Intranets

Some of the major differences between intranets and other online solutions are that the audience is more controllable, and the access is more restricted than with Internet sites. Intranets are used habitually, day after day, inside a company, living exclusively on its internal network. Intranets use the same types of technologies as Internet sites, but they operate solely to aid employees to be more effective at their jobs and to disseminate internal messages and coordination. In this aspect, they may facilitate (in the long term) substantial corporate reorganization as they both simplify the access to shared information and speed-up its availability and timeliness.

Basically, all of a company's internal functions can be streamlined by building solutions with Internet-based technologies and integrating them into the culture and workflow of that company. This category holds the most promise for modular solutions that target specific recurring needs or activities of specific departments. There are also several pre-built intranet solutions available on the market that can be easily installed, customized, and launched to serve many of a company's needs.

Many companies approach the development of their intranet as an extension of their corporate organization and structure. Though well-meaning, they often duplicate the same inherent problems within their company -- especially with internal communications and the coordination of services between departments -- onto their intranet, thereby not taking full advantage of the opportunities for intranets to change the nature of their work.

Some of the features of intranets include:

• Employee Info/Publishing
• Employee Feedback and Polling
• Employee Learning
• Employee Training, Help desk Functions, and New Employee Orientation
• Company Policies and Benefits
• Human Resources Functions
• Employee Expense Tracking Systems
• Internal Messaging and Communications
• Employee, Facility, and Partner Directories
• Company Newsletters and Communiques
• Calendar Publishing and Synchronization
• Travel Management Systems
• Knowledge Management (Capturing and Sharing)
• Reporting Systems
• Security
• Corporate Identity Guidelines Sub-site
• Network Usage and Status Visualization
• Measurement & Reporting
• Automated Internal Communications Systems

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