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Intranets

Most organisations should have an Intranet. I say most because a two person business running out of homes probably doesnt ‘need’ one but if you are employing people, especially in different locations, an Intranet can (and should) become an integral part of your internal business communications.

What is an Intranet? Think of it simply as a private website for your staff. You can have one just for you if you are just starting out, it can be a central repository of what defines your business and can grow with you. A Wiki is an excellent place to start as it is simple and quick to learn and use. Once the limitations of the Wiki are reached, the Wiki can still have a place in your business process documentation while the Intranet itself can be moved to a Web Content Management System

WordPress or Joomla make great platforms to build your Intranet (see the link above), they are free and very flexible and there are many free add-on/plugins for them to add functionality with no need to know any coding. Joomla has a steeper learning curve but ultimately is more powerful. If you have Windows servers, you could build your Intranet on Windows Sharepoint Services but the initial setup will be the hardest and the learning curve the steepest but the end result may be far more powerful. If you want the full Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS), expect to pay for it, it is not at all cheap to buy, customise or maintain.

What can your Intranet do? An Intranet can do anything you want it to do. If you treat it like a consistent homepage only, then that is what it will become. If you limit yourself to not spending any money on it, you will reach a different level of usage, if you see it as the basis for all your company’s internal operations, then that is also what it will become. It is only limted by your imagination. Anything that can be done online can be done in an Intranet, often more as you have a more defined/controlled environment to work with. The Internet’s communications systems are very well designed to be efficient and therefore any remote users or remote offices will often benefit from improved performance with an Intranet based system as opposed to a traditional application. You can use your intranet for company news, internal blogs, documentation, centralised forms and documents, events calendars, discussion forums, training, managing projects, sharing internet links, Client Relationship Management (CRM), process automation (eg Leave applications), testing future web sites etc. (and more).

Your Intranet can be as flashy or as understated as you like but it should reflect your businesses culture and values honestly. Often an Intranet is modelled on the company web site but this is not always a good thing, your staff (internal customers) have very different needs than your external clients. Your staff should be able to contribute easily, either directly or through a few known content Editors. If you make it an integral part your busines, something that has to be used by everyone everyday, it will then be able to become even more. There is nothing more demoralising for staff than a static intranet that is not useful or used for anything that is forced on staff as their browser homepage that has not been updated since it was created, often many years ago where a fresh, relevant and changing Intranet gives a feeling that things are happening in the business.

Posted in: Business, The Web