A large-scale global intranet benchmarking study analysing more than 159,000 pages across 28 organisations has underscored a critical insight for business leaders: although employees increasingly depend on intranets, many systems are not designed to effectively support productivity, efficiency or decision-making.
The data indicates that 93% of employees used their intranet within a three-month period. Even so, the average visit lasted less than six minutes, with only 2.19 pages viewed per session. This reveals a notable gap between usage and effectiveness, as employees frequently access intranets but often find it difficult to quickly locate the information they require.
What This Means for Businesses
The findings point to several key opportunities for organisations looking to improve collaboration, reduce operational friction, and unlock better ROI from Microsoft 365:
1. Streamlined Structures Reduce Wasted Time
With employees making an average 3.36 visits per day, unclear navigation or cluttered information directly translates to lost productivity. Many organisations still treat SharePoint as an unstructured document dump, rather than a strategic workspace.
2. Evergreen Content Drives Value
While over half (52%) of intranet pages are news, the study shows that evergreen content—policies, procedures, reference materials—attracts significantly higher engagement, with 67% of content pages visited compared to 41% of news.
This signals a major opportunity for organisations to prioritise structured, high-value content that supports day-to-day work.
3. Governance Issues Are Holding Back Intranets
Inconsistent tagging, unmanaged sprawl, and duplicate content reduce search accuracy and increase compliance risk. These pain points also reduce the effectiveness of new AI tools emerging across Microsoft 365.
4. AI Success Depends on Strong SharePoint Foundations
The study’s AI Readiness Index, with an average score of 51.1 out of 100, shows that many organisations are not yet prepared to leverage Copilot and other AI efficiencies. Poorly structured or outdated content limits what AI can surface, summarise, or accelerate.
“People aren’t disengaged from intranets. They simply don’t have time to fight through bad ones,” said Ian Loman, Sales Director at Adepteq. “The opportunity for organisations is huge: fix structure, governance, and design, and productivity immediately improves.”
Adepteq Responds with Practical Support for Businesses
To help organisations translate these insights into tangible changes, Adepteq has released the SharePoint Business Benefits Guidebook 2026—a practical, free resource that explains how to fix common SharePoint issues, build a purposeful site structure, and modernise digital workplaces for the AI era.
The guide covers:
- The Top 10 SharePoint Myths affecting adoption
- How poor configuration silently drives duplication, compliance risk, and hidden cost
- How to design SharePoint the way people actually use it
- Improving search and navigation to support AI and Copilot
- Practical steps to replace spreadsheets and manual workflows
- How better governance boosts productivity across every department
