How to Choose a SharePoint Intranet Agency That Works for Comms and IT
Key Takeaways
- Internal communications and IT are measured on different outcomes. Comms teams answer for reach, engagement and content quality. IT teams answer for security, permissions, platform health and supportability. A SharePoint intranet agency has to satisfy both briefs with one design.
- Many problems described as design problems turn out to be governance problems. Across Silicon Reef discovery work, findability, content ownership and review cycles come up far more often than colour palettes or homepage layouts.
- Evidence settles disagreements faster than opinion. At the University of Leeds, pre-project discovery work highlighted that 94% of employees said finding information quickly mattered, while only 24% agreed they could actually do it. Evidence like this moves the conversation from personal taste to shared priority.
- Microsoft 365 integration decisions carry both audiences with them. Every choice about permissions, metadata, Teams, Viva Connections, custom components and Copilot readiness affects how useful the intranet feels to employees and how confidently IT can support it.
Choosing a SharePoint Intranet Agency That Works for Comms & IT
When a UK enterprise starts looking for a SharePoint intranet agency, the buying conversation rarely starts from one shared brief. Internal communications teams usually thinking about reach, relevance and whether employees will actually use the site. IT is looking at permissions, tenant standards, security, support and how the design will behave as Microsoft 365 changes. Both perspectives are right. The challenge is turning them into one intranet roadmap, funded once and expected to serve the whole organisation.
We work with both groups on almost every intranet project, and we often find that communications and IT aren’t usually arguing about the overall goal. But they are trying to protect different risks: one around adoption and employee experience, the other around platform control and long-term maintainability. A partner who can translate between those concerns keeps the discussion practical before it lands with a steering group.
This guide explains how those priorities overlap in a Microsoft 365 environment, what UK buyers should test during procurement, and how to shape an intranet plan that both communications and IT can support with confidence.
Jump to:
- Why Internal Communications & IT Judge the Same Intranet Differently
- Where the 2 Sets of Priorities Collide & How a Good Partner Resolves Them
- What a Balanced SharePoint Intranet Agency Does Differently
- How to Test an Agency Across Both Agendas
- The Microsoft 365 Integration Questions IT will Raise Early
- A Phased Plan that Keeps Both Teams Moving
- How Silicon Reef Works Across Internal Communications & IT
Why Internal Communications & IT Judge the Same Intranet Differently
The same intranet demo can trigger different reactions because each team is accountable for a different outcome. Communications will notice whether news is prominent, whether the homepage feels usable and whether a regional or frontline colleague can get to the right update quickly. IT will look under the surface: site creation, permissions, supported components, performance, accessibility and whether the solution can be maintained without becoming a custom platform.
Putting those measures next to each other early helps turn a subjective design debate into a shared set of delivery criteria.
|
Area of the intranet |
What internal communications needs | What IT needs |
|---|---|---|
| Homepage & News | Reach across the whole workforce, targeted news, scheduling and measurable engagement | Predictable performance, supported web parts and no unmanaged customisation |
| Search & Findability | Employees finding policies, forms and people within a couple of clicks | Consistent metadata, term store discipline and controlled site provisioning |
| Publishing Rights | Enough autonomy for comms and department authors to publish at pace | A clear permissions model, least privilege and an audit trail |
| Design & Branding | Brand consistency, accessible layouts and an experience people return to | Solutions that survive the Microsoft 365 roadmap without constant patching |
| AI & Copilot | Personalised content and agents that answer everyday employee questions | Sensitivity labelling, oversharing control and tenant readiness |
| Life After Launch | Content owners who feel confident and supported | Documented handover, a low support burden and clear escalation routes |
IT requirements and employee experience strengthen each other when they’re treated as connected design decisions. Good platform choices usually make the communication experience stronger. Accurate permissions make targeting more reliable. A disciplined term store improves search. Supported components keep pages fast for colleagues opening the intranet on a mobile device between tasks.
A strong agency makes those dependencies visible so both teams can see how their priorities reinforce each other.
Where the 2 Sets of Priorities Collide & How a Good Partner Resolves Them
Most enterprise intranet projects hit the same handful of pressure points. If they’re surfaced during discovery, they become design decisions rather than late-stage compromises.
| Decision Point | Internal Communications View | IT View | How a Balanced Partner Resolves It |
|---|---|---|---|
| Custom Components | Wants a specific look and set of features | Cautious about code to maintain and test | Start with standard capability, evidence the gap, build only where the outcome justifies long-term maintenance |
| Who Can Publish | Moves faster with distributed authors | Concerned about permission sprawl | Page templates, approval flows and a small number of trained owners per site |
| Content Migration | Wants everything moved so nothing is lost | Wants a smaller, cleaner estate | A content audit with named owners: migrate what’s current, archive the rest with a retrieval route |
| Personalisation & Targeting | Audience targeting by role, region or function | Depends on accurate groups and directory data | Agree the group strategy in discovery and reuse existing Entra groups wherever they’re maintained |
| Copilot & Agents | Sees an assistant answering employee questions | Sees oversharing and labelling risk | Address permissions and content quality first, then scope agents to well-goverened sources |
| Measurement | Wants engagement and reach analytics | Wants privacy and compliance respected | Define the metrics and the reporting method in discovery, with data handles inside the tenant |
| Timing | Launch tied to a communications moment | Change windows and testing cycles | One roadmap with shared milestones and dependencies visible to both teams |
Resolving these points starts by making the consequences explicit. A useful partner records the decision, names the owner and explains the trade-off in terms that both communications and IT can act on.
