• Strategies

The Internet is your company’s window to the world. And your corporate website, its public face. But your company has a private face as well—its intranet.

Both the Internet and the intranet use the same types of hardware and software, but they are used for two very different purposes. The general belief is that a company’s intranet should be built for speed and send out a casual vibe, not a glamorous one. But this approach is definitely a no-no.

While bringing on the bling might be taking it too far, the truth is a sexy, well-designed intranet can do wonders for your company. It’d actually go a long way in encouraging your employees to use this great corporate tool. An intranet that looks unexciting isn’t likely to invite hits. And that defeats the purpose an intranet is built to serve.

But what purpose does it serve, anyway? An intranet provides employees with secure, convenient access to shared company information and boosts inter-departmental interactions. As a result, it improves a company’s effectiveness in managing its information and streamlining document distribution.

Reasons to spruce up your intranet
* A badly designed intranet will quickly become redundant. It may convey the impression that the organization doesn’t care for the site.
* A well-designed intranet, on the other hand, would say here is an organization that’s devoted time, money and professionalism to develop a site that is high on value. An intranet that only talks about company rules and regulations and has links to your pay slip is likely to be visited only once a month. So, make sure the content on your intranet is compelling enough to draw a stream of hits.
* Intranet technology is constantly evolving and improving, as is clear by the current spread of SharePoint and wiki-based intranets. You need to incorporate new tools that offer greater capabilities and new approaches to benefit the company.

It pays to be linked in
* Include links to various departments within the company, such as human resources (for benefits and job openings), and to other departments that would like to publish their own documents.
* Ensure that all the information on the intranet is reliable and kept up-to-date. Otherwise, you can expect your employees to lose trust in the intranet and access it less and less.
* Give it a well-defined identity of its own—a brand of sorts. While this should ideally be derived from your corporate identity, it can be distinct from it. For instance, you could have a name for your intranet. The TCS intranet, for example, is called Ultimatix.
* Push the envelope to offer more utility values. TCS’s Ultimatix lets employees who are looking for a roommate or a house to rent post their requirements and vacancies. In such ways, the intranet has the potential to become indispensable for your employees.

So, a sexy intranet isn’t one that just looks stunning—it’s also one that offers real value and, in the end, helps builds confidence in the company. When this is done well, it can boost morale, enhance communication, increase efficiency, develop a greater sense of corporate culture and community, and provide an extremely effective and secure way to distribute relevant information. That’s sexy, right?

©Entrepreneur May 2010

Tags:
internet, intranet, website