Why Intranets Fail

Why is your intranet deserted, and what should you do about it?

"Nobody goes there" and "the content is out of date" are symptoms, not causes, and organizations often move too quickly from a symptom to the decision to redo everything. The context does not help: an employee receives on average 117 emails and 153 Teams messages per working day (Microsoft, 2025), so publishing more will not bring anyone back.

This white paper replaces fatalism with measurement: a self-assessment grid built on data you already own, a decision tree that ties the response to your foundation and a recovery plan whose results you can present to leadership.

What's inside:

• The figure everyone quotes: where the circulating intranet failure rates come from, why they are not used in this document, and the four families of warning signs (usage, content, governance, technology).
• The 12-sign self-assessment grid: each sign scored 0, 1 or 2 against an observable criterion and a data source you already have, with a score sheet out of 24.
• Reading your score: why the dominant family matters more than the total, and the typical response for each family, including the move to a hybrid content management model.
• The decision tree: five questions to ask with IT to choose between fixing, rebuilding without migration or replacing the foundation, and a comparison of the three branches by timeline, effort, what you keep and main risk.
• The 90-day recovery plan: three thirty-day blocks (diagnose and decide, clean up and reorganize, relaunch and measure), each with an exit criterion, and a list of actions to take this week.
• The seven recovery indicators: the formula, data source and expected reading at day 90 for each one, and what Microsoft 365 measures natively and what it does not.
• Extending your SharePoint: what the rebuild-without-migration branch involves when the Microsoft 365 foundation is sound, with Jint SharePoint and customer examples.

Why download it:

A diagnosis based on your own data. The grid relies on native SharePoint statistics, a page export and three fifteen-minute interviews, and can be completed in about 30 minutes.

Sourced figures only. Every figure quoted carries an organization, a year and a scope, and the white paper explains why the most widely circulated intranet failure rates are left out.

A decision tied to your foundation, not to a reflex. The decision tree helps you avoid both a heavy rebuild that is not needed and a minimal version that disappoints users.

A plan you can present to leadership. The seven indicators are read at day 0 and again at day 90, so the recovery is measured against your own starting point rather than an external benchmark.