Intranet? What Intranet?

By Author: Dominic Lachance
Total Articles: 2
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If your employees are not familiar with your intranet site, then it is quite possible that it isn't very effective.

What is an intranet?
First of all, let's look at what an intranet is. An intranet is a Web site that can be viewed only by an organization's employees, and not the general public. An Extranet is similarly limited in audience, sometimes limited to an organization and its suppliers or clients.

Okay then, how does it differ from an Internet Web site? From a technology perspective, there is no difference. intranet and Internet sites both use the same media, web programming and server technology. Where they differ is in their respective goals and the resulting design requirements.

Very often an Internet site's goals may be to:

attract and develop new customers
sell products or services
inform the general public
inform shareholders
In sum, an Internet site's main focus should be to support an organization's marketing and communications goals. However, too often an Internet Web site is created because we need a Web site because everyone has one ...
... rather than using it as an effective tool. This is a topic for another discussion.

So how does an intranet differ?
First of all, because the audience is employees instead of potential customers, with an intranet we are not trying to sell anything and we don't need to impress anyone. Instead, the intranet plays primarily a corporate communications role with two main goals:

to keep employees informed of important information that is deemed necessary for them to know
to provide information that employees feel is necessary to know
These two goals may seem to be the same thing but in fact the first goal often represents what management and the webmaster think is important and the second is what individual employees think is important. Quite often intranets follow the first goal only and the structure of the site resembles the organization's organizational chart. The result is that employees may not find information that they are looking for because it isn't there or it isn't presented in a way that they can find it easily. For instance, an employee is looking for a form. Should he look on the Finance page or the Human Resources page?

Common intranet Problems
So we know what an intranet is supposed to do, how do we know whether it is fulfilling its role? Here are few symptoms of an intranet that is not succeeding:

Other information channels are faster: If you can find out information elsewhere faster, there is obviously a problem. For instance, if you can get some one's phone number by consulting a paper directory. Once employees realize that info is too hard to find in your intranet (they will come to this conclusion rather quickly) they will rely on other sources making the intranet a futile exercise.
Intranet information is not up-to-date: Because intranets compete with other information channels, they must be extremely timely. Once employees realize that information on the intranet is not timely and not reliable, they will abandon it. Again, you are then wasting your time maintaining an intranet.
Too many wide distribution list e-mails: If your organization is relying e-mails sent to everyone to inform employees, you are not using your intranet effectively.
Too much reliance on paper: Yes, most offices have more paper than ever before and it's usually hoarded into each employee's cubicle. This is very wasteful.
Document version control problems: Is this the right form? Is this the final version of this report? If this has been said often enough then maybe a more effective use of the intranet would be in order.
Inefficient administrative procedures: Are you reliant on paper for documenting administrative activities? Does your organization have different systems that don't talk to each other? A well-designed Web application on the intranet could automate many paper-based administrative activities and represents a cost-effective way of providing access for all desktops.
These are just some of the problems we have encountered when evaluating the effectiveness of intranet sites.

Documédia and intranets
Documédia has extensive experience in intranet site development. We can ensure that your organization has an effective intranet site that supports your organizational goals and is maintained in a timely and cost-effective manner. We can assist you with designing the site architecture, graphic design, building the site, developing Web applications and even training your staff to maintain the site in-house. >> more information about Documedia Intranet and Web Design services
About the Author As President and Co-Founder of Documédia, Daniel Guay has over 9 years experience in development and training in the field of Web publishing. Daniel specializes in publishing paper documents and digital files into online formats such as Adobe PDF, HTML and XML for use on the Web, intranets and CD-ROM.Daniel is an Adobe Certified Expert in Adobe Acrobat, Adobe FrameMaker and Adobe GoLive.