What every global company needs: a "Location Finder" like Syngenta's

Among the gold award winners in the 2008 Intranet Innovation Awards organised by Step Two Designs was Syngenta, headquartered in Switzerland. With over 210 locations in more than 90 countries, Syngenta faces the challenges all large global companies have in making it easy for their employees to find information about the different locations.

Many times I've worked on this issue with my clients. The main problem is that a typical intranet landscape will have a multitude of different intranets. Even if there is an over-arching enterprise portal, once you start digging down into the depths, you'll find local information in many different shapes and forms, in a variety of places within the navigation, and to inconsistent degrees of detail.

The Location Finder designed by Syngenta goes a along way in handling this issue, and is practically a mini Syngenta world itself! Employees can see what's going on in different places, get travel and entertainment details if they need to visit the location, and more.

"The Location Finder provides a one-stop shop experience to get to all information about a location. Employees now use this as the main source to prepare for a trip, or to “look in” on what’s happening elsewhere.....The Location Finder provides a rich directory of regions, countries and offices. Beyond the basic listing of office locations, the directory provides opening hours, site maps, hotels and restaurants nearby, travelling recommendations, weather, local news and more."

Full details on all the winners can be found in the 148-page Intranet Innovations 2008 report. (Cost: 189 US $.)

This includes screenshots and detailed information on how the innovations were designed and delivered, along with judges' commentaries and more. You can download the Executive Summary (immediate download, 2.6mb PDF) for an overview of the awards, as well as full details on two of the winners (Scottrade and Janssen-Cilag).

I was honored to be one of the international judges for the Intranet Innovation Awards, and was very impressed by the quality of the dossiers.
As I've said before, the legitimacy of these awards is that they do not pretend to award "the best intranet", which in my experience is a futile exercise. They zoom in on specific features that are outstanding on their own terms.
I encourage all intranet managers to consider entering the awards in 2009. Let me know if you are interested, and I'll put you in touch with the organisers at Step Two Designs. You can of course find more information on their web site.