All you need to know about Intranet : benefits, key features, management

According to a survey from Nielsen Norman Group, employees spend an average of 3 hours a day searching for relevant information to carry out their missions.  

A well-designed digital workspace can be the key to a better productivity for your teams. To find out about the definition of the Intranet, its advantages, its implementation and its management, discover our Jalios guide. 

What is an Intranet ? 

An Intranet is a private internal computer network which access is limited to a group of users like employees of a company. 

To the beginning, the Intranet allowed a company to only centralize information and communicate internally. 

Nowadays, modern platforms are interactive. Indeed, they offer users a space for active collaboration. The modern Intranet has much more extensive features beside its beginning, discovers the modern Intranet main features: 

• Remote file storage and sharing; 
• Recording the working time of employees; 
• The organization of schedules and synchronization of diaries; 
• Project planning and distribution of tasks with the establishment of reminders; 
• Access to emails; 
• The provision of a staff directory and decision support tools; 
• Organizing and holding videoconferences; 
• Private chat; 
• Access to business applications; 
• A corporate social network. 

How Intranet works ? 

This digital and collaborative platform is obviously connected to the Internet. It is accessible from anywhere, thanks to a 4G or Wifi. However, its necessary to have an username and a password to use it. 

Finally, the data and files accessible via the Intranet are stored in a cloud. This information is protected by firewalls and strict security policies to ensure its confidentiality. 

The realm of the Digital Workplace offers a variety of solutions tailored to the specific needs of businesses, both in terms of internal communication (social) and collaboration. Furthermore, each functionality aims to enhance the way employees work and strengthen team efficiency.

Social Intranet for Dynamic and Collaborative Internal Communication

The Social Intranet places emphasis on communication within an organization. It is an internal platform that integrates features to promote company culture, collaboration, and information sharing, while fostering employee engagement and strengthening organizational cohesion.

The Social Intranet allows users to create profiles, publish content, participate in discussions, and share relevant information with colleagues. It facilitates the exchange of ideas, problem-solving, collective decision-making, and knowledge dissemination within the company. With features such as activity feeds, comments, mentions, and discussion groups, the Social Intranet encourages employee engagement, enhances cross-functional collaboration, stimulates company culture, and promotes transparency.

Collaborative Intranet to boost team productivity

The Collaborative Intranet is a variant of the Intranet that focuses on collaboration and cooperation within an organization. It is an internal platform designed to facilitate teamwork, knowledge sharing, and the completion of shared projects.

The Collaborative Intranet provides specific features that foster collaboration, such as task management, shared calendars, project-specific workspaces, discussion forums, instant messaging tools, and real-time document creation and sharing. This collaborative approach enables employees to work together more efficiently, share ideas, develop strategies, and make collective decisions. The Collaborative Intranet also promotes the reuse of knowledge and best practices within the organization, leading to improved productivity and the delivery of high-quality work.

What are the Intranet main features and benefits? 

With the evolution of Digital Workplaces, the Intranet has become a fundamental tool for companies. This platform has indeed serious advantages and features, get an overview of some of them.

Improving the productivity of employees 

A study conducted by Prescient Digital Media reveals that 47% of companies have seen an increase in their productivity after setting up an Intranet. It saves considerable time by centralizing information, facilitating collaboration and thus improving project management. 

Lower business costs thanks to the Digital Workplace 

Employees can more easily work remotely. For the company, this means savings in terms of travel, ancillary services and office space. 

Better engagement and stronger involvement of employees 

The Intranet increases interactions, it will encourage your employees to discuss, share their ideas and give their opinions. This improvment has a positive impact on their sense of belonging, which will increase their motivation and efficiency. Indeed, employees are more involved and valued by their company helps them to be more beaming and seeking to achieve the goals set everytime. 

Improving the brand image of the company 

Effective communication of your values gather employees around a strong corporate culture. Motivated and involved, they are true ambassadors of your company ! 

Better team work 

The Intranet is a particularly effective tool when the teams are not all on the same office. Everyone can move forward on current projects while collaborating with their colleagues, regardless of their time zone or work organization thanks to digital workplace.  

