

Replacing an intranet is one such large-scale project that brings with it a hefty price tag. We give some guidance in our Intranets and Employee Experience Platforms Report, yet I’m still often asked about the “true” cost. Unfortunately, this is more complex that just looking at licensing, but I have a simple formula to help you think it through. 

This is a big one and will impact many of the other aspects of your project, for example the speed you can progress, or whether you need external resources to support you.  There are a variety of roles and tasks that need to be completed throughout an intranet’s lifecycle, such as: 

• Strategic intranet planning and delivery 

• Roles within the ‘new intranet’ project team 

• Technical scoping, implementation and management 

• News and non-news content planning, creation and management (including governance) 

• Analytics monitoring, improvement planning and delivery. 

Identifying who will do what and what gaps you may have to fill is a vital step for longer-term planning and budgeting. 

It’s particularly important not to underestimate the cost associated with migrating, creating, and maintaining content. As my colleague Wedge has said, “it’s easy to discount content creation cost as just the price of doing your work” but this can mean a significant spend is missed from your budgets. For example, you are likely to need to tidy and migrate content from your existing platform to the new one, or potentially ask people to start from scratch.  

The cost of training people how to use the new platform should be considered as part of the budget too. This may come at a cost from the vendor or partner for launch, but you’ll need to consider ongoing training and development, which includes maintaining training materials. Your editing and publishing community will be vital to the success of your intranet throughout its life, so make sure you factor in appropriate costs for your budget. 

The in-house resources you have at your disposal will impact the type of vendor or vendor partner you need. For example, if you have a team of people available to help manage the SharePoint back-end then you may only need lightweight assistance from a partner to implement a SharePoint intranet in-a-box. Alternatively, if you’re a team of one and want support with development ideas beyond the initial launch then a vendor with baked-in services might be what you need. Be wary of building an intranet relying on the skills of your in-house web team though, as intranet maintenance may always be seen as a ‘side project’.  

In terms of other services, independent intranet vendors tend to include a greater number of services in their licensing costs and will usually handle installations etc. directly. In contrast SharePoint intranet in-a-box solutions may offer services themselves, or direct you to use an implementation partner, but both are likely to be at an additional cost.   

The initial set-up is an important consideration too, as some platforms will require development work or bespoke solutions to get your platform ready, while ‘what you see is what you get’ from others. After launch the potential complexity of ongoing bespoke developments or pure SaaS will also impact the cost. 

In summary, the underlying technology, need for support services, and ongoing development requirements will all need to be factored into your budgets. 

Firstly, you may have to use a platform for your intranet due to business decisions made elsewhere. This could be SharePoint, Google Workplace, or something like ServiceNow and the cost of those licenses needs to be considered for your budget. You should therefore explore what you already have plus what upgraded licenses you may need in order to meet your goals. For example, do all frontline employees currently have an associated license? Or do you want to introduce Viva Amplify to address a greater number of internal communication requirements? Just because you have technology already in place doesn’t mean it’s automatically cheaper. 

Alternatively, some vendors make use of other technology to service platform needs. For example, using third-party products for analytics or using AI technology selected by the organisation instead of providing their own. These dependencies should be clear as you explore vendor websites or have demos, but double-check where you’re unsure and ask the vendor to clearly explain what is or isn’t included. 

It may sound obvious, but if you have ambitious goals for your intranet then you’re likely going to incur higher licensing costs and / or vendor service costs. It’s advisable to document your strategy and identify what matters most, before then moving onto capturing the functional requirements a platform needs to have to meet your needs.  

By using our review report you can get an idea of which requirements are more- or less-sophisticated or common, and therefore what this may do to your budgeting. For example, if you just want a way to share news and store reference materials then a simple (and cheaper) solution may work better than one that has multi-way integrations and a bespoke AI-agent.

Finally, there is the simple case of platform licensing. However, you’ll note that very few vendors publish pricing on their websites (although we do offer some indicative pricing). They may also be hesitant to provide a quote without taking a lot of context information from you first. Make sure you’re clear about what you want and if you have a budget in mind, it’s worth sharing that with them. Also, you’ll need to factor in where functionality is provided via optional modules. This may mean there are savings to be made or, as associated with the complexity point above, this may mean higher costs. 

There are a lot of factors for you to consider when budgeting for a replacement intranet, or even for the ongoing costs of maintaining one. It’s possible to save money in some places by being flexible with what you’re looking for, but you should get agreement for your strategy from senior leaders before finishing off any budgeting. What I haven’t mentioned here of course is anything around the return on investment, so make sure you document where your intranet will save or make your organisation money as part of your business case.