Our content strategy focused on the Bank's chief communication and knowledge sharing tool: its intranet. As in many companies, the intranet, flavour of the 90s, has become an evolved mass of different ideas, platforms and sites, each with its own distinct design and architecture making information difficult to find.

We interviewed internal stakeholders and users about their experiences of the intranet, to gauge the gap between what it needed to do and what it could do. To bridge that gap we audited the intranet page by page, flagging issues like broken links, duplicated or dated content, and readability issues.

Our findings helped us to recommend:

• ways to improve user journeys and cross directorate co-operation

• new universal naming and labelling conventions

• improved tagging and indexing schemes

• imposing a more consistent style and structure.

We developed an information architecture and taxonomy for a new site, testing terms with a card sorting exercise and developing a controlled vocabulary. ‘Nirvana’ state wireframes provided a vision and roadmap for its future development.

Underpinned by a detailed governance guide, the site has a major role to play in helping the Bank help Europe through its economic crisis while accelerating the transition to a smarter, greener and sustainable economy.