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Intranet and Its Significance in an Organization

Research · June 2015

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.3612.4326

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 INTRANET AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE IN
ORGANISATION.
Presented by; Mohammed Usman, MIM, PGDIM, ADAP, HDLA, HND, DGCA

ABSTRACT
In this modern era, intranet is considered as effective way of information sharing and
maintaining economic resource. Its effective management is viewed as a crucial source of
and competitive advantage for organizations, by enhancing individual employee and core
organizational competencies. Knowledge-based organizations such as universities,
hospitals are prime examples of organizations where access to and the sharing of
knowledge is critical. In the organization, Information Technology (IT) tools are viewed
as a crucial ingredient in the functioning of healthcare services (Haux, 2006; Kankhar,
2006; Pluye et al., 2005; Ammenwerth et al., 2003). Many organizations have embraced
the Intranet with the intent to harness the technology to support Knowledge Management
(KM) initiatives (Oliver & Kandadi, 2006; Spies et al., 2005). Touted as the ‗killer
application‘ for knowledge management (Cohen, 1998), the Intranet is said to have the
potential of enabling organizations to improve communication and collaboration among
employees, thereby increasing productivity and providing significant savings in time and
money. Through the efficient and effective sharing of knowledge, the Intranet can
facilitate the provision of better information sharing among the organization staff.
INTRODUCTION

An intranet is medium of communication in a closed community. Messages from the

intranet is transfered through a gateway, with a firewall along with users authenticated
and encrypted messages, which cannot be viewed by any other person that does not
among the users within the organization.

An intranet is usually described as an internal or restricted access network that is similar

to functionality as the internet, but is only available to an organization internally.

(Oliver & Kandadi, 2006; Spies et al., 2005). Touted as the ‗killer application‘ for
knowledge management (Cohen, 1998), the Intranet is said to have the potential of
enabling organisations to improve communication and collaboration among employees,
thereby increasing productivity and providing significant savings in time and money.

(Haux, 2006; Kankhar, 2006; Pluye et al., 2005; Ammenwerth et al., 2003). Many
organisations have embraced the Intranet with the intent to harness the technology to
support Knowledge Management (KM) initiatives

In addition, the various features of the Intranet were found to enable communication and
collaboration within the organization. The results of the research showed that the Intranet
positively impacted on knowledge sharing by influencing the socialization,
externalization, combination and internalization modes of the ―Nonaka & Takeuchi’s”
(1995) knowledge conversion model.
However, this impact was limited by certain technical and non-technical factors.
Accordingly, the need was demonstrated to enhance the integration of the Intranet with
popular knowledge sharing mediums such as face-to-face conversations. The Intranet
could supplement these mediums by facilitating collegiality over distances, asynchronous
time communication and collaboration, multiple contacts and permanent records. This
was expected to ensure the sustainable usage of the Intranet for knowledge sharing.

CHARACTERISTICS OF INTRANET

After some consideration, here are characteristics of intranet.

1. An open, multi-way communication: Top Down, Bottom Up, Peer-to-Peer
An enterprise has a host of communication channels available, but the intranet is a critical
one. A great intranet must facilitate all communication routes: Top Down, Bottom Up,
peer-to-Peer. There must be a channel to allow senior leaders to communicate key
organisational messages and there must be a way for employees to let your CEO know
what they think! Wherever you can, publish content provider‘s names and, if possible,
have presence awareness facilities so that peer-to-peer communication is maximised.
2. A facilitator of enterprise collaboration

How does your business collaborate? Email and shared network drives are still a default
collaboration tool in many organisations but your intranet is superbly placed to assist.
Through teamsites, knowledge shares, instant messaging, video tools, your intranet can
be the key enabler of enterprise collaboration: great intranets are doing this now.

3. An executor of business transactions

A great intranet is a place of action and should be a part of business processes. Typically,
these business transactions will include HR self-service tools (payslips, pensions,
benefits, time off booking), expenses, travel booking and so on. British Airways has
embraced the idea of the intranet as an executor of business transactions — a great
example of what‘s possible. Bringing these transactions to the intranet are tremendously
valuable.

It brings dedicated, guaranteed traffic which, in turn, enhances your intranets

communication and collaboration efficiencies.

Employees like having all these functions in one dedicated place. It‘s just easier.

4. A tool that positively impacts every job in your company

In short, does your intranet make a difference to employees? If you were to take it away
tomorrow, would people notice / care / cry?

5. A gateway to business knowledge

Where is knowledge in your company? My enterprise knowledge is in my head, on paper

on my desk, on my laptop, on sharedrives and increasingly, in teamsites. But should I
leave, nearly all of this would be lost to my current company. Indeed, even whilst I‘m
still employed, most of my knowledge is not in a place where it can be shared, used,
learnt or redeployed. Intranets are a great place to share knowledge and make this
knowledge work for the organisation.

A great intranet should also allow you to identify the people that have the knowledge you
need. Time spent on developing skills and experiences sections as part of employee
intranet profiles is rarely wasted. We should all know what we each know.

