This post would qualify as a part of the “back to the basics” series. While cloud based business software has gained mainstream adoption over the past couple of years, many companies are dipping their toes in it for the first time, and are still asking the “why” questions.

This post answers the “why” for intranet software. Why should my company implement an intranet at all? How will it benefit me? Here’s why.

1) Productivity. An intranet is the “home” for employees (ideally) and the intranet desktop is probably the first thing they see in the morning. An intranet which gives employees’ access to all the tools and information they need to effectively perform that day’s tasks, every day, can go a thousand miles in improving productivity. Some examples of these tools and information are:

1. Latest events and meetings

2. Outstanding tasks

3. New discussions

4. Important documents

5. Relevant news

6. Email

2) Corporate communications. Since an intranet is an employees’ main window into corporate tools and information, and occupies a very important part of their attention space, it offers a great place for the management to communicate with employees. To exemplify, imagine a large corporation with thousands of employees around the world. If everyone logs into the intranet every morning, the management can:

1. Publish important announcements

2. Advertise new initiatives and policies

3. Communicate company history, culture and positioning

4. Recognize outstanding employees

5. Gather feedback in the form of surveys and suggestions

3) Streamline processes. Modern intranets contain not only static information, but the actual tools that employees use for work. This presents a great opportunity to use intranets as a place where companies can document processes, and provide the actual tools to automate processes. Many companies use intranets to automate anything from simple processes like employee appraisals to sophisticated processes like CRM and project management.

4) Spur Collaboration. Modern intranets have collaboration and social tools built into them. Not only can employees access work related information, they can also share and work together on it within the intranet. Networking tools allow employees to discover the skills and competencies of fellow workers and bypass corporate hierarchies to connect with them directly.

5) Knowledge management. In its very broadest sense, knowledge management means capturing, organizing and retrieving corporate information. With all tools and information within the intranet, and employees constantly adding new information in the form of comments, discussions, blogs, documents; the intranet serves as a centralized place to capture important corporate information. Tools like search ensure that employees across the company network can find just the information they need to perform their jobs.