What a Balanced SharePoint Intranet Agency Does Differently
The strongest SharePoint intranet agencies don’t treat UX, content and Microsoft 365 integration as separate workstreams. They join them up from the start, which shows in a few practical behaviours.
The best SharePoint intranet agencies will:
- Run platform discovery and employee research together, so design choices are grounded in both tenant reality and the way people actually work.
- Make governance part of the user experience. Content ownership, review dates and lifecycle rules are reflected in templates and publishing processes, not left as a separate document no one uses.
- Use Microsoft 365 native capability wherever it meets the need, and only recommend custom work when the value is clear and the support model is agreed.
- Treat accessibility and mobile behaviour as design constraints from the first wireframe, covering heading structure, link text, alt text and how pages collapse on smaller screens.
- Plan beyond go-live, with author training, administrator documentation and a roadmap that keeps the intranet improving as Microsoft 365 evolves.
Discovery is where Comms and IT alignment starts
Discovery helps communications and IT agree the direction of the intranet using evidence, not assumptions. A good discovery report explains the current state, the main areas for improvement and the recommended next steps in a way both teams can recognise.
For communications, that might mean showing where employees struggle to find news, policies, forms or people. For IT, it means showing the platform, permissions, governance and support considerations behind those problems.
Our discovery process combines stakeholder workshops, interviews, requirements gathering, employee research where available and a technical review of the Microsoft 365 environment. The report then brings those inputs together into one practical view, typically covering:
- current-state findings and the main pain points employees experience;
- staff needs, content issues, search behaviour and information architecture;
- accessibility, mobile access and how the intranet will work in Microsoft 365;
- permissions, governance, ownership, adoption and support considerations;
- a phased roadmap that shows what to tackle first and what can wait.
That structure gives comms and IT one shared version of the problem. Communications can see how the intranet will improve reach, findability and content quality. IT can see how the same recommendations will be supported through tenant readiness, permissions, metadata, lifecycle rules and documentation.
At the University of Leeds, pre-project discovery work showed that only 24% of employees could quickly find the information they needed, despite 94% saying it was very important. Those figures became one of the primary drivers behind the intranet overhaul, because they gave stakeholders a measurable problem to align around. Teams may disagree about wording, intranet purpose or design direction, but neither side can argue with clear numbers.
How to Test an Agency Across Both Agendas
When vetting potential agencies, we recommend bringing communications and IT into the same conversation. It gives both teams the chance to ask questions together, helps the agency explain trade-offs in a way each side can understand, and shows how well they can handle both technical and non-technical concerns. These are some of the key questions to ask.
| Area to Test | Question to Ask | What a Strong Answer Sounds Like |
|---|---|---|
| Relevant Experience | How much of your work is SharePoint and Microsoft 365 intranets? | Named, recent intranet projects with both comms and IT stakeholders, across SharePoint Online, Teams, Viva, Power Platform and Copilot |
| Discovery | What research will you do before design? | Surveys, workshops, analytics, a content audit and a technical review, ending in a prioritised roadmap |
| Findability | How will you make information easier to find? | Search configuration, navigation labels, metadata, taxonomy and content pruning treated as one design problem |
| Governance | Who owns content after launch? | Named owners, review dates, lifecycle rules, archiving and provisioning, designed into the pages themselves |
| Microsoft 365 First | When do you recommend custom development? | Standard capability first, with a written case for anything bespoke and a named owner for its upkeep |
| Working with IT | How will you engage our security and platform teams? | Technical discovery early, agreed tenant access, respect for change control and documentation as a deliverable |
| Accessibility | How do you meet WCAG 2.2 AA? | Structural heading levels, description link text, alt text, mobile-first layouts and an audit before launch |
| Handover | What happens after go-live? | Author and administrator training, documentation, support options and a plan for the following 12 months. |
The Microsoft 365 Integration Questions IT will Raise Early
These are the questions we ask at the start of every intranet engagement. Having answers ready shortens discovery and gives IT confidence that the project respects existing standards:
- Which licence plans are in place, and do all employees have the Microsoft 365 account, email access and authentication route they need?
- What level of tenant access will the agency receive during discovery, build and testing?
- What is the change request process for scripts, apps, web parts or configuration changes?
- Which security groups will assign permissions, and are they already in place and maintained?
- Are there existing third-party components, legacy app catalogue solutions or JavaScript injections to account for?
