12 proven benefits of an intranet

Did you know that intranets have been around since the nineties? Well… they’re pretty old huh!?

That does not mean they are out of fashion and no longer relevant to your business though.

On the contrary; in the last two decades, with the rapid growth of technology, intranet software has evolved tremendously to overcome a lot of today’s business challenges. Modern intranets look good, they are fast and easy to use, they integrate perfectly with the latest technology and implementing them takes only days, not months. Oh, and did I mention they no longer cost you an arm and a leg?

In this post I’ll share 12 reasons why the intranet is a crucial part of any successful business. But first, let’s make sure we’re on the same page.

To keep it simple, an intranet can be described as a private internal website used by an organization. Every company intranet has its own purposes, but most organizations use the intranet to effectively disseminate information to their employees as well as to provide employees easy access to all the documents and files they need to do their job.

We’ve implemented hundreds of intranets for both small businesses and large enterprises in different industries. The goal was not the implementation itself but helping these companies and organizations achieving their objectives and goals.

The intranet has many use cases, but I’ve listed out 12 of the most popular, proven ways it benefits organizations and employees. See which areas you would like to improve and how the intranet can help you do it.

Through a company intranet, organizations can reach and inform all their employees in an easy, fast and efficient way. Sharing company news, announcements or communicating a change in the entire organization is now a breeze. The multilingual capability enables you to reach out to employees in their preferred language.

With the audience targeting possibility, the intranet helps you to send the right content to the right employees. This makes sure employees stay engaged and never miss any important information.

The intranet gives employees a central place to keep up with all the information they need. This way, a company intranet can free employees from the reliance on email, reducing email overload.

Many organizations struggle to improve workplace collaboration, especially with dispersed teams and remote or hybrid workplaces. Due to the lack of the right collaboration tool, employees find it challenging to communicate and work together.

The intranet ensures communication flows. It also enables employees to find and connect with any colleague, no matter where they work.

The advantage of an intranet like Involv that’s built on SharePoint is that you get the advantages of a world-renowned document management system to make collaboration easier.

Your intranet will become the shared online space for the entire company. It’s where everyone goes not only for information but also for the connection with the workplace. Through the intranet, leaders or managers can share company values and goals as well as stay in touch with employees.

With the people directory inside the intranet, employees can quickly find and contact any colleague. This is especially important if your workforce is dispersed across multiple locations.

In the company intranet, employees can keep track of upcoming birthdays and new hires and the user profiles help you get to know more about your colleagues on a business and personal level.

In my opinion, the top three enemies of productivity are unnecessary meetings, excessive emails and time wasted searching for information. These problems can be solved with an intranet.

By sharing company news via the employee intranet, people can move away from checking email, the main source of distraction. Being able to disseminate information and collect employee feedback in a more efficient way also means that you can skip inefficient and unnecessary meetings.

The powerful search possibility of the intranet allows employees to search for the right information or documents and files when they need it.

Especially with Involv, each employee has their “My Page” containing a wealth of personalization information. It includes a news overview, links to recent documents, collaboration sites and productivity apps, an overview of tasks and much more. By having everything in one single place, employees no longer need to spend time searching for information.

To IT managers, one great benefit of a company intranet is the ability to store and access all data in one central location. The intranet can act as a content management system that brings all your organizational content and documents together. It allows employees to find and access information and files easily, quickly and securely, reducing shadow IT.

Save more time by automating some business processes and procedures, moving away from all boring paperwork and tedious tasks.

An intranet that supports forms and workflows allows you to automate processes such as document approval, IT support ticketing, leave requests, expense claims, onboarding, ideation, etc.

Forms also make it easier and faster to collect feedback, or create quizzes. Collect the answers automatically and evaluate them with built-in analysis.

The company intranet helps to create an engaging onboarding experience for new hires. Your intranet will become the hub for all company information, providing insights into the culture and people.

New employees can easily get to know more about the company and their colleagues through the news space, blogs, people directory, org chart and rich employee profiles.

A great thing about the intranet is that it supports two-way communication. It has proven to be an efficient tool for top-down communication but also enables bottom-up dialogues.

When reading company news on the intranet, employees are able to share their opinions or feelings using likes, comments or mentioning @colleagues. It allows people to leave feedback or thoughts. This is critical if you want to build a culture of honest and open communication in the workplace.

As mentioned above, the intranet helps to improve internal communication, increase collaboration and bring people together. All these things are great foundations for building a positive company culture.

Your intranet will become the central hub of all company news and activities. It’s where company successes are shared, employees are recognized and appreciated, events are planned, etc. It also acts as a virtual water cooler where conversations or informal chitchats among employees happen, helping employees become more connected.

To help organizations create a people-first culture, modern intranets like Involv offer features like a people directory, upcoming birthdays, new hires, rich employee profiles, social integrations and self-service apps.

According to a survey, 84% of deskless workers say they don’t get enough direct communication from top management (Ragan). It’s clear that one of the biggest internal communication challenges is to reach and engage these non-desk employees.

A mobile intranet app can help organizations bridge this gap. It enables you to deliver company news straight to your employees’ smartphone. The push notifications make sure everyone reads important messages and the “who is who” is a useful feature to stay connected with colleagues.

Intranet analytics provide an instant overview of your intranet performance. It provides you with all the important metrics, including employee usage and behaviour, top performing content or sites, top creators and contributors and much more.

This is critical information to measure how effective your internal communication is.

With all the benefits mentioned above, an intranet appears to be an essential tool to improve employee engagement in the workplace.

It provides employees a central place for information and resources, for team collaboration and for the connection with colleagues and the company. The intranet empowers people to be best at their job. These are extremely important components in employee engagement.

Building an intranet with SharePoint or Office 365 can be fast and stress-free.

At Cognit, we created a turnkey SharePoint intranet solution called Involv which can be up and running in a matter of days. It’s very easy to use, easy to maintain and has all the most-requested intranet features.

Working with us gives you access to a team of experienced intranet specialists and useful resources to ensure your intranet success.

If you want to get to know more about Involv or how we can support you in deploying a SharePoint intranet, please schedule a free demo with us.