I was involved in a CMS discussion recently about the need to create a central spot within the enterprise where everyone knows to go online for help and someone described it as the "one front door". Some may call it a portal or a "hub" or whatever, but you get the idea.
Personally I love the term. The implication of it is what I loved the most: familiar, simple, and clear. The challenge I find is figuring out how to make the site "sticky" and useful while also being accessible. What if you separated out the form from the function of your site to build a better experience? Sure, let there be departmentalism at every layer, but do that in a functional way in the background so we as the front-end user don't even notice. If you need multiple systems to run your organization that is acceptable, but do the work so the user feels like everything is under one roof. Then you can do the equally important work of making the form of the website come through.
In every great "form" website you can be sure to find a few common areas that should dominate your UX discussion:
1. Navigation
The goal is to get me the user to where I want to go within 2 clicks. You really only know that by carefully elevating the items that get the most traffic. What are the top 25 things people need and can you boil that down into 5 larger buckets? Congrats, now you have identified your top/primary navigation. What if those buckets change whether you are logged in or not? Use data to illuminate the path (analytics, views, surveys, etc.) leading me where I want to go and serving up an exceptional experience.
2. Search
Sometimes people just want to put in a few words and get quickly to where they want to go. They know why they are coming to your site and just need to get there as efficiently as possible. Make search clear and useful. Allow me to drill down into a sub-category from the beginning should I desire so. Allow me to filter down from the initial layer of results if I need to explore a bit more precisely. We live in a world of search engines and many people are now comfortable with an Amazon-like search paradigm. Getting smarter and more deliberate with search will make your site more valuable to the end-user and will become the go to tool.
3. Content
Now that I have reached the page I am hoping to reach (either from the navigation or search or direct) is there a way that the content can be displayed better to be more familiar or easier to consume? What about tabbing content so I don't have to scroll forever to find what I need? What about more visual guides and less words? Are there related bits of content that I can serve up together so the end user feels like they are getting their needs met more efficiently? Most large organizations today are not lacking in good content, they struggle with how to arrange that content to make it valuable and effective. It takes a great deal of organization and commitment to ensure what is being served up is accurate, concise and helpful.
4. Context
Don't let your public-facing website have all the fun. One amazing value of a portal/intranet type website is you have context built in: you know the person's name, location, group they are a part of, office they work out of, type of computer they have and so much more. Use that to elevate their experience! Can the top/primary navigation change as a result of the role that I have so I can get to what I need quicker? Are there announcements or offers that are really only appropriate for the office where I'm based so others don't get confused? If you know that I have unique laptop configuration based on my department can you make sure that I only see that option? This type of work is being done all the time within a marketing context so why not within your internal site as well? As a side note, maybe you could cut down on the number of internal sites you have to manage by serving up contextual value within the same environment instead of having to create custom experiences based on unique content. Build once, use many.
Smarter websites will win in the long run and within enterprise service management there is more opportunity than most have to do this really well. It takes work and resource, but if you're going to invest in expensive enterprise tools, make sure to also invest in the time and effort to serve those tools up in a way that will keep us knocking on that door.
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