- Is the global term store in use, and how consistently is metadata applied today?
- How will the intranet connect with the tools employees already use every day, including Teams, Viva Connections, Viva Engage, SharePoint search, audience targeting and Copilot?
- Are Copilot and agents enabled, and what has the experience been so fa
That final Copilot question is increasingly part of intranet planning. Copilot works from the content and permissions already in the tenant, so oversharing and outdated documents surface faster once it’s enabled. Intranet work that improves structure, ownership and access is also the groundwork for AI features that behave sensibly.
A Phased Plan that Keeps Both Teams Moving
Shared ownership works best when each phase has visible responsibilities on both sides. This is the shape most of our enterprise intranet programmes take.
| Phase | Focus | Internal Communications Owns | IT Owns |
|---|---|---|---|
| Discovery | Evidence and priorities | Employee research, content audit, channel matrix | Tenant review, permissions, licences, integrations |
| Structure | Information architecture and governance | Navigation labels, news taxonomy, content owners | Site provisioning, term store, security groups |
| Design & Build | Pages people can use | Brand, templates, editorial standards | Accessibility, performance, code review, testing |
| Launch | Adoption | Campaign, author training, feedback loop | Cutover, permissions checks, support process |
| Evolve | The intranet as a service | Content performance, news, planning | Roadmap alignment, Copilot readiness, monitoring |
How Silicon Reef Works Across Internal Communications & IT
Silicon Reef is a UK-based Microsoft 365 and SharePoint specialist, working with internal communications, IT and digital transformation teams on SharePoint intranets, Viva, Power Platform and Copilot. Our work spans higher education, housing, healthcare, charities, media, energy, manufacturing, financial services and more, including the University of Leeds, Housing 21, British Red Cross, Bauer Media Group and Warner Bros. Discovery.
Our approach starts with people. We spend time with employees and stakeholders before we design anything, and we bring IT into that process early so technical constraints shape the roadmap instead of interrupting it later. Where a standard Microsoft 365 capability solves the problem, we say so. Where a SharePoint add-on will help, we have one: Beacon adds branding, news management and personalised quick links inside SharePoint, with support that sits with us rather than with an internal development team.
The measure we care about is whether an organisation starts treating its intranet as the trusted source of truth. That happens when communications can reach everyone, IT can support what’s been built, and employees can find what they need without asking a colleague.
Where to Start
If communications and IT are describing the same intranet in different terms, a short discovery is usually the fastest way to align them. Employee evidence, a content audit and a technical review give both teams a shared picture and a sequence they can agree on.
If you’d like to talk through what that would look like in your environment, we’d love to help.
Bring Comms & IT Together Around a Better Intranet
Silicon Reef helps organisations design and build SharePoint intranets that employees trust and IT teams can support.
From discovery and information architecture through to governance, launch and ongoing improvement, we help you create an intranet that works inside Microsoft 365.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should internal communications or IT own the SharePoint intranet?
Shared ownership works best when the split is explicit. Communications own the editorial strategy, news, content standards and engagement measures. IT owns the platform, permissions, provisioning, integrations and support. A steering group with both functions, and a decision log they share, prevents the intranet drifting towards whichever team shouts loudest during a busy quarter.
Do we need a SharePoint intranet agency, or can we build it in house?
Many internal IT teams have broad Microsoft 365 expertise that includes SharePoint, but a successful intranet now depends on much more than standing up pages and sites. It needs strong information architecture, governance, content ownership, search, accessibility, adoption planning, Viva and Power Platform integration, and a clear view of how Copilot may use the content later. An agency with narrow, deep Microsoft 365 and intranet expertise brings pattern recognition from many projects and is more likely to build something employees trust and IT can support. A hybrid model is common: an agency runs discovery and build, then the internal team takes ownership with training and documentation.
Is SharePoint enough on its own, or do we need a third-party intranet product?
SharePoint Online covers the core of a modern intranet for most organisations: publishing, news, search, permissions, Teams and Viva integration, and Copilot alignment. Many requirements that once pushed organisations towards separate intranet products can now be handled inside Microsoft 365, using newer out-of-the-box capability, carefully scoped custom development, or Microsoft 365 add-ons that keep the experience, data and support model under the same roof. The question worth answering first is which capabilities you’re missing today, and whether the Microsoft 365 environment you already have can deliver them before you add another platform to support.
What does a SharePoint intranet agency actually deliver?
Typically: a discovery report and roadmap, an information architecture, a governance model with named owners and review cycles, a set of accessible page templates, a branded and configured SharePoint environment, migration support, author and administrator training, documentation and an ongoing support arrangement.
What should we prepare before speaking to an agency?
Current site map and navigation, usage analytics, a rough content inventory, brand guidelines, accessibility requirements, your channel matrix, licence details, group and permissions approach, and any recent employee research. Agencies can gather all of this, and having it ready shortens discovery and sharpens the proposals you receive.