The World's Top Intranets Put Social Networking and Collaboration Center Stage

Nielsen Norman Group Announces the "2009 World`s 10 Best Intranets"
FREMONT, Calif.--(Business Wire)--
Social networking, which has steadily been inching its way into the enterprise
the last few years, has now firmly taken root in top intranets, according to
usability expert Jakob Nielsen whose user-experience research firm Nielsen
Norman Group today announced the winners of its ninth annual intranet design
contest. This year saw substantial increases in the use among top Intranets of
social networking and collaboration support features.

"Social networking ideas pioneered on the open Internet are being applied today
to intranets not just for the sake of offering the latest and greatest features,
but because they deliver true business benefit, the most important of which is
allowing employees to share information and knowledge more easily, and in some
cases, bring more personal information into the workplace, promoting stronger
connections among employees," said Jakob Nielsen, principal of Nielsen Norman
Group. "As a testament to how important and helpful this movement has become,
every winner in our contest this year offered one or more social features."

The most prevalent among the social networking elements added to this year's top
intranets were the Facebook-like features offered in the employee directories to
enrich the employee profiles. One intranet offered an "In Common With You"
section to highlight common interests when a user views a colleague's profile.
Another organization allows employees to add personal videos to the corporate TV
network in something of an enterprise YouTube. The number and type of blogs also
increased this year over previous years and now include not only CEO and
leadership blogs, but also employee blogs.

Collaboration spaces also increased. Besides wikis and document and task
handling, several of the winning intranets added spaces in which employees can
broadcast requests for help or input from colleagues, marking them as "urgent"
when necessary and "solved" once the issue has been addressed.

"Our Intranet Design contest has given us the rare privilege over the last nine
years of taking an inside look at the best-of-the-best intranets, and we can say
without question that the top intranets have evolved well beyond simply hosting
HR manuals and now play a recognized, strategic role in supporting work
processes and increasing business efficiencies," said Kara Pernice, managing
director of Nielsen Norman Group.

The top intranets in this year's contest provide numerous examples supporting
the business value of an excellent intranet, and are each described in detail in
Nielsen Norman Group`s 473-page report entitled "Intranet Design Annual 2009:
The Year`s 10 Best Intranets," co-authored by Kara Pernice, Jakob Nielsen and
researcher Patty Caya.

The 10 organizations with winning intranets span six industries and are based in
six different countries, plus one from an organization that is not headquartered
in any individual country. Their employee populations average 37,500 people,
with the smallest being 3,200 employees. The average size of the teams managing
these intranets is 14 members.

In alphabetical order, the winners are:

* Altran, a large engineering and innovation consultancy (France)
* Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), a developer of computer and graphics processors
(USA)
* BASF SE, the world`s leading chemical manufacturing company (Germany)
* COWI Group A/S, a consulting group focusing on engineering, environmental
science, and economics (Denmark)
* Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (DTT), a financial services network providing audit,
tax, consulting, and financial advisory services (USA)
* Environmental Resource Management (ERM), one of the world's leading providers
of environmental consulting services (Global)
* HSBC Bank Brazil (Brazil)
* Kaupthing Bank (Iceland)
* L.L.Bean, a vendor of apparel and outdoor equipment (USA)
* McKesson Corporation, a large provider of pharmaceuticals, medical supplies,
and health care information technologies (USA)

"Intranet Design Annual 2009: The Year`s 10 Best Intranets," is available to
download for $224 from the Nielsen Norman Group website at
http://www.nngroup.com/reports/intranet/design

About Nielsen Norman Group

Nielsen Norman Group (http://www.nngroup.com) is a user-experience research firm
that advises companies on how to succeed through human-centered design of
products and services. NN/g principals Jakob Nielsen, Don Norman and Bruce "Tog"
Tognazzini are world-renowned user-experience pioneers who advocated
human-centered design and usability long before it became popular to do so.
Besides authoring books and evangelizing at NN/g events about user experience,
they and others on the NN/g team offer high-level strategic consultation on the
usability of websites, consumer products, software designs and anything else
that needs to be easy-to-use. Media contact: Darcy Provo, darcy@nngroup.com,
415-871-1831.

For Nielsen Norman Group:
Darcy Provo, 415-871-1731
darcy@nngroup.com

Copyright Business Wire 2009