10 Best Intranets of 2023: What Makes Them Great

Since 2001, NN/g has selected the 10 best intranets of the year to feature in our Intranet Design Annual report. For 2023, the 10 winning organizations are:

• AbbVie (US), a large biopharmaceutical company
• Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) (Canada), a global investment group
• Humana, Inc. (US), a for-profit healthcare company
• Infosys Limited (India), a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting
• iRobot Corp. (US), a consumer-robotics company
• Lifespan Health System (US), a nonprofit health system
• MetLife, Inc. (US), a provider of insurance, annuities, and employee-benefit programs
• OCBC Bank (Singapore), a large financial-services group in Southeast Asia
• ServiceNow (US), a software company that develops a cloud-computing platform
• Żabka Polska (Poland), a large convenience-store chain in Central and Eastern Europe

Six Industries Represented in 2023

This year’s winners come from 6 different industries:

1. Biotechnology
2. Finance
3. Healthcare
4. Insurance
5. Retail
6. Technology

Two 2023 winners are from the finance industry: CDPQ and OCBC Bank. Finance is the second most-winning industry in the history of the Intranet Design Annual, with 34 winners (15%).

Three winning intranets are from technology companies: Infosys Limited, iRobot, and ServiceNow. Technology is historically the third most-winning industry, with 32 winners (15%). Infosys Limited won its second Intranet Design Annual award in 2023, having won previously in 2007.

The insurance industry has had 9 previous winners, including this year’s winner, MetLife, while AbbVie was the third company from the Biotechnology industry to ever win.

Two of this year’s winners are from the healthcare industry: Humana and Lifespan Hospital Group while Żabka Polska is the twelfth win for the retail industry since the beginning of the award.

Growing Intranet-Team Sizes

The average intranet-team size for this year’s winners was 21 people, ranging from as few as 4 (AbbVie) to as many as 60 (Infosys Limited). These numbers reflect the size of the core intranet team, including internal and external staff and full- and part-time employees. The numbers do not include extended team members, such as content authors or people working on short-term projects.

Since the beginning of the award, team sizes have been steadily growing. In recent years, teams have allocated more and more people to ensure that intranets support a positive employee experience.

How Long Does It Take to Redesign an Intranet?

This year, teams took between 6 and 45 months to create their winning designs. The average duration was 25 months (standard deviation = 12.3 months), which is similar to the averages from recent years.

This average is slightly higher than last year’s (25 vs. 23 months) –– likely because of the extra time needed to make necessary intranet changes to support employees during and after the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g., shift to remote or hybrid work, return to in-office work).

From 2004 to 2013, the median time to create a winning intranet was 35 months (or 2.9 years); from 2014 to 2023, the median creation time dropped to 18 months (1.5 years). This means that over the last decade, delivery timelines have dropped by almost one and a half years.

Factors contributing to shorter design-and-development times include larger teams, advancing intranet technology, outside agency help, and the continued use of Agile development.

Intranet Consulting and Agency Partners

For 2023, 7 out of 10 winners partnered with consultants and outside agencies to create their intranets. Those teams are:

• AbbVie in partnership with Digital Workplace Group (DWG) and Unily
• CDPQ in partnership with Akumina, MindBreeze, and Avanade
• Humana in partnership with Rightpoint, a Genpact company
• iRobot in partnership with Unily
• Lifespan in partnership with Oomph, Inc.
• ServiceNow in partnership with Edelman
• Żabka Polska in partnership with Workai

Agencies provided a variety of services, including workshop facilitation, UX research and design, and technical guidance and development.

UX Research and Design Services

AbbVie collaborated with Digital Workplace Group (DWG) to leverage their expertise and insights on visual and UI design. AbbVie then collaborated with their internal user experience team and Unily to develop the information architecture from card sorting and usability studies.

Avanade was one of 3 partner-agencies that worked with CDPQ to develop an intranet vision and design initial wireframes.

Humana collaborated with Rightpoint’s UX design team, who conducted research, developed the intranet’s information architecture, designed wireframes, and developed the intranet’s user interface.

iRobot worked with Unily, who facilitated discovery calls between iRobot's design team and other companies already using the Unily platform. This service helped iRobot collect early feedback and generate ideas. Similarly, ServiceNow worked with Edelman to facilitate a stakeholder workshop to gather early inputs for the intranet redesign.

Lifespan collaborated with Oomph, Inc. for intranet strategy, stakeholder management, UX research, UI design, and development. Oomph developed the intranet’s information architecture, and also prototyped and tested tablet versions of the mobile intranet.

Technical-Guidance and Development Services

Intranet teams commonly used consultancies and external agencies for technical guidance and intranet development. For example, Unily provided AbbVie with onboarding guidance and technical advice on SharePoint and O365 integration. Unily also helped AbbVie with user profile syncing, the use of mail servers for notifications, and Azure hosting.

For CDPQ, Akumina provided CMS and technical guidance, while MindBreeze implemented connectors, developed the front end, and tuned the platform for content relevance.

For Humana, Rightpoint's software-development team completed the back-end architecture, QA, and code testing before deployment, which was handled by Humana’s development team.

Oomph’s technical team partnered with Lifespan to provide technical discovery and full intranet development, which included the intranet’s custom features and integrations. Oomph also facilitated the migration of all medical and clinical policies from Lifespan’s old intranet to the new one.

Żabka Polska collaborated with Workai, who handled deployment and onboarding along with custom feature design and development. Workai also provided platform support on both the business and technical levels.

Many teams choose to collaborate with external agencies when developing their intranets due to the complex nature of these projects. This is particularly common for small teams that may lack the necessary expertise and resources to meet their organization’s objectives. However, even large teams often seek the assistance of agencies to enhance their work. For more specific examples and in-depth information about agency and consultancy partners, refer to the case studies of each company in the full report.

Five Regions and Countries Represented

This year's winners came from 5 different countries:

1. Canada
2. India
3. Poland
4. Singapore
5. United States

The US had the most winners this year (6), including:

• AbbVie
• Humana
• iRobot
• Lifespan Hospital Group
• MetLife
• ServiceNow

Half of the winners (115 out of 230) have come from the US since the Intranet Design Annual began in 2001. Singapore earned its second award from OCBC Bank, while CDPQ earned Canada its twentieth win. Żabka Polska's award marks the fourth win for Poland. Infosys accounts for both of India's wins in the history of this report.

Find detailed case studies from all 10 winners along with intranet screenshots and lessons learned from winning teams in the 2023 Intranet Design Annual Report.