When should you start to use an intranet?

If you don’t currently have a company intranet, you might wonder why having one would benefit your organisation. After all, you’ve survived this long without one, right?

It’s true some companies can survive happily without an intranet, but an intranet offers so many quick wins, at relatively little cost, that it’s almost foolish not to have one. For even the smallest companies, the investment can be well worth it; a quality intranet can benefit both your staff and business as a whole.

So, when should you start to use an intranet? It might be time to invest in an intranet if any of the following apply to your organisation…

You want to organise documents

Document management is a central feature of any quality intranet. A good document management tool lets you create and organise, share and store documents, and keeps them secure. It will also provide you with much-needed version control, so you can avoid issues with duplication, and lets you collaborate together on documents easily.

You want to communicate with your whole team

Intranets let you communicate with a lot of people at the same time and can reduce reliance on email. Using your intranet to communicate with staff will reduce the number of emails you have to send and reduce clutter and free up storage in employee inboxes. Staff receive countless emails every day, so it's easy to miss important messages when they are one of dozens; using your intranet to communicate important messages removes this problem.

You want input from teams

In many companies, face to face meetings are becoming a thing of the past; with busy schedules, it can be difficult to find a suitable time for everyone to meet. Booking external meeting rooms can be costly, and the whole process can be time consuming. In these circumstances, an intranet can be a useful way of giving and receiving feedback from various teams, without having to meet in person.

You want to track and allocate resources

Of course, sometimes, only a face to face meeting will do. An intranet can show you the availability of meeting rooms and let staff book them online.

You want to keep remote workers up to date

Increasingly, people are working away from the office and from other locations, whether that be at home, on a train or in a coffee shop. An intranet lets you communicate with remote workers, instantly and on the move.

You want to centralise company policies

An intranet is the perfect place to store your company policies, HR procedures and forms. Storing all these documents in one place makes them quick and easy to find and puts all the information staff need at their fingertips. It also means the HR department are free to get on with other tasks, instead of answering the same questions over and over.

You want to boost employee morale

Aside from its business uses, an intranet is the perfect place to create forums where colleagues can chat to one another in a more relaxed environment. It can be used to arrange events, as an employee marketplace and for other reasons outside of your business. An online environment that is dedicated to employees can help boost morale throughout your teams and help foster friendships within the organisation.

You want to share certain information with customers

You’ll almost certainly want to lock down large areas of your intranet and restrict some content to employees only, but you might also want to have certain information available for customers. An intranet allows you to do this, with customisable security settings to control exactly who can see what.

How can Core help?

As part of our Intranet and Collaboration service, Core can design and build an intranet that suits your exact requirements and is flexible enough to grow with your business. If you would like to discuss any aspect of our intranet service, contact us today. For more information on things to consider when choosing an intranet, read our blog.