Analytics in intranets and EXPs 

In our latest Intranets and Employee Experience Platforms report we evaluated leading digital products against eight scenarios. The seventh of these real-world business scenarios is ‘Analytics’. 

What we explored 

Intranet managers and content owners need to be able to measure the effectiveness of their intranet, which not only shows the performance but will lend guidance to ways to improve the site too. We have tested: 

• What information was available to admins so that they can get an idea for site-wide and individual section content usage and adoption. 

• How the analytics deliver actionable insights that help improve the way the intranet is managed. 

• Analytics and tools for communicators. 

• Support of mandatory reading and search analytics. 

Note that we don’t dictate a long list of specific features, but instead consider common employee needs. We then ask the vendors to demonstrate how they would address the scenario in whatever way they see as the best approach.  

What we found 

This is an area we’ve been talking about for years, as historically this has been the lowest scoring scenario. While there have definitely been improvements, this is still an area that could be a lot better – as the average score of 3.2 out of 5 shows.  

Often vendors argue that clients want different things from analytics, so they give little data as standard. We feel there are basics that could be improved across the board that clients could then expand upon. Additionally, some vendors argue that having loads of charts and reports means that they address this scenario fully. We disagree, as some data is basic and arguably not particularly useful, even though it’s easy for vendors to surface. Intranet managers need actionable insights – data that helps them make decisions rather than just showing them irrelevant numbers. 

Very few vendors are hitting the mark with analytics, particularly when it comes to data around search. Given the introduction of AI features in search and prevalence of poor search experiences among employees, this area in particular needs greater focus. With the addition of more internal comms tools, we’d expect to see more supporting analytics in this area too. 

A handful of vendors are doing well, however, such as Staffbase that has an excellent analytics suite that would be made even better by the addition of search data. Firstup is a market leader in this area too, with data presented in different and helpful formats on general site usage, content performance, search, community activities and more. We’re also pleased to see Oak make the first use of AI in analytics that we’ve seen. 

How SharePoint and Viva fared in this scenario

There is data and reporting across Microsoft applications, but this can feel fragmented, especially if you consider your intranet to be a combination of SharePoint, Viva Engage, Stream and Teams. It is possible to extract all the data into Power BI and there is a ‘Microsoft 365 usage analytics’ report to start you off, but this requires configuration and Power BI Pro licensing. Viva Amplify includes helpful reporting on campaigns and search analytics are good. ‘Mandatory reads’ would need to be supported via Forms and PowerBI.

Overall, this is how the products scored in this scenario: