Overview

An Intranet is a web site that is for internal use only. It may hold information that the company wishes to share internally but not externally. Examples are an employee telephone extension listing, the latest price lists, employee of the month, internal company announcements, organisation charts, competitor information and much more.

Why use an Intranet?

The reasoning behind Intranets a few years ago was to share information between employees. Whilst this is still essentially the case now, Intranets are being implemented today to achieve real business benefits such as cost savings, increased productivity and competitive advantage.

How?

The starting justification for many Intranets is the decreased cost of producing, accessing and distributing information within a company. Analysts estimate that 18% of corporate printed material becomes outdated within 30 days. Documents that are printed and mailed, such as internal phone books, policy and training manuals, requisition forms and marketing materials, can be put on an Intranet and updated for a fraction of the cost of reprinting material. It is not only the publishing but also the updating of information that leads to significant savings. Intranets allow information to be rapidly and economically deployed to a dispersed group of employees.

Companies without an Intranet may email to a Sales distribution list the latest price list. This means that the recipients and the sender hold multiple copies of the price list on the system, thus using more of the company's resources. And when the sales person uses the price list, how sure is he that it is the latest version? An Intranet will reduce the amount of disk space required and ensures that everyone has access to the latest price list.

All companies have expert knowledge that resides in its people. An Intranet gives you a framework for publishing expert information in a controlled manner and uses familiar web browser tools. This allows employees to access the information they need when they need it. This reduces time wasted searching for documents, trying to ascertain whether it is the latest version or trying to contact the expert to gain the information. Sales people may need the latest price list, maintenance agreement, product roadmap and competitor information in a hurry. The Intranet can provide this information all in one place.

Productivity increases can be harder to measure than the cost savings above, but companies that budget, track and invoice employee time in hourly increments, such as accountants, consultants and solicitors, have an advantage in this regard.

An Intranet provides more rapid easier access to the company’s expert knowledge at any time of day. In today's highly competitive global marketplace, that translates into competitive advantage in terms of shorter time cycles to: produce a tender response, to answer a customer’s question, to find the right person or to fix a problem.

Click here to find out how Claromentis can help you realise these benefits