Published on Wednesday, 12 December 2018 at 10:17:42 AM
An intranet provides an adaptive tool built exclusively for the specific needs of your organisation. It can serve to improve internal communication, increase administrative efficiencies, be a driver of your brand and reinforce your organisation’s core values.
The same platform can also be adapted as a portal for key stakeholders such as elected members or community groups. For example, a Councillor portal can provide elected members with easy access to key documents, news items and other resources which can be easily uploaded and edited by website administrators.
Here are 8 key benefits of an intranet:
1. Improve internal communication: Intranets serve as a powerful tool used to enhance communication within an organisation. Employees that may work at geographically dispersed locations can all access the required information and communicate with other offices or employees.
The type of information available on the intranet is designed to suit your needs. It can serve as an interactive information portal detailing events, achievements, milestones or briefings from management or HR updates.
You can also set up your intranet to receive feedback across your network, with online surveys or polls easily set up by your content moderators.
The information contained within your intranet allows for staff to keep up to date with the strategic focus of the organisation. Chat, email and/or blogs are all examples of intranet communication channels that can also be incorporated.
2. Increase workforce productivity: Intranets provide users with an efficient means to locate and view information and the relevant applications required of their roles and responsibilities.
With the help of a web browser interface, users can access data stored in any database the organisation has made available at any time, from any company workstation. This increases their ability to accurately carry out tasks in a timely manner, with the confidence they have the right information, at the right time.
3. Timely delivery of message: With intranets, organisation’s have the ability to distribute information to all employees across the network at the same time. You can also set email or SMS alerts to notify staff of information updates available on the intranet should the situation require it. It also allows for more regular, bite size information packets rather than long winded, once a month newsletter style bulletins.
4. Automation through integration: A lot of the information provided within the intranet is data base driven, that means, it’s automated. The content management system (CMS) allows for the creation of news and company information that needs to be disseminated by management, much in the same way as website content is managed, however, a lot of the information will draw from your existing business software applications reducing the need for double entry and duplication of information sources that can lead to disparate data sets.
5. Get up close and personal: As an intranet is specifically designed as an internal communication tool, you can talk to your intended or targeted audience in a language and tone that reflects the culture and values of your organisation. It doesn’t have to be all business, you can personalise your intranet messaging to each and every user drawing from database driven content.
6. Harness the effectiveness of the Web: Web technologies allow massive amounts of corporate knowledge to be maintained and easily accessed throughout the company. The type of information that can be stored on an intranet is unlimited however typical intranets for business include employee manuals, HR documents and company policies. Some higher level intranet applications assist with Quality Assurance (QA) and provide access to project plans, job tracking and management functionalities. Integration with third party news feeds or weather channels, localised to the area in which your employee resides can also be incorporated. As businesses can update the online copy of a document, the most recent version will be made available to employees using the intranet assisting in document version control.
7. A cost-effective solution: Intranets reduce the costs involved with maintaining physical documents such as procedure manuals, internal phone list and requisition forms. By viewing organisational information and data via web-browsers, firms can save money on printing and post and help protect the environment. As an added advantage, you’ve just created an online data store for important internal documentation, meaning you have an online back up in the instance your office isn’t accessible.
8. The techy bit…Cross-platform capability: Web browsers comply with the standards
for Windows, Mac, and UNIX.
Put simply, your intranet will work on all internet connected devices.
We have good news!
If you are already a CouncilConnect subscriber, you have the added benefit of creating an intranet or portal as a multi-site. A multi-site is an additional website with its own domain name within the same CMS which allows you to share content to other CouncilConnect websites. Read more on Multi-Site website here.
If you are interested in learning more about the CouncilConnect intranet solution or how it can be adapted as a Councillor portal, give one of our friendly team members a call on 08 9920 8500 or email mc@marketcreations.com.au.
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