When a company doubles in size, acquires new businesses, expands into new regions, or restructures teams, information fragmentation becomes a business problem. What started as a simple intranet can quickly become disconnected systems, inconsistent communication channels, duplicated content, and increasing operational complexity.
This guide is for the employee experience leaders leading an intranet project or employee experience evaluation in a growing organization that has outgrown its current setup. It introduces the key considerations, evaluation criteria, and buying decisions covered in the full Buyer's Guide.
Why Growing Organizations Re-evaluate Their Intranet
As organizations grow, so do the demands on internal communication, knowledge sharing, employee engagement, and company culture.
Common signs it is time to revisit your intranet strategy:
- Information spread across SharePoint, email, file repositories, and business systems
- Difficult content management and inconsistent governance
- Poor search functionality and weak metadata
- Limited mobile access for frontline workers
- Low intranet adoption
- Challenges supporting onboarding and organizational change
- Systems that no longer align with business objectives
A modern intranet acts as the center of the digital workplace, connecting employees to company news, knowledge, people, and tools in one place. If your intranet can’t do that, then it’s likely time that you need a change.
Unily named a Leader in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Intranet Packaged Solutions.
The Six Steps of a Successful Evaluation
1. Clarify your procurement requirements
Before evaluating vendors, define your non-negotiables. This usually means your GDPR and compliance requirements, access control policies, and single sign-on (SSO) standards. It also means checking how a new platform fits your existing investments in Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, or your CRM, and what integrations and APIs you need to make that work.
A vendor that cannot meet a hard requirement is not the right vendor, however impressive their demo.
2. Bring stakeholders in early
Successful evaluations involve multiple perspectives. That means including IT, HR, and internal communications teams leadership early, and looping in procurement and legal, and operational leaders who represent frontline employee needs.
Bringing stakeholders in early helps build stronger requirements, better alignment, and more confidence in the final decision.
3. Define evaluation criteria
Start with the simplest question: what problem are you trying to solve?
Before comparing vendors, turn your answer into an intranet requirements checklist that weighs both business outcomes and user needs. That typically spans scalability, information architecture, content creation, the employee directory, governance and security, mobile experience, and intranet KPIs like adoption and engagement.
Separate must-haves from nice-to-haves before starting any vendor demos.
4. Gather proof
It’s important that all vendor demonstrations are shaped by your requirements. Ask every vendor to walk through real workflows: publishing a targeted announcement, finding content through the platform’s search engine, accessing information on the mobile app, and connecting systems to complete a task end-to-end.
The goal is to validate claims through practical examples.
5. Pressure-test the shortlist
Once you have a shortlist, go deeper into the areas that affect long-term success: governance, administration, platform ownership, and ongoing support.
Look closely at how the platform handles document management systems, project management, and collaboration tools such as instant messaging and discussion forums, plus the everyday basics like quick links and day-to-day administration.
This stage reveals what living with the platform will actually be like.
6. Make the decision
The final decision should balance usability, functionality, business value, and future growth.
Ask:
- Does the platform solve our current challenges?
- Can it grow with us?
- Will it support our users over the long term?
- Can we measure success clearly?
The best choice is usually the platform you can still confidently support and expand in three years.
How to compare employee experience platforms
User Experience
Look for an intuitive user interface, strong responsive design, and a mobile experience that matches desktop, so office-based and frontline employees navigate the platform in the same way.
Communication & Engagement
Communication and engagement tools decide how well your messages land. Evaluate company news publishing, audience targeting, and the social features that keep company culture alive across a distributed workforce
Knowledge & Search
Assess search performance, content governance, and metadata management, and check that the platform points people to accurate information instead of duplicates.
Technology & Integrations
Technology and integrations decide how easily the intranet fits your existing stack. Review connectivity with Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Teams, Google Workspace, and your CRM, along with security controls and API flexibility.
Administration & Governance
Administration and governance are what your team lives with every day. Consider content management processes, publishing workflows, version control, and access management, and check whether the user guides and support resources are genuinely useful.
What's Included in the Full Buyer's Guide
The full guide expands on the complete buying process and includes:
- A six-step evaluation framework
- Stakeholder buying team guidance
- Requirements planning worksheets
- Vendor scorecard methodology
- Demo evaluation criteria
- Workflow testing examples
- ROI and measurement guidance
These practical resources are designed to help buying teams move from research to a confident platform decision.
Download the Buyer's Guide
Get practical guidance for evaluating the right intranet software, aligning stakeholders, measuring value, and selecting an intranet platform that can support your organization now and as it grows.
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