Nielsen Norman Group announces the World’s 10 Best Intranets for 2018 and reveals focus on design simplification and content unification

Nielsen Norman Group today announced the winners of its 18th Intranet Design Annual contest. This year’s winning intranet design teams and their intranets are featured in detail in Nielsen Norman Group’s new 463-page report Intranet Design Annual 2018: The Year’s 10 Best Intranets, which is now available to download on the company’s website.

The award recognizes the American Medical Association’s (AMA) new intranet, AMAtoday, which launched in December 2016. AMAtoday replaced a 12-year-old intranet platform with a modern digital workplace that includes a task-based information architecture, news center, automated administrative forms, instant messaging, highly effective search function, personalized content, and other digital features.

“Introducing AMAtoday brought our organization into the modern digital age, with a platform on which we can continue to build a true digital workplace that not only enables, but encourages collaboration, connectivity, and efficiency,” said Justin DeJong, AMA vice president for internal and external communications.

The new intranet has helped the AMA increase employee engagement, reduce email traffic, and decrease time spent completing manual forms. Daily intranet adoption increased from 4% to 54%, leading to happier and more engaged employees. There was also 37% reduction in IT support center calls and a 19% reduction in enterprise internal emails, leading to employee self-service engagement.

“AMA’s team took 27,000 pages of content and edited it down to 120 streamlined pages, while also transitioning the organization to a more collaborative and technology-savvy solution, enabling greater efficiencies and connections within the organization," said usability expert Jakob Nielsen, principal of Nielsen Norman Group.

Using human-centered design, rapid prototyping frameworks, and agile product development principles, business and technology consultancy West Monroe Partners and AMA designed AMAtoday, an intranet based workplace that met an array of user demands and positioned the company to succeed far into the future. The firm built AMAtoday on a Microsoft Office 365 cloud intranet and collaboration platform, integrated the intranet with other systems to provide a seamless login experience, enhanced search capabilities, and introduced digital forms with automated workflows to reduce administrative burdens and improve productivity. 

“AMAtoday is an excellent example of what is possible when you combine leading digital technology with design principles that draw on empathy for an employee,” said Kaumil Dalal, Director in West Monroe’s Technology practice. “We enjoyed partnering with the AMA to bring this key element of its digital workplace to life and are thrilled to see it recognized as a leading intranet and digital workplace. To win such a prestigious award is an honor and makes this recognition that much more special.”

Nielsen Norman Group's Intranet Design Annual 2018: The Year’s 10 Best Intranets, co-authored by Kara Pernice, Amy Schade and Patty Caya is available to download for $248 from the Nielsen Norman Group website at http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet-design-annual/.

About the American Medical Association

The American Medical Association is the premier national organization providing timely, essential resources to empower physicians, residents and medical students to succeed at every phase of their medical lives. Physicians have entrusted the AMA to advance the art and science of medicine and the betterment of public health on behalf of patients for more than 170 years. For more information, visit ama-assn.org.

About Nielsen Norman Group

Nielsen Norman Group (http://www.nngroup.com) in an evidence-based user experience research, training and consulting firm that advises companies on how to improve the bottom line through human-centered design of products and services. NN/g principals Jakob Nielsen, Don Norman and Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini are world-renowned user experience experts who were advocating human-centered design and usability long before it became popular to do so. Founded in 1998 and headquartered in Silicon Valley, NN/g evaluates interfaces of all kinds and guides the critical design decisions that make websites, applications, intranets and products achieve their full potential for businesses and their users.

About West Monroe Partners

West Monroe is a progressive business and technology consulting firm that partners with dynamic organizations to reimagine, build, and operate their businesses at peak performance. Our team of more than 950 professionals is comprised of an uncommon blend of business consultants and deep technologists. This unique combination of expertise enables us to design, develop, implement, and run strategic business and technology solutions that yield a dramatic commercial impact on our clients’ profitability and performance. For more information, visit www.westmonroe.com.

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