9 Questions to Ask a SharePoint Intranet Agency

Key Takeaways

• The best SharePoint intranet agencies bring more than technical expertise. Look for a partner that understands Microsoft 365, internal communications, governance, search and employee experience, as these factors often have a bigger impact on success than the technology itself.
• Discovery should come before design. A successful intranet starts by understanding employee needs, content challenges, governance gaps and communication priorities, rather than jumping straight into wireframes and homepage concepts.
• Findability and governance are closely connected. If employees struggle to find information, the root cause is often outdated content, unclear ownership, poor metadata or inconsistent information architecture rather than the design of the intranet itself.
• Long-term success depends on adoption, ownership and trust. The strongest enterprise intranet solutions don’t stop at launch; they help organisations create a trusted source of truth through training, clear governance, accessible design and sustainable content management.

Choosing a partner for SharePoint intranet development is about much more than finding someone who can build an attractive homepage.

For most large organisations, an intranet quickly becomes one of the most important parts of the digital workplace. It’s where employees go to find policies, access tools, stay informed and increasingly, interact with AI-powered experiences. Done well, it can improve internal communications, reduce duplication and help people work more efficiently. Done badly, it can become another system that employees avoid, working around it rather than with it.

After supporting organisations across sectors, including higher education, media, energy, healthcare, professional services and charities, we’ve found the same questions repeatedly come up during procurement. Interestingly, the concerns that appear later in discovery workshops and intranet reviews are often the ones buyers didn’t think to ask at the start.

These are the questions we’d recommend exploring before appointing a SharePoint intranet agency.

Jump to:

1. How much of your work is SharePoint & Microsoft 365 intranets?
2. Can you show examples of projects similar to ours?
3. What discovery work will you do before design & build?
4. How will you make information easier to find?
5. How will you handle governance, ownership & content lifecycle management?
6. Will you use standard Microsoft 365 capabilities first?
7. How will you work with our IT, security & Microsoft 365 teams?
8. How will you support adoption, training & long-term ownership?
9. How will you make the intranet accessible, mobile-friendly & useful for every employee?

1. How Much of your Work is Actually SharePoint & Microsoft 365 Intranets?

This may seem like an obvious place to start, but it’s surprising how often organisations assume that experience in web development or digital transformation automatically translates into expertise in intranets.

A modern Microsoft 365 intranet sits at the intersection of technology, communication, governance, information architecture and employee experience. Building one successfully requires much more than technical SharePoint knowledge.

A good partner should be able to demonstrate experience across areas such as SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, Viva, Power Platform and Copilot. As well as governance, search, content ownership, information architecture and internal communications. These are the disciplines that repeatedly appear in enterprise procurement exercises because they’re often the difference between an intranet that thrives and one that struggles to gain traction.

Silicon Reef perspective

One of the biggest misconceptions we encounter is that intranet projects are primarily technology projects.

In reality, most organisations already own the technology they need. The more difficult questions tend to be about governance, ownership and communication. Who is responsible for content? How does information stay current? What happens when policies change? How do employees know they’re looking at the right version?

Those are the challenges that usually determine whether an intranet becomes genuinely useful.

2. Can you Show Examples of Projects Similar to Ours?

Most agencies can provide case studies. The more valuable question is whether those examples reflect organisations facing similar challenges to your own.

A university managing multiple campuses has very different requirements from a housing provider supporting thousands of frontline employees. Likewise, a charity, healthcare organisation or global enterprise will each have their own governance, communication and compliance considerations.

Rather than focusing solely on design examples, ask what problem the client was trying to solve and what outcomes were achieved. A strong agency should be able to explain how they approached discovery, what obstacles they encountered and how their recommendations evolved as the project progressed.

The most useful case studies rarely start with technology. They start with a business challenge and show how the intranet helped address it.

3. What Discovery Work will you do Before Design & Build?

We’ve yet to see a successful intranet project that didn’t begin with a strong understanding of the organisation behind it.

Discovery is often where the most valuable insights emerge because it provides an opportunity to understand employee needs, communication challenges, content issues, governance gaps and technical constraints before decisions are made about structure or design.

That typically means speaking to stakeholders, reviewing analytics, understanding existing SharePoint environments, assessing governance arrangements and involving real employees in the process.

By the end you should have a practical roadmap that helps the organisation move forward with confidence – not just a basic discovery report. That roadmap might include quick wins, longer-term recommendations and a clearer understanding of where effort should be focused first.

Silicon Reef perspective

Many organisations begin by describing a symptom. We often hear “the homepage feels outdated”, “engagement is low” or “employees can’t find things.”

Once discovery begins, the picture is usually more nuanced. Sometimes the issue is search. Sometimes it’s unclear content ownership. Sometimes it’s a lack of governance around site creation. And quite often it’s a combination of all three.

Discovery helps separate the visible problems from the underlying causes.

4. How will you Make Information Easier to Find?

This is the question that consistently sits at the heart of almost every intranet project.

How your intranet looks is important, but not as important as how useful the experience is. If people can’t quickly find the information they need to do their job, even the most polished and visually impressive intranet will be ignored.

That might be a policy, a process, a document, a form, a colleague or a department page. Whatever they’re looking for, the expectation is usually simple: it should be easy to find and easy to trust.

When discussing findability with potential agencies, ask how they approach search, metadata, taxonomy, information architecture and content structure. These areas tend to have a far greater impact on the employee experience than visual design alone.

