Designing an effective intranet/extranet

Corporations have much useful information which would be valuable to provide to their employees on an intranet. However, most of this information was designed to be read on paper pages. When corporations move this information onto an intranet all too often documents are "dumped" online. No changes are made to the paper material to accommodate the new media (change page size, information organization, structure, etc.). In addition, no consideration is given to how the information will actually be used or retrieved. This may seem the fastest and most cost-effective route; however, the costs incurred by users trying to use this information, or often not using this information because it is too frustrating, can far outweigh the early cost savings. The paper addresses the issues of designing information effectively for use on an intranet or extranet.