Corporate Intranet System

In essence, an intranet is a business' own private website. It is a confidential business network that uses the same underlying structure as a regular website and is protected from unauthorised users.

Intranets enhance existing communication between employees and provide a common knowledge base and storage area for everyone in your business. They also provide users with easy access to company data, systems and processes from any networked computer or mobile device.

Because intranets are secure and easily accessible, they enable staff to do work from any location simply by using a web browser. This can help small businesses to be flexible and control office overheads by allowing employees to work from almost any location, including their home and customer sites.

Top 6 Benefits of an Intranet

1. Reduces Cost

An obvious intranet benefit is its cost-effective feature which it gets from the paperless environment. For example, with an intranet solution, a company can publish most of their company documents in a central location in a digital format. This saves the company money on printing documents and distributing information, duplication and document maintenance overhead, etc. Another cost reduction results from the reduced meeting, travel and telephone time, and better use of traditional meetings and operational communications. Also, compared to a conventional client-server or legacy system, an intranet's "per seat" cost is much lower. The intranet solutions from jDynamic are fully managed so you do not need any expensive hardware or infrastructure. New content or applications can be easily added without incurring additional costs. In addition, intranets provide a common universal browser interface in a diverse corporate computing environment. This ability significantly reduces the training costs in the company, together with providing the opportunity to utilise various computer platforms. An intranet also results in cost savings for training, corporate, administrative, and operational communications. 

2. Saves Time

An intranet can speed up employees’ communications through e-mail, chat facility and forum conversations. For example, a single forum message can start a string of additional messages back and forth for further communications. Another efficient intranet communication is the use of "forms," such as forms for an employee survey. The data collected in this manner is stored for future use and can be accessed by relevant parties. With information residing in only one place (on the intranet server), it is also relatively easier and quicker to add new information, or to update existing information to make it instantly available.

3. Increases Collaboration

Communication and collaboration form the foundation of intranet applications. Intranet applications can enhance the communication and collaboration of company employees from just-in-time publishing, knowledge sharing to virtual team coordination. Other tasks become easier, including managing projects in a distributed workgroup and virtual team, sharing corporate knowledge, online feedback mechanisms (employee surveys, opinions/complaints) and communicating announcements. 

4. Increases Productivity and Effectiveness

Developing an intranet can vastly benefit the company by increasing productivity and effectiveness. It increases the productivity by faster, easier, more flexible and open communication through a suite of standard, easy to use, powerful, and rich facilities, rapid transmission and feedback and one-to-one, many-to-many dialogs, etc. The increase in productivity also results by better learning and knowledge management facilities. For example, an intranet increases the development, distribution, application, and quality/currency of intellectual capital. It also provides better collection and sharing of market intelligence, enhanced training resources, available to all on demand and JIT (Just-In-Time). The intranet also contributes directly to the effectiveness of the company by producing business results. For example, faster time to market by better communication to and with affected parties, improved coordination and agreements and rapid information access. Effectiveness also increases by better, faster feedback, adaptation, correction and increased staff participation.

5. Integrated and Distributed Computing Environment

An intranet can fully support a distributed computing architecture by allowing access from various devices and operating systems. This also enables the company to deliver information on the least expensive platforms, and to scale the computing resources upward or downward as conditions shift.

6. Rich in Format

Unlike the traditional paper-based documents, intranet provides a wide variety of media types, which include audio, video, and interactive applications. These features allow users to communicate in a dynamic way and to enhance the accuracy and speed of information sharing.

What Type of Content Could Be Added?

Types of content typically found on intranets:

Administrative - calendars, emergency procedures, meeting room bookings, procedure manuals and membership of internal committees and groups.

Corporate - business plans, client/customer lists, document templates, branding guidelines, mission statements, press coverage and staff newsletters.

Financial - annual reports and organisational performance.

IT - virus alerts, tips on dealing with problems with hardware, software and networks, policies on corporate use of email and internet access and a list of online training courses and support.

Marketing - competitive intelligence with links to competitor websites, corporate brochures, latest marketing initiatives, press releases, and presentations.

Human resources - appraisal procedures and schedules, employee policies, expenses forms and annual leave requests, staff discount schemes, and new vacancies.

Individual projects - current project details, team contact information, project management information, project documents, time and expense reporting.

External information resources - route planning and mapping sites, industry organisations, research sites and search engines.

The Next Step

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