Intranets - A Beginners Guide
An Intranet is a 24 hour content delivery system that uses your company’s “protected” internet space (intranet = internet inside) as a hub for the flow of information through the organisation. Being web-based means it can be accessed through a browser, so useability is high, fast, intuitive and requires relatively little training.
You may already have one. Larger and more complex organisations refer to a “digital dashboard” or an “enterprise portal”, but they are much the same thing. Because they are web-based, these powerful software products to manage information flow are increasingly appropriate, affordable and attractive to smaller businesses – the internet at its liberating best. Many enterprises now use their own website as an access point to provide staff, customers and suppliers with key data, news and views.
Resource capability and planning
Intranets access and translate data stored within an organisation’s core (but often disparate) management information systems, such as accounts, projects, customers and HR; they then present a user-friendly interface which enables managers and key personnel to access real-time reports and performance measures. For non-corporate sized businesses this means enterprise-wide MIS without the pain and cost of installing and running sledgehammer systems, such as SAP. All the knowledge you need can be brought together through this simple, robust, web-based interface. For strategic planning, management can find what they need faster, and make more informed decisions allowing them to predict and assess their overall capacity to implement change based on live data.
Implementing strategic change
An Intranet is a powerful business tool because its whole premise is connecting people to information, enabling knowledge, insight, challenge and decision, and subsequently provides the medium for sharing and moving forward. Communication and informed action is also at the heart of managing strategic change. Let’s look at a few typical components to illustrate this point:
An information store
An Intranet can house essential electronic information about your business and provide a means of sharing this information with your management and staff. It could be a simple collection of relevant articles, or a fully fledged document storage facility, with full version management. This is a far more secure way of supporting change projects than locking up key details in the desk of your project manager or worse, in his head. And because its on the Intranet, it can be accessed from anywhere in the business, or the world.
A discussion forum
Used wisely, this is one of the most powerful tools offered by an Intranet. You can encourage all employees to air their views and read other peoples opinions across a wide variety of subjects, providing you with an important feedback and engagement medium. Nothing beats talking and listening in person, but on a larger scale – and also when anonymity can be assured - the chat forum can provide a very rich source of information and has worked very well for many organisations in digging out real issues and concerns and understanding the implications of proposed initiatives and change.
A news management system
Regular, relevant and engaging news feeds across the organisation can, to an extent, be managed by email, but this is an inelegant and quite unimpressive way to keep up activity and interest levels through the course of a strategic implementation programme. Intranet-based news management lets you easily update in real time all the important news, announcements, presentations and opinions to keep the business motivated to move forward. It can be one of the single most important reminders that change is dynamic, and strategies aren’t yesterday’s great idea, but today’s (and tomorrow’s) way forward.
Conclusions
Like strategic implementation itself, an Intranet is about communication needs. Successful delivery is ultimately dependent on people, backed up by processes and supported by IT. Intranet components such as information stores, discussion forum and news management should play an important and exciting role. They are a medium for behavioural change and can be compelling without being frightening. It’s a new system but its actually only the internet, and what better way to encourage knowledge sharing and dialogue in real time?
What’s more, it offers a robust framework for collecting, sorting and distributing all the relevant data to all the people who need it. From the integration of existing systems to the ongoing barometer readings of change initiatives, your intranet will take you to improved levels of management information without the need for massive investment in more traditional enterprise systems.
And finally, it gives you the means to move the whole company forward – not just those in the strategic planning department!