Intranet Design : Why your small business needs an intranet

Your small business needs in intranet for constant, reliable, and secure communications with others to ensure successful growth.

An intranet is similar to a website, and it uses Internet protocols, but it's an internal network exclusive to one business. (An "extranet" also is an internal or private Web site, but access privileges are extended to designated customers, partners, and/or others.)

Most large corporations use intranets. Information distribution is a huge task when you have 10,000 or more employees. Intranets can help cure that headache.

Understanding that a small business doesn't have nearly 10,000 employees, but there are 3 major reasons why your small business should invest in one.

#1 Communication suffers when dealing with more than one person.
Even a very small business has communication issues. Most people find out what's happening while gossiping around the coffee pot. Stories change as they spread, leading to a misinformed and disgruntled staff. If you have telecommuters, off-site workers, employees who travel a lot, or a virtual company, communication issues become even more challenging.

In order for a company to succeed, all players must understand its goals. Neither long-term nor short-term goals should be confined to upper management meetings.

An intranet is the perfect place to post weekly reports, memos, and goals. This way, everyone is on the same page.

Building an intranet can enhance communication through message boards, instant messaging, and moderated chats. How?

Let's take a typical business scenario. The sales staff of 5 has to come up with a presentation to the president on increasing sales in the next fiscal year. Those five people will enter a conference room, eat pizza, drink coffee, and drag it out for hours. The first meeting turns into a 3 hour, stream-of-consciousness brainstorming session. The second meeting starts with a review of the best ideas from the first. The participants hash out why they will or will not work. By the third or fourth meeting, the 5 will come up with some proposals.

Using a discussion board in the days before the meetings can streamline the experience. Ideas can be debated beforehand. Participants come into the sales meeting more focused.

#2 Time is money.
An small business intranet allows you to post critical information for all employees to see. Even having human resources information posted is valuable. Some employees have said workers could spend 45 minutes trying to find out if the day after Thanksgiving was a paid holiday. The personnel manager was gone and no one else knew.

Posting of calendars, company policies and company benefits is a great start. They'll reduce wasted time. But an intranet can be used for more than basic information. The beauty of an intranet is its interactivity.

You can be a green business by saving time ( and trees ) with interactive forms. Vacation requests, supply orders, changes to benefits, and more can be handled quickly and efficiently.

#3 It's better than e-mail.
You may be thinking, "Why doesn't the personnel person just e-mail the form?" Or, "I communicate well with my employees through meetings and postings on the cork board."

E-mailing multiple versions of the same document or presentation leads to confusion and sometimes information overload.

Let's take that same sales group we envisioned earlier. They've decided on 3 major ways they will increase sales. They are now working on a PowerPoint presentation.

Five people collaborating on one PowerPoint file can lead to disastrous results. I can hear the shouting now. Who has the most revised version?

By using an intranet, people can work on a shared file and have a central location for the most recent file.

This will also help save space on your server. It may sound like a tiny thing, but having versions of various files on everybody's computer takes up valuable space.

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Small Business Intranet Design

Computer or not, people know what the Internet is. One of it's many uses is for personal and business websites. The other type of network that is less well known but is becoming more important in the small business world is the intranet, which is a corporate information network design...

Why your small business needs an intranet

Your small business needs in intranet for constant, reliable, and secure communications with others to ensure successful growth. An intranet is similar to a website, and it uses Internet protocols, but it's an internal network exclusive to one business...