6. A digital reflection of the values of the company

Employees do not need their intranet to be liberally emblazoned with the company
colours to know which company they work for, but a great intranet will be a digital
reflection of the company values. It will embody the company ethos; it should feel the
same as being in an office. A great intranet is in tune with the company way.
7. Serves to build enterprise community

Many companies are recognising the value of internal community building to facilitating
collaboration and innovation, but also in driving employee engagement and connection
with the company they work for. Allowing people to connect by surfacing interests,
skills, experiences and hobbies on a profile page is the first step; the second is to provide
intranet ‗space‘ and company time for that community to thrive.

Community tools could extend beyond the current employee base. Consider community
tools for your company alumni or even prospective employees who are still at University.
Communities could co-exist across intranets, corporate internets and social media sites.

8. Transparent governance, management and strategy

It‘s all well and good having this great intranet, but if no one knows the strategy, who
governs and controls this space and what the rules of engagement are, then there‘s still
clear space for improvement. Be sure to publish the governance structure, your intranet
strategy, the key personnel contact information and all the rules of intranet engagement
on the intranet. Set up an ‗ideas‘ section so employees can contribute to the organic
growth of your intranet.

SIGNIFICANCE OF INTRANET IN ORGANIZATION

The Modern Intranet is changing the way that organisations conduct business, providing
them with operational support, employee profiling, transparency and collaboration
abilities that we have not seen before. As an integral part of how an organisation operates
day to day, the Intranet should essentially serve five purposes or important in
organization: as follows

 Decision Support
 Risk Mitigation
 Innovation
 Learning
 Employee Engagement

Decision Support
Organisational flux, rising competitive pressures and the expanding global reach of many
organisations place a premium on information that helps executives to make the decisions
required to manage a company. New demands for transparency from stakeholders and
regulators magnify the need for better and timelier information.

An intranet cannot just be a tool for those of your employees who have a laptop. A great
intranet has a reach as broad as your employee‘s day-to-day geography:
The Intranet needs to provide two kinds of decision support;

pull support when executives actually go out and look for the information they need in
order to make decisions; and push support where the information is pushed to the
executive by way of creating awareness, or educating or as an early warning status which
requires action.

Pull Support
When people need to make decisions, they need to have access to the latest information,
be able to find the most up to date version of the document, relevant reports etc.
Document management used to be the domain of the individual on his own C-drive (and
prior to that in his filing cabinet), later documents were posted to share drives in whatever
categorisation made most sense to the individual. Gradually project managers started
imposing some structure on the share drive and people began using the shared
information to inform their decision making.

Today‘s business environment has become infinitely more complex and it has become
necessary for people, not only to look for what they need based on how they expect the
information to be categorised, but to be able to actively search using key words on the
Intranet.

It is possible, using the modern Intranet, to enable employees to surface the information
they require to make decisions based on a search functionality as well as individual
profiling. This means that if one employee is profiled as a ―marketer‖ and another as a
―technologist‖, when they search for documents and type in the words ―networking event
February‖ the marketer will get the latest plan for a breakfast she organized for senior
staff members to network with clients, and the techie will get a list of disruptions on the
company network during the month of February.

Push Support
Push support is generally in the forms of RSS feeds which are set up in order to ensure
that the latest relevant information from outside the organisation is reaching the right
executive. This may be economic data, technology development, trends analysis etc.

Push support also includes aggregated information about the company in the form of
regularly updated news portals or progress reports etc.

Knowledge Management is also an important part of decision making. All to often

companies deploy knowledge management tools without thinking about the kinds of
decisions it may support.

Risk Mitigation
In order to be fully equipped to make any decision it is clear that the executives and
employees need to have the correct information at the correct time. Care must be taken
with version control and other document management activities to ensure that this is the
case.
Company Policies are also incredibly important when it comes to risk mitigation and of
course the documentation pertaining to governance must be easily findable and accessible
on the Intranet.

It is also important to build corporate governance into the operational processes on the
Intranet. For example if certain people may not speak on behalf of the organisation, they
should not be able to post on the corporate blog, some employees might need to be
moderated and some actively encouraged to create thought leadership blogs etc.

Risk can also be mitigated by building flags into the Intranet, for example when a senior
engineer resigns, anyone who is working on a project with her is immediately notified
and can proactively co-opt a new resource onto the project. Another example could be
when a supplier has let the company down, that the system alerts the accounts manager
that there may be a delay on delivery to the client.

Innovation
We all know that the pace of change is rapidly increasing and the Intranet is a fabulous
collaboration tool for different employees from different parts of the organisation to
become aware of Innovation projects and participating in innovating into the future.

Well-designed Intranets let the employees attach all the related documentation to the
Innovation project as well as the profiles of the individual participants, so that in future
this data can be interrogated to understand the innovation process or to identify people
will great innovation skills. This is a great knowledge management tool.

Learning
The Intranet can incorporate workflow which enables the employees to identify gaps in
their knowledge and to book themselves on courses. It can provide on-line material and
the succession plan can also be built into the individuals profile as they learn and progress
through the organisation.

Employee Engagement
The Intranet is a fantastic tool for connecting and communicating with employees,
whether it is providing them with interesting content, rewarding them for contributions or
enabling them to see how they are performing or just letting them network and up-skill
each other within professional communities of interest.

CONCLUSION

The ability to profile employees leads to all kinds of opportunities from improving their
search experience, enabling people to find certain skills within the organisation. The days
when an Intranet was a nice to have are gone. The modern Intranet is a critical strategic
and operational tool which no medium to corporate business or public sector organisation
should be without.
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