When I say parent categories, I mean the major categories or sections (in taxonomy terms, often referred to as 'parents') that host or provide access to the bulk of the information or content on a given intranet -- and represent the major or global navigation for the site or portal. Most of these intranet home pages of course have more than just parent category links and often have other tertiary or navigation links that are not in fact 'parents', but rather are support links that might include the following:


An examination of the top level parent categories of these 13 leading intranets reveals the following:


Of note, most of the examined intranets do not have consolidated sections for products and services, and/or customers. Most leave that information to division or business unit silos. Of course, employee users despise content that organized by business structure or heirarchy and most organizations should know better. Some, like Sodexo, understand this and give this information the royal treatment by breaking down their product lines and customers by group with individual parent categories (Corporate, Government, Health Care, Laundry, and Schools).
I have to say, that I find some of the labels and IAs to be rather unintuitive, and real 'head scratchers'. However, I'm not an employee at any of the companies and those organizations are not organizing content for me, but rather for employees. The lesson is this: what is good or intuitive at one company, is not necessarily so at another.

In no particular order here are the top levels (2nd level) or parent categories of the 13 leading intranets that were examined:

Google (6 parent categories):
HP (6 parent categories):
Cisco (6 categories):
Microsoft (5 categories):
British Airways (7 parent categories):
Bank of America (6 categories):
SAP (6 categories):
Perkins Eastman (5 categories):
McDonald’s (5 categories):
SimCorp (8 categories):
Ericsson (8 categories):
Sodexo USA (9 categories):
Atomic Energy of Canada (7 categories): Please note that each of these organizations may or may not be in the process of updating their information architecture (IA), or have recently updated their IA and therefore the categories represented above are representative of the IA at the time the respective companies chose to make the information public.

The ultimate goal of the intranet manager, architect and consultant is to create an ‘intuitive’ IA – information categories and navigation paths that are intuitive or easily understood at a glance.’ Of course the principal challenge of any information architect is that what works at Google or Microsoft, doesn't necessarily work at your organization. The keys to success are understanding the corporate culture and how your employees work, relate to each other, and the nomenclature used to categorize and seek out information.

For help with your intranet information architecture please see our Intranet Blueprint service or contact us directly.

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Toby Ward, a former journalist and prominent writer and speaker on intranets and intranet planning, is the President of Prescient Digital Media. To learn how to undertake effective intranet planning, or to get our free intranet white paper, Finding ROI, please contact us directly.

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Learn more and specific tips for crafting your intranet information architecture:

Reinventing intranet information architecture Information architecture for the intranet Information Architecture - the science of site layout Smell the intranet scent Pick a Card (sort), any card

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