Increased Productivity Equals Higher Profitability

Online intranet services offer file management and collaboration, but this is only one aspect of intranet functionality. These applications are not capable of managing your day to day operations and fall short of providing extranet functionality, i.e., allowing your customers to see data from your Intranet in a secure environment.

Now, imagine an application that not only organizes your data/documents and allows collaboration, but also empowers your employees to manage every day to day operational task, piece of data and transaction from initial customer contact to invoicing. That is exactly what we will do for you with a custom intranet/extranet solution.

Below are just a few ways that a custom intranet can impact your business:



What is an intranet?

In essence, an intranet is a business' own private website. It is a private business network that uses the same underlying structure and network protocols as the Internet and is protected from unauthorised users by a firewall.

Intranets enhance existing communication between employees, and provide a common knowledge base and storage area for everyone in your business. They also provide users with easy access to company data, systems and email from their desktops.

Because intranets are secure and easily accessible via the Internet, they enable staff to do work from any location simply by using a web browser. This can help small businesses to be flexible and control office overheads by allowing employees to work from almost any location, including their home and customer sites.

Other types of intranet are available that merge the regular features of intranets with those often found in software such as Microsoft Office. These are known as Web Offices. Creating a Web Office will allow you to organise and manage information and share calendars using a familiar web browser function, which is accessible from anywhere in the world.

Types of content found on intranets:

• Administrative: calendars, emergency procedures, meeting room bookings, procedure manuals and membership of internal committees and groups
• Corporate: business plans, client/customer lists, document templates, branding guidelines, mission statement, press coverage and staff newsletters
• Financial: annual reports and organisational performance
• IT: virus alerts, tips on dealing with problems with hardware, software and networks, policies on corporate use of email and Internet access and a list of online training courses and support
• Marketing: competitive intelligence, with links to competitor websites, corporate brochures, latest marketing initiatives, press releases, presentations
• Human resources: appraisal procedures and schedules, employee policies, expenses forms and annual leave requests, staff discount schemes, new vacancies
• Individual projects: current project details, team contact information, project management information, project documents, time and expense reporting
• External information resources: route planning and mapping sites, industry organisations, research sites and search engines

Benefits of an intranet

Your business' efficiency can be improved by using your intranet for:

• publishing: delivering information and business news as directories and web documents
• document management: viewing, printing and working collaboratively on office documents such as spreadsheets
• training: accessing and delivering various types of e-learning to the user's desktop
• workflow: automating a range of administrative processes
• front-end to corporate systems: providing a common interface to corporate databases and business information systems
• email: integrating intranet content with email services so that information can be distributed effectively

The main benefits of an intranet are:

• better internal communications: corporate information can be stored centrally and accessed at any time
• sharing of resources and best practice: a virtual community can be created to facilitate information sharing and collaborative working
• improved customer service: better access to accurate and consistent information by your staff leads to enhanced levels of customer service
• reduction in paperwork: forms can be accessed and completed on the desktop, and then forwarded as appropriate for approval, without ever having to be printed out, and with the benefit of an audit trail

Whether your company has 20 employees or 20,000, we will work with you to solve your critical collaboration challenges. By developing an understanding of your business, we help you plan ahead to limit long-term expansion costs. Your custom intranet solution will scale as your company adds users and content; so, it can grow with you as your business expands.

We will help you achieve efficiency, productivity and ultimately higher profitability - without hassles, time delays or excessive costs.