Features to make work life easier for employees  

The Intranet is made up with a lot of features aimed at making the daily lives of employees efficient and simpler. 

The modern Intranet is composed of several features, such as:

• A directory: to reference each employee so that they feel integrated within the company
• An agenda: in order to facilitate the organization of the daily life of your employees with shared and/or private agendas
• A news feed: to allow employees to make their voices heard by offering them the possibility of sharing news with the whole company or of informing about the progress of current projects, surveys, etc
• A chat: in order to create a link between each employee and each team thanks to the instant messaging integrated into the Intranet
• Centralize documents: the Intranet also makes it possible to centralize all the useful information for employees, both corporate documents and documentation for projects, this functionality makes it possible to make each information accessible to all or to a specific team and to store them within a single platform 

As you will have understood, an Intranet is made up of several useful features for the development and productivity of employees. 

Request our Intranet demo !

How to set up an effective Intranet and manage it well? 

According to a Gartner report written in 2020, 90% of Intranet projects are doomed to failure. This colossal figure is explained by poor anticipation of the project and poorly adapted support. To set up an Intranet dedicated to success and ensure proper management of its development, several steps are essential. 

The first step is to precisely define your goals. At the same time, it is essential to think about the needs and expectations of your employees. The proposed tool must make it possible to include all your employees. In addition, it is essential to involve the management and all the teams from the start of your project. This approach makes it easier for your employees to buy in. Once your specifications have been drawn up, you must select the service provider likely to meet your expectations. Its better to go for a recognized expert in Digital Workplace, corporate social network, collaborative Intranet, document management, social learning, content management and corporate portal. Then remember to communicate transparently about this new tool. Here again, it is a question of arousing the interest and enthusiasm of your employees for your Intranet. Its deployment must, moreover, be accompanied by training so that everyone can appropriate the tool and develop their working methods. 

Finally, your Intranet must be managed efficiently. To ensure profitable development for your business, it is essential to regularly assess its effectiveness and make adjustments, if necessary.  

How to measure the KPI of an Intranet? 

To evaluate the effectiveness of your Intranet, you must define key performance indicators such as:

• Employee satisfaction through for example, an opinion survey on its various elements (interface, content, tools, etc.);
• The number of connections;
• The engagement rate, the interventions of your collaborators: for this, divide the number of likes and comments by the number of readers, then multiply by 100. This allows you to define the content and publications that work well;
• The number of content posted. 

Intranet solutions provide you with all of these figures. All you have to do is analyze them to assess the effectiveness of your digital platform.  

To conclude, an Intranet is a collaborative platform whose purpose is to facilitate communication between each department of a company in order to develop a synergy where employees will feel involved and valued. 

Also, the Intranet aim is to simplify the working days of employees by providing them with tools that contribute to productivity. To go further into the challenges of new work modes with Intranet or Digital Workplace, contact us for a request!

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Q&A

What are the differences between an Intranet and a Digital Workplace?

A Digital Workplace is a virtual working environment that gives employees access to all the information, applications, knowledge and people they need to work together effectively. The Intranet is an essential component of the Digital Workplace, which aims to transform how employees work and interact within the organization. The Intranet primarily focuses on internal communication, information management, and collaboration within the company. On the other hand, the Digital Workplace encompasses a range of tools and technologies, including the Intranet and the Extranet. Its goal is to provide a digital work experience by simplifying the usage and access to various business applications.

What are the links between the Intranet and the Extranet?

The Intranet and the Extranet share a common goal of enhancing collaboration and information management within a company. Both provide tools and functionalities for document sharing, communication among organization members, and project collaboration. However, the main difference between the Intranet and the Extranet lies in their accessibility and target audience.

Why is the Intranet useful for the development of a company?

The Intranet is a solution that enables you to foster communication, collaboration, productivity, and knowledge sharing within a company. By facilitating access to information, improving workflow processes, and reinforcing the company culture, the Intranet contributes to the productivity of your employees and the growth of a company through better coordination and utilization of resources.