7 Things Your Boss Needs to Know About Investing in an Intranet Solution

If you’re an IT manager thinking about how to convince your boss that having an intranet solution makes sense, you’ve come to the right place. Besides making your business more efficient, saving you time and money and streamlining your communications, purchasing a private network that can only be accessed internally and which can help facilitate fast, widespread communication is a no-brainer.

But intranet solutions can cost money and, to be fair, they may take time to get used to and introduce to your users. So is it worth all of the effort? Read on to discover 7 reasons why your business can benefit from having an intranet and your boss needs to know.

1. Save Time, Work Efficiently

You’ve all heard the saying time is money right? Well, intranet solutions save endless amounts of precious time. They offer a solution for your employees to find information when they need it, where they need it. Payroll, invoicing, HR, stock control are just a few of the benefits that an intranet can automate, freeing up staff to be productive in other areas and doing away with the need for endless spreadsheets and so on. Employees can find information easily without the need for shared drives or a variety of software such as Dropbox or email to access required documents.

2. Increased collaboration

In the era of social media, most businesses understand that managing a twitter feed, Facebook and/or Instagram account are necessary marketing tools for communicating with their customers. So why shouldn’t similar tools be offered internally? Collaboration in the form of message boards, forums, employee profiles, and live chat offer useful real-time, fast communication that users can access without the need for email or more formal forms of communication. This is especially useful for businesses that are spread over multiple floors, offices or even continents. Widespread internal communication can be hugely time consuming when information distribution is a huge task. An intranet can resolve that problem by providing a central location to post company-wide communications like weekly reports, memos and corporate goals. This way everyone is up to speed and stays in the loop.

3. Increased efficiency

If you agree with the above, it follows that by building an intranet, employees and bosses alike become more efficient. Not only is it easier to set up and share appointments and information, but as a part of an intranet, employees can communicate better, leading to less confusion following meetings, when everyone has to take notes and remember everything afterwards. Broadcast emails and sending multiple versions of the same document or presentation via email can lead to confusion and information overload. Using your intranet to share documents, PowerPoint presentations, and videos is less intrusive, and it offers one centralized place for sharing information. There’s no need for sending multiple versions of the same document either. An intranet allows employees to work on shared files without confusion about which is the latest version and people overwriting other’s work.

4. Central document management

There’s no getting around it. An intranet solution offers the most centralized, cost effective and accessible digital storage solution out there. It can even reduce costs by reducing paper waste, the need for warehouses, printing costs, and file cabinets.

5. Reduced sign-on

With a proper intranet solution, your staff can save time signing into a variety of different software. If you’re using outlook for email, dropbox for file sharing and something else for arranging meetings, holiday or pay, it can be overwhelming. An intranet can combine access to all of those. An added advantage is that if you have a high turnover of staff, you save time on training as new employees can sign into one intranet and find all that they need in one place. And let’s face it, signing into multiple login pages can be annoying.

6. Your company can grow with an intranet solution

Whether your company is contemplating a merger or acquires offices in another region, an intranet can facilitate an easy transition. It’s not difficult to add more users and assign permissions so even if you begin with a simple intranet, it can evolve as your company does.

7. HR benefits

Intranets can offer the use of electronic forms to streamline HR practices such as vacation requests and payroll. Intranets can even offer you the platform to publish centralized company information such as HR policies, procedures, guidelines, protocols, resources, corporate documents, branding and logos etc…

With so many advantages an intranet solution can bring to your business, it almost becomes redundant to be asking the question of whether an intranet is necessary. The question is more, which one is right for you.

Precurio can offer you the right solution for your business needs, whether you’re a small or medium sized business, Precurio’s 30 day trial offers you the time and space to explore which design and features fit your business needs. Contact us today to access your 30 day trial.