Why We Rebuilt Our Platform from the Ground Up
There’s a moment in the life of any product where you stop patching and start asking a harder question: is this still the right foundation?
Let’s rewind to 1999, when Intranet Connections first started. For over two and a half decades, we’ve supported financial institutions, governments, healthcare organizations, sports teams, airlines, and more to create an easy-to-use intranet that connects their teams to their information. You name it; we’ve probably worked with them.
A question like this doesn’t start circulating all at once but creeps in slowly, through customer conversations, limitations we kept running into, and a growing sense that the platform we’d built and loved was starting to hold us back. We’d spent years adapting, extending, and working around. And somewhere along the way, we started wondering what it would look like to just start over.
The Case for Starting Fresh
The digital workplace grew more complex, more components, more dependencies, more things for IT teams to maintain, and so did our limitations. For example, integration with Microsoft tools like Azure and SharePoint was possible, but never quite as seamless as they could have been.
None of which was a crisis. But taken together, it was clear that incremental improvements weren’t going to get us where we needed to go. The decision was clear; we need to rebuild from the ground up, using foundational architecture built to grow and last.
So that’s what we decided to do.
All In
We are a team rooted in focus. Once we committed, we committed ourselves fully.
I connected with our of head of development, Chris Duehrsen, on what he thought we to make this rebuild happen and he was clear… more developers. So, we brought four new developers onto the team specifically for IC3, investing heavily upfront so we could build it right and fast.
We’re a fully remote team but, like we always do when a when a decision is big enough to deserve it: we brought everyone together in person. We announced the move to IC3 in that room together.
Building on the Right Foundation
Starting fresh gave us the chance to make foundational decisions deliberately, rather than inheriting them from two decades of evolution. Because most of our customers, and most workplaces really, already live in the Microsoft ecosystem, Azure, SharePoint, Microsoft 365, we chose to build a full Microsoft stack.
It also gave us the chance to rethink how we build.
From the earliest planning discussions through development, testing, and refinement, customer feedback played a central role in shaping IC3. We shared concepts, gathered input, validated assumptions, and put working versions of the product in front of customers throughout the process.
Rather than building in isolation and revealing the finished product at the end, we worked alongside the people who use our platform every day. Their feedback helped influence everything from usability and navigation to priorities and functionality.
What We Built
At some point during development, Chris and I watched a developer pull up the forms system and ran it against a dataset of over a million records. It didn’t hesitate. All those limitations we’d spent years working around; they were gone. Customers could build workflows as complex as their actual business required, from any device. They could seamlessly connect, search, and retrieve from SharePoint without leaving their intranet. They could translate, create, and build with the help of secure AI, on a platform that doesn’t compromise simplicity.
That platform is IC3.0 and today, it’s available.
Learn more about IC3 and how it can support your team here
Author – Rob Nikkel
Rob Nikkel is CEO of Intranet Connections (IC), an intranet software company that has spent more than 25 years helping regulated and operations-driven organizations create more connected, informed, and aligned workplaces.
With over 20 years of leadership experience in the digital workplace space, Rob is recognized for his practical and people-centered approach to technology. Under his leadership, IC has evolved into a trusted partner for financial institutions, healthcare organizations, and government agencies seeking to improve internal communication, governance, compliance, and employee experience through intuitive, purpose-built technology.
Rob is a frequent voice on topics including digital workplace strategy, internal communication, operational alignment, workplace culture, compliance, and the evolving role of technology in helping organizations stay connected in increasingly fragmented environments. His perspective is grounded in the belief that technology should simplify work, strengthen communication, and help people do their jobs better.
Known for his approachable leadership style and ability to translate complex challenges into practical insights, Rob brings a thoughtful and relatable perspective to conversations around the future of work and connected workplaces.
