We’ve seen an increase lately in customers wishing to implement intranets and extranets to improve their internal communications. In today’s challenging times companies can see real ROI on a solid intranet that not only reduces costs but actually improves employee morale and communication.

Here are some thoughts on why having a corporate intranet can be a real benefit to your company.

• Improved internal communications – store information centrally and know that everyone is accessing up-to-date information. Your intranet provides greater version control than shared folders. It is the location for approved pieces (not all the work-in-progress items).
• Increase communication and sharing – by putting best practices and resources in one place you create a more collaborative working environment – both internally and with your customers, vendors, distributors, strategic partners--everyone.
• Secure communications – instead of sending sensitive information, such as price lists, over email, make everything available in one password protected location.
• Improve customer service – when all employees have easy access to the same information, they can answer customer questions more accurately and quickly. Open up some of this information to your customers, and then they can get answers to their questions even faster.
• Reduce paperwork and email traffic – put all your forms in one central location and allow them to be completed online and you reduce the effort of sending these forms by email and printing them out
• Increase productivity, flexibility, accessibility – an intranet is more accessible than a file system or a virtual private network (VPN). With everything in a single location, employees can easily access what they want, when they want. Do employees work from home? Do they travel? Might they be working at night or on the weekend? Your intranet gives them access to whatever they need, whenever they need it.
• Build an online community - an intranet can provide things to organization members that the corporate office alone couldn’t provide, like an anonymous comment box. It can also help foster and create an online community within the organization. For example, the day after the company picnic, you can post pictures of the event.

-- Mike