Rediff

New Delhi, Feb 7: Sparsh, the Infosys Technologies intranet, has been selected as one of 'The Year's 10 Best Intranets' by the Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g), a user experience research firm that advises companies on human-centered product and service design.

Infosys is the first Indian company to be selected for Nielsen Norman Group's Intranet Design Annual Award.

"We are honoured to receive worldwide acclaim for our intranet. The award shows Infosys' commitment to employee communication by leveraging technology. Sparsh has provided the much-needed impetus to create a small company culture in a fast-growing environment," says Kris Gopalakrishnan, president, joint managing director and COO, Infosys Technologies Ltd.

Sparsh supports over 69,000 employees across 18 countries it operates in. Sparsh has today become the primary channel for news and official information, created a communication platform and opened up avenues for networking for Infosys' employees.

"Named Sparsh -- 'to touch' in Sanskrit -- this intranet lives up to its billing, achieving three essential yet difficult attributes: to motivate, communicate with, and unify employees," says usability expert Jakob Nielsen, principal of Nielsen Norman Group.

Among the features the report recognised were:

User participation and incredible user uptake.
New avenues for publishing and networking.
Content freshness and access to archived content.
Personalized and customized content. 
Clean and simple look and navigation.
Attention to design details.

"Early on, we realised that creating a great user experience is the real killer app. With this insight, we were able to transform the Infosys Intranet into a living, breathing entity catering to diverse, multi-cultural global community. The recognition from Nielsen Norman Group reinforces our belief in this," says Sridhar Marri, associate vice president and head, communication design group, Infosys Technologies Ltd.

Infosys is the first Indian company to be selected for this award. "Most of this year's winners are from countries that have fostered previous winners. However, we also have a new country represented this year: India. Having India join the ranks of winning countries is a clear symbol of its growing might as a software superpower," says Jakob Nielsen.

Other Nielsen Norman Group award-winners this year include American Electric Power (US); Comcast (US); DaimlerChrysler AG (Germany); The Dow Chemical Company (US); JP Morgan Chase & Co. (US); Microsoft Corporation (US); National Geographic Society (US); The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (UK); and Volvo Group (Sweden).

The winning intranets are each described in detail in Nielsen Norman Group's "Intranet Design Annual 2007: The Year's Ten Best Intranets," available on the NN/g Web site.