Paula Darch 13 October 2015 7 min read

How to Generate Your Intranet Name

Naming your intranet

Your intranet planning is going well. You are 12 weeks in and thinking about names. Your intranet name is so important but is often agreed at the last minute by committee and can sometimes be the one thing you spend less time on, or it’s the one thing constantly on your mind and can never be decided!

An intranet name needs to reflect your business, your brand and your culture. You want your colleagues to come to love and look forward to logging onto X. You have so many expectations for X both now and in the future. You want their name to last and not go out of fashion too quickly, so maybe a timeless classic is the way to go, or would you think about a name change in the future?! So how do you start to think about names for your intranet?

1.  Ask your agency

If you are a large organisation, maybe you might get lucky and your creative agency will take on the task of overall intranet design and naming (branding) for you. This will still need a water tight brief written by you and careful management. Their lead times may also be longer than you anticipated.

2.  Launch a naming competition

You might want to launch a naming competition and invite colleagues to name your new arrival. This could be great or it could be less so. I know of instances where some amazing names were suggested and some where they ended up using their working title and all entries discounted.

3.  Take some time and brainstorm

Sometimes, you just need to spare some time and let your own creativity flow and list a host of potential intranet names based on everything you know (after all out of everybody involved in your intranet’s development, you have lived with it since inception). Once you have a list of suggestions, be brave and circulate them to your intranet team. They might all highly rate some of the names you have suggested or may themselves be inspired by your list and suggest the perfect name for your intranet.

To help you, I’ve listed 10 popular intranet names:

  • The Hub
  • The Portal
  • Genie
  • Pulse
  • Heartbeat
  • Flash
  • Grapevine
  • Ella
  • Connect
  • Chat

4.  Shortlist and context

However you arrive at your shortlisted names, take some time to live with them and see which you feel best suits your intranet. People love abbreviating names, so think about how it could be shortened and whether you are comfortable with that.

When you have your name, think about how the name might influence your intranet design.

Once you are happy with your intranet name you then need to get sign off and buy in. At this stage it’s really important you give your preferred name context and meaning. Perhaps circulate the name with draft intranet design, so colleagues can visually see the context and highlight how the name sits with your brand.

If you circulate the name and simply ask colleagues whether they like it, don’t be surprised if you get emotional responses back elevate the naming of your intranet to a lengthy circular discussion.


SORCE Intranet

I hope you have found these tips helpful. For further information and guidance, take a look at our implementation guide.

Here at SORCE we’ve experienced hundreds of intranets of all shapes and sizes and are skilled at helping uncover opportunities to improve engagement and business processes.

As intranet software and consultancy providers our software powers the intranet and extranet for hundreds of organisations. Our clients cover a wide range of sectors from finance to manufacturing, not for profit organisations (such as charities and housing associations) as well as local authorities and other public sector agencies.


 

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Paula Darch

Paula is our marketing whizz and is passionate about intranet engagement and getting the most out of your intranet software.