In our discovery work with clients, we often find that employees turn to search when they’re trying to complete a task. If search isn’t delivering useful results, people quickly fall back on asking colleagues, creating workarounds or storing local copies of information.

Silicon Reef perspective

Organisations often treat findability as a navigation problem when it’s actually a governance problem.

Search can only work effectively when information is structured well, content owners understand their responsibilities and metadata is being used consistently. Without those foundations, even a beautifully designed intranet will struggle to deliver the experience employees expect.

5. How will you Handle Governance, Ownership & Content Lifecycle Management?

Governance doesn’t always receive much attention during procurement, but it tends to become one of the most important topics after launch.

Without clear ownership and review processes, content gradually becomes outdated, duplication increases and employees begin to lose confidence in what they’re reading.

A good agency should be able to explain how they help organisations manage content ownership, review cycles, archiving, site governance and information lifecycle management. They should also be able to demonstrate how governance supports the wider objectives of the intranet rather than existing as a separate workstream.

This is particularly important for organisations that hope to improve search, reduce duplication or prepare for AI-powered experiences in the future.

Silicon Reef perspective

Governance is one of the strongest predictors of long-term intranet success. This is one of the biggest lessons we’ve learned from years of intranet work.

When governance works well, information is easier to maintain, easier to find and easier to trust. Those improvements naturally support better communications, stronger adoption and a more sustainable platform overall. That’s why we see governance as a foundation rather than a compliance exercise.

6. Will you use Standard Microsoft 365 Capabilities First?

Many organisations are understandably cautious about introducing unnecessary complexity into their Microsoft 365 environment.

A good agency should share that mindset.

SharePoint and Microsoft 365 continue to evolve rapidly, and many requirements that once needed custom development can now be achieved using standard functionality. That’s why it’s worth asking how a supplier decides when to use out-of-the-box capabilities and when custom development is genuinely justified.

The answer should focus on business outcomes, maintainability and long-term value rather than technology preferences. If a custom component is being proposed, there should be a clear explanation of why it’s needed and what it enables that standard functionality cannot.

Silicon Reef perspective

Some of the most successful intranet improvements we’ve delivered haven’t involved custom development at all. In many cases, organisations already own the capabilities they need but aren’t getting the full value from them.

Before investing in something bespoke, it’s always worth exploring whether the problem can be solved with the tools already available within Microsoft 365.

7. How will you Work With our IT, Security & Microsoft 365 Teams?

Enterprise intranet projects bring together a wide range of stakeholders, each with different priorities.

IT teams are often focused on security, governance, compliance and platform management. Internal communications teams care about reach, engagement and content effectiveness. Business stakeholders typically focus on usability and employee experience.

An experienced agency should be comfortable working across all of these groups and helping them align around shared objectives.

The most effective projects tend to balance governance requirements with user needs rather than treating them as competing priorities. That’s particularly important within larger organisations where permissions, retention policies and compliance requirements need to be considered from the outset.

8. How will you Support Adoption, Training & Long-Term Ownership?

A successful intranet isn’t defined by launch day. In many ways, that’s when the real work begins.

The organisations that get the most value from their intranet tend to treat it as an evolving service rather than a completed project. They invest in governance, support their content owners, provide ongoing training and regularly review what’s working and what isn’t.

When evaluating an agency, it’s worth looking beyond the implementation itself and understanding what happens after go-live. How will administrators be trained? What support will content owners receive? Will documentation be provided? And will your internal team be equipped to manage the platform confidently and independently?

These questions might not feel as exciting as design concepts or feature lists, but they often have a greater influence on long-term success.

Silicon Reef perspective

One of the most rewarding moments in an intranet project is when an organisation starts treating the intranet as its trusted source of truth rather than just another communication channel.

That shift doesn’t happen because of technology alone. It happens when employees trust the information they’re finding, content owners understand their responsibilities and communications teams have confidence in the processes supporting the platform.

9. How will you Make the Intranet Accessible, Mobile-Friendly & Useful for Every Employee?

Modern organisations rarely have a workforce that sits behind a desk all day.

Many employees work remotely, travel regularly or spend most of their time on the frontline. That’s why accessibility and mobile experience should be considered from the very beginning of an intranet project rather than treated as a final-stage checklist.

A good agency should be able to explain how accessibility standards, mobile design, content targeting and employee personas have been incorporated into their approach.

Just as importantly, they should be thinking about the entire workforce rather than optimising exclusively for head office employees.

Silicon Reef perspective

Some of the strongest intranets we’ve seen aren’t necessarily the most complex or feature-rich. They’re the ones that feel relevant and useful to everyone, regardless of where they work or how they access information.

When a frontline employee can find what they need just as easily as somebody sitting in a corporate office, that’s usually a sign that the organisation has got the fundamentals right.

Final Thoughts

When evaluating intranet agencies, it can be tempting to focus on functionality, design concepts and implementation costs.

Those factors are important, but they’re rarely what determines long-term success.

The strongest enterprise intranet solutions are usually built on a combination of discovery, governance, findability, adoption and clear ownership. They help employees trust the information they’re using, reduce friction in day-to-day work and create a stronger foundation for future innovations like Microsoft Copilot and AI agents.

Ultimately, the most valuable agency won’t necessarily be the one with the most impressive demo. It will be the one that understands how people find, share, manage and trust information across your organisation, and can help you build an intranet around those realities.