Intranets reap great ROI for business

If used to its potential, your intranet will be the keystone of your business. It should be the central store of all company information and the jump-off point to the applications and databases users have to access on a regular basis.

We’ve discussed in the past how Intranets can save money, encourage users to communicate more effectively, make your business more efficient, and eliminate bottlenecks in some of the most common tasks most businesses face. However, you might never have sat back and considered what you are losing by not investing in an intranet – and it can be more than you think!

Intranets are generally considered vital to businesses of all shapes and sizes nowadays, but often they are given less of a priority than other IT projects like ERP and CRM solutions. Usually this is because these solutions have a clearly defined purpose and function when compared to an intranet, which has a far wider variety of uses.

If used to its potential, your intranet will be the keystone of your business. It should be the central store of all company information and the jump-off point to the applications and databases users have to access on a regular basis.

Amount of time your users effectively waste on a daily basis:

All these processes in your business can be made more efficient by having an Intranet.  At the moment they are losing you money!

Searching network drives for the latest version of a company policy or procedure (such as a the maternity benefits or sickness procedure)

An Intranet means the information is just seconds away from a mouse click for all staff

Looking for a colleague’s internal phone number

With an Intranet it is a simple and accurate process

Distributing management reports such as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

The Intranet means that you can link through to live data on other systems and you only have to publish once for all to see – no mass emailing!

Managing internal bureaucratic procedures such as booking holidays, new starter induction and general form filling.

With an Intranet you can streamline these processes, meaning staff can spend more time on essential business matters.

In summary the Intranet means that you can have the Self-service employee.  Information that is housed online is always ready for quick consumption.  Documents that were once on paper are now located on the Intranet. These Intranet documents can be kept up-to-date more often and with greater ease than their paper counterparts.  They can even be updated in real-time from corporate databases. This leads to more accurate and timely information in the hands of decision-makers. Companies can now react quicker to changing market conditions.

With one click, employees can directly access the solution to their problem.  The old-fashioned way would have been for the employee to ask someone else such as the HR Department or their manager causing delays and errors and wasting valuable time. Employees are also able to choose the times they access information making them more time efficient.

If you do the maths, your business is becoming less profitable and less efficient than your competitors who make good use of the available technologies.  As a rule of thumb if you can save each employee 5 mins / day you will see a 1% efficiency increase and this will affect your bottom line in a big way.

It´s not always feasible to quantify in strict financial terms the benefits of an intranet. An intranet can improve how an organisation communicates internally and can result in:

• More loyal, committed staff, because they feel that they are being kept informed of important developments.
• An organisation which is more capable of quickly adapting to a changing environment
• A New Culture - An intranet can build a new culture within your corporation.  This new culture is one built on information exchange and collaboration.  Intranets make it easier to move information within the organisation.  Departments that once rarely interacted are now collaborating on big projects.