What do intranets do

It allows the internal communications team to focus their time, effort, and resources —— and it clears up any confusion among the employee base about where to find the latest news. With interactive blogs , newsfeeds , and a virtual town hall center , you can transform your intranet into the ultimate internal communications channel.

Plus, with social features such as liking, commenting, and rating, you can measure engagement with content and create an ongoing, two-way dialog between employees and the leadership team.

Learn more about how to use your intranet for internal communications planning: Employee Engagement Issues? Closely tied to internal communications is employee engagement. The company intranet can be used for activities like contests, events, polls, and photo galleries. In fact, this can be a great enticement to get employees to come back to the intranet every day. You can create a dedicated place for these activities — like a social center — or treat the whole intranet like your primary engagement vehicle, leveraging engagement features and solutions across several areas.

One of the most common uses of a company intranet is content management. An intranet gives you a place to store and share company documents in an easy-to-use, easy-to-search location. A company intranet also allows you to document knowledge in the form of wiki articles.

What you end up with is a central knowledge base full of company information that can easily be updated, with version control and automatic notifications when content has changed. With the rise of remote work and virtual teams, being able to leverage your intranet as a team collaboration tool is critical. Managing team projects using email and shared drives can be complicated and unnecessarily time-consuming.

Instead, you can create a team room on your company intranet where you can share files, important dates, and progress updates. Learn how your intranet can help you build a teamwork culture: Winning Strategies for Fostering Teamwork in the Workplace. From onboarding to learning and development to recognition and promotion announcements — all employee-focused programs and news can be accessed via the company intranet.

Then weave the same messaging through the online employee handbook and recognition center to ensure consistency at every turn. All of these use cases could be addressed using different tools, each with its own technical requirements and barriers to adoption.

But with a more modern digital workplace platform, you can bring them all together into one digital destination. Like many large organizations, you might already have an intranet. But, ask yourself: what purpose is it serving? Just think about the business value you could realize by making it work a little harder. Learn more about Igloo intranet solutions or book a demo with one of our digital workplace experts to discuss your specific needs. Learn 5 things you can start doing today using the tools you already have.

The pandemic forced organizations to reimagine the workplace. Gluing a global workforce together is no easy feat, and keeping them engaged is key. In other words: it truly measures employee engagement. A social intranet introduces features popularized by famous social networks, meant to improve bottom-up communication. The meaning of intranet is therefore: an internal communications tool that is used between employees. The Internet is the underlying technology that enables an intranets connectivity.

Intranet and internal are usually kept apart to keep the intranet secure. These computers need to have web browser software for example: Safari, Firefox or Internet Explorer. Firewalls are put up as gatekeepers and to provide security. The internet is a globally-connected network of computers and publically accessible by anybody. The intranet is a local or restricted network and only accessible to people within an organization.

Another big difference is that an intranet is a software as a service SaaS that can be bought or licensed by an organization. The internet is not owned by a single person or organization but companies or governments can own certain bits. Even though some SaaS and collaboration tools integrate with other apps, you will still find yourself and your employees logging into ten different platforms before the day has even started.

Isolated platforms create information silos. In the end, you lose all the productivity boosts these solutions were meant to bring. This is where intranet software steps in. Instead, you have a complete system that incorporates all the working parts of your digital workplace — in one central platform.

The intranet is only accessible to people in your organization. An extranet is accessible to people in your organization, and select people outside of it. An extranet is useful if you have resellers; people that are involved more deeply in your organization than customers are. Randstad Sourceright, a recruitment company, used their intranet to connect a global workforce. Trimble Solutions uses theirs to enhance productivity.

ZPG, the organization behind Zoopla and uSwitch, have never had one single source of truth for internal knowledge and communication. Now the organization has one place to access everything. Have a look at our customer success stories for more information. Happeo is a community-powered employee communications platform. The tool combines intranet, enterprise social networking, collaboration and targeted distribution of news into one single platform.

According to Happeo success in today's competitive markets depends on a organization's ability to engage, align and retain talent. Besides that Happeo enables internal communicators, HR and leaders to both distribute news top down, but also leverage the power of a strong employee community to create a high-performing digital culture where employees feel part of a team, feel their voice is heard and can crowd-source knowledge and information. There might be many reasons why an organization uses an intranet.

In essence an intranet is used for productivity. However, in recent years there has been a distinct shift in priorities for enterprise collaboration platforms to move from clunky, text-heavy document management systems, such as in-house built SharePoint intranet solutions, to centralized gateways to the digital workplace and facilitators of the digital employee experience.

Here, we explore the associated features of the modern-day intranet that have seen increased popularity in recent years. The rise of social media has transformed the way we connect and communicate in our personal lives.

Now, it is also playing an increasingly vital role in enterprise communication. Where intranets historically were seen as a means for top-down communication from management to employees, there is now a surge of development in two-way, instantaneous forms of communication.

Common features under this category include:. While historically fears around privacy and data protection saw many enterprises nervous about making corporate systems readily available for employees off work premises, we now appreciate — more than ever — the need to provide ease of access for staff, at a time and in a way that matches their own preferences and way of working.

Failing to provide the flexibility of access for users stands in the way of a truly collaborative culture. Alongside this, remote working and globalization have increased dramatically.

Offering restricted access to systems from a single location is no longer an option. When considering an intranet solution, it is important to consider the ways in which people within your organization work, and ensure that your intranet can serve them effectively.

The enterprise software market has undergone tremendous growth over the last decade. Where once the Microsoft Office suite formed the beginning and end of the business technology stack, we now have a tool or application for every niche task, department or role possible.

In addition, multiple applications requiring different logins and passwords can make for a clumsy and time-consuming digital experience — impacting the ability for employees to work efficiently.

Configuring your intranet as an identity provider and integrating with your other business systems with Outbound Single Sign-on SSO allows employees to choose one, secure password for all their business needs, reducing vulnerability. An intranet in the modern-day workplace, therefore, must work seamlessly within and alongside existing and future business tools and applications — rather than operating as an isolated and closed platform.

For this reason, the most successful intranet platforms are those that include a public API or third-party integrations , allowing that organization to connect seamlessly with other applications and platforms. The process of defining what this looks like falls into your intranet strategy, and will often benefit from specialist support from your chosen partner or a third-party expert. In the commercial world, we are increasingly accustomed to receiving information that is tailored to our preferences, experiences and previous interactions.

The most successful intranets, therefore, are those that are able to personalize the information pushed to each user , using built-in intelligence and usage data to push relevant and timely content. Some of the most popular include extranets and portals, which are often used interchangeably — causing confusion.

We explore fully the difference between intranets, extranets and intranet portals in our previous blog post, but for a quick recap:. As we explore in the previous post, many market-leading intranet solutions now offer these different forms of functionality as standard.