SharePoint Intranet Design or Bespoke? How to choose the right platform

For the purpose of this article, we will refer to intranet solutions as digital platforms that are accessed exclusively by members of an organization with active directory authentication of all assets, which allow intranet corporate branding features and can be integrated with the users’ devices file systems. This will exclude collaboration solutions such as Slack  or Jive which are focused on specific tasks or require user registration on their platforms.

SharePoint Intranet online and ON-Premises

Depending on your IT environment and internal processes, SharePoint may or may not be the best choice for your organisation’s intranet. We will review some of the features, benefits, and drawbacks of implementing a SharePoint Intranet Design to help you understand if it is the right solution for you.

Options for implementing a SharePoint Intranet Design

A SharePoint Intranet can be implemented based on the Online platform provided by Office 365 (soon to be known as Microsoft 365), on-premises using MS SharePoint Server or using a hybrid approach. The decision about which option of SharePoint Intranet to implement is commonly based on the organisational constrains around security, confidentiality, governance and flexible access. A highly centralised organisation with fixed locations and a high-end internal IT infrastructure might be inclined to use on-premised whilst a geographically distributed organisation with a mobile workforce might prefer to use SharePoint Online. Some organisations may choose the hybrid approach to keep highly sensitive assets on-premises but general support for collaboration, productivity and communications based Online to provide their employees with a flexible platform.

Pros

1. SharePoint provides a robust solution for team collaboration and file sharing among groups of individuals, internally and externally.
2. Frictionless Integration with Office 365 and other Microsoft offerings like OneDrive and Teams.
3. SharePoint licensing is included with even your most basic Office 365 packages.
4. Great collaboration – sharing documents, real-time dual editing, tasks, calendars, scheduling meetings etc
5. Flexible data management through the customisation of data fields for lists and libraries.
6. Powerful search engine with advanced indexing features and compliance with user permissions.
7. Integration with OneDrive allows working on documents from intuitive file-system interfaces and folder structures which should be familiar for most users.
8. Large catalogue of functional features which cover most common needs of corporate teams.
9. Security– advanced level Microsoft security for data transfer, inc. two-factor authentication.
10. Granular security for control of access permissions at any team level in line with the company’s policies.
11. Extensive features for version control and data tracking.
12. SharePoint Online provides a robust platform with high availability, seamless performance and global redundancy.
13. Customisable to suit company/user requirements, with plugins available for extended functionality:
14. Basic branding (Logo/colours/graphics/footers) implemented through themes
15. Flexible Hub Site feature which allows building corporate portals aggregating information from multiple team sites based on themes
16. Site templates to ensure consistency with corporate guidelines
17. Workflows to cover most common enterprise scenarios
18. Power apps for custom forms and data management.
19. Wide range of 3^rd party solutions to provide additional functionality.

Cons

1. Bespoke intranet design will be very time consuming and will not be possible on all areas of SharePoint, particularly sites with team collaboration features
2. Complicated process for set up and data migration: it could take 6-12 months to fully integrate and develop to the desired branding standard and features configuration for a corporate intranet.
3. Needs lots of planning and to be administered well from that point onwards for it to be a success.
4. Requires high level of involvement from the company management to establish clear governance over data purpose and ownership.
5. Requires a fully trained SharePoint administration resource to deal with deployment and ongoing maintenance.
6. Difficult to manage, hard to use – requires specialised knowledge and SharePoint developers for any complex customisation or integration.
7. Training is a given – how to work with lists, how to control the display of content, how to add page elements or site features.
8. It’s likely to be costly – depending on the level of customisation, whether on premise, subscription, or hybrid, it could be expensive to set up and maintain.
9. Branding options are limited when using SharePoint Online and any sites or features using the Modern Experience interface. Full site front end customisation is also discouraged when branding SharePoint on Premises as software updates could affect it.
10. SharePoint implements a variety of site types with different  UX elements which adds to the complexity of implementing a consistent interface.
11. Some SharePoint elements, such as navigation, can be cumbersome to manage.
12. A SharePoint farm might contain sites with the modern and the classic experience, which require different branding procedures.
13. Access for the development team to test and implement customisations and/or new features is limited so deployment must be performed by a SharePoint administrator. This can add overheads to the process as any issues and feed back to the development team can be time consuming.
14. On premise implementation require a significant investment on software and hardware, as well as ongoing maintenance.
15. Document libraries synchronised with OneDrive look deceptively like a shared drive, but they are quite different, and users must be aware of the limitations in terms of number of documents and folder nesting effect on file path length.
16. Confidential information stored on lists or libraries is always visible to SharePoint administrators and Site Collection owners so team members fulfilling these roles must have full clearance to access corporate data.
17. An effective SharePoint search function requires advanced configuration of search scopes and indexes, which will demand SharePoint administration time.

Bespoke Intranet Design

A well-designed bespoke intranet application, built to meet a user’s exact requirements will always out-perform an off the shelf offering because it meets and only meets the specific need it was designed for. This removes unnecessary functionality and processing which together complicate and add unnecessary workload causing business process overhead.

The main issues that can arise with bespoke software include neglect and a loss of expertise on the platform, but these can easily be addressed by a well-planned and well-built custom application that will evolve with the changing needs of the business enabling you to work to your own roadmap of development changes.

Pros

1. Designed to meet your employees specific goals, making it efficient and easy to use, aids morale and motivation retaining engagement
2. A bespoke application can be built to connect with other business software/data right from the architecture stage
3. Flexibility to integrate with other applications including SharePoint for a hybrid approach
4. Complete control over the look and feel to fully comply with corporate guidelines and match other channels such as the company website for a consistent visual presence
5. You own the development roadmap and are in control of the development path and pace
6. You own the source code and can scale / adapt as required
7. Reduced hardware and software requirements for on-premises deployments
8. Increased efficiency through alignment to your processes and workflow, hence reduced administration overheads
9. Increased productivity by automating repetitive tasks unique to your workflow

Cons

1. Off the shelf tools can have useful features that you might not have considered and would aid your team
2. There is a time cost to the business in the planning and delivery of a bespoke project
3. Time to implement can, when not planned and executed well, be higher than buying an off the shelf solution
4. Upfront investment can be higher, though total cost of ownership is in many cases lower
5. Ongoing maintenance and overheads will be lower
6. No automatic upgrades or change to UI, this would need to be done manually
7. Document management features similar to SharePoint can be very expensive to replicate, including version control
8. On premises implementation requires resources with hosting expertise
9. Dependencies on 3^rd party frameworks might create unforeseen issues as technologies evolve and approach end-of-life support

When to use them…

If you want to…

Other Intranet choices

Google Workspace can be configured to serve as the basis for Intranet Development. However, it doesn’t quite provide branding options apart from using a company logo and very limited colour schemes. Also, the Google model for Drive with virtual folders can be very confusing when it comes to backups and data transfers.

Workplace from Meta provides an extensive collaboration platform. However, it lacks the advanced content and document management native features that are needed to implement an effective Intranet design. Also, it’s basically a Facebook interface focused on a single organisation and doesn’t allow much branding beyond a logo.

Approach your Intranet design with caution

Before you can start making decisions about whether to use a bespoke Intranet or a SharePoint Intranet, you must start with a comprehensive planning process to ensure the scope for Intranet design is clearly delimited, with all aspects of corporate and usage requirements as well as  implementation constrains properly considered.

Taking the right decision when choosing which Intranet design route to follow will have a big impact on your organisation. With over 20 years’ experience in designing, developing or implementing Intranets, talking to us will help you make an informed choice as we are ready to help with guidance and useful advice on your journey.