|
I came a cross a very interesting article by Sean Nicholson of socialmedsean.com. Sean describes how he was in the discussions for a new intranet portal proposed for the spin off of a large telecom company. In the middle of the conversation, a senior Executive asked a question that many must have secretly harbored - "Why do we need an intranet?". It is a totally valid question, and points at the disconnect between users and management, and the team managing the intranet. Sean has proposed the following reasons why a company needs to have an intranet: 1. Corporate communications – When a company is small, it is easy for management and employees to mingle, have periodic open house meetings, and keep communication on company culture, announcements, policies and strategies flowing. But as an organization grows larger, it needs to leverage information technology to help two way communication between employees and management. An intranet is a central hub, which attracts everyone's eyeballs, and which everyone can use to convey important information. 2. Consolidation - An intranet consolidates all the important information and applications employees need to get work done and be more productive. It saves everyone from the hassle of having to go to 20 different places to access they tools and data they need to do work. 3. Enterprise Search – Since an intranet software consolidates all the important information and applications in the organization, it also provides the benefit of allowing users to search across the portal, and easily access relevant information. 4. Knowledge Management and Collaboration - Intranets, especially modern "social" intranets encourage everyone to participate and contribute their knowledge to the intranet in the form of forum discussions, blog posts, document collaboration and so on. This enables an organization to capture organizational knowledge for the future, and also encourages employees to work together for organizational goals. 5. Decentralized Content Management – Modern intranets are easy to use, and allow content owners to publish and manage content rather than a centralized IT department. This is hugely beneficial because departments can publish and share content according to their needs rather than having to go to the IT department for every small need. 6. Organizational Transparency - When everyone is sharing and contributing information to a single transparent intranet, it encourages a culture of transparency and "silo breaking". Important information is out there for people to see and access, rather than people holding on to their knowledge. 7. Employee Satisfaction – Intranets provide users with the tools they need to get their work done, and encourages everyone to contribute and share information, creating a culture of openness. This leads to higher employee satisfaction.
|
