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Why Your Small Business
Needs an Intranet
One
thing I like about running a small company is the ability to act quickly.
Decisions are not bogged down by layers of management. In fact, most
moves are made with the interested parties meeting around a conference
table.
But
there can come a point when your business outgrows this arrangement. You
need constant, reliable and secure communications with others in the
company to ensure successful growth. You need an intranet.
An
intranet is similar to a Web site, and it uses Internet protocols, but
it's an internal network exclusive to one company. (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.
I
hear you, "I don't have anywhere near 10,000 employees!" But I
can give you three major reasons why your small business should invest in
one. Here they are:
1.
Communication Suffers When Dealing With More Than One Person
Even
a very small company 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. It's Business 101. Everyone needs to be working toward common
goals.
An
intranet is the perfect place to post weekly reports, memos and goals.
This way, everyone is on the same page.
Toby
Ward, president of the intranet consulting firm Prescient Digital Media,
notes that even a company with few employees benefits from an intranet.
Even if you don't have people working remotely, your sales staffers or
consultants aren't always in the office.
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 five 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 three-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 five
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
Yes,
this is a cliché. But it's too valid not to use here.
An
intranet allows you to post critical information for all employees to
see. Even having human resources information posted is valuable. One of
my employees said workers in his former office once spent 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 save time (and trees) with interactive forms. Vacation requests,
supply orders, changes to benefits and more can be handled quickly and
efficiently.
Make
sure your intranet follows good design principles. You can't just throw
stuff up there and hope people will find it. Organize your intranet to
make it as user-friendly as possible. We're trying to save time here, not
frustrate people.
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."
According
to Ward, 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
three 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?" "Johnson, you gave me the wrong figures. I thought we
fixed that." And so on.
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.
How
To Get Started
Before
you set up an intranet, make sure you understand what you want it to do.
Understand how employees will use it. Finally, adhere to good design
principles. If it takes five or six clicks to find a vacation request
form, it's too complex.
You'll
also have to decide if you want to build your own solution. J4 Systems
can build an intranet to your specifications. It will have the look and
feel and design principles you specify.
There's
Got To Be A Downside, Right?
To
get your intranet ready for employee use, you will need someone to
develop and maintain the content. The idea is to have continually updated
information available. How you delegate those tasks may depend on the
size of your company. If you only have 10 people, one person may be
sufficient to maintain the information.
If
you have a larger company, you'll probably want to separate content
updates among departments. No matter the size, you'll have to budget
maintenance time into an employee's schedule. Remember, we're dealing
with computers — nothing ever runs as smoothly as we would like. Once the
system is up and running and everyone understands it, the return on
investment will be significant.
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