Scalability is a strategic indicator of business success. Building a web intranet digital workplace is one of the essential conditions for a company’s growth, as well as expanding its staff and market share. An intranet is the network that connects separate employees to each other and unites them into working teams. Intranet is the internal space of a company where it stores sensitive information, instructions, and protocols necessary for work. The intranet is also a specific space for communication between employees.
The main task of a web intranet network is to unite the company’s employees and provide them with technical conditions for interaction at all levels. Other tasks of the intranet include information storage, time management, company culture development, and others.
What is an intranet?
An intranet is a closed network consisting of chat rooms, file storage, and tools for task management. . Most often, the word Intranet refers to a corporate intranet portal created and adapted to the needs of a particular organization. But incorrect. An intranet is a broader concept, it is the internal network environment of a company. While a company intranet portal (corporate portal) is a narrower concept, it is one of the functional parts of an intranet. An intranet portal can be compared to a platform that performs certain functions on its own, but also acts as a gateway and router that connects intranet users to other applications and programs within a closed workspace.
An intranet network can be built according to different architectures depending on the specifics of the company’s work, but it should always be based on four guiding principles: security, convenience, functionality, and accessibility. The need for a corporate portal within an intranet network increases in proportion to the number of employees who use it. It is all about business processes scaling and development: where chats in personal messengers used to be enough, now you need kanban, closed communication channels, and an extensive structure for access to information.
What are the uses of an intranet and why it is important for a company?
An intranet should be an isolated space, a closed workspace, a private segment of the Internet that only you and your employees have access to. The general function of a corporate portal within an intranet is to meet all the company’s challenges in terms of internal interaction between employees. The key performance indicator of the built intranet system is measured this way: if all employees successfully fulfill their tasks by interacting through the corporate portal and other components of the intranet, then the network is working effectively.
A properly built intranet is a complete system. If you share files through a corporate intranet portal but use third-party messengers for work communication and separate time tracking programs for task management, such an intranet system is fragmented. A fragmented system primarily creates risks to information security and significantly slows down business processes within the company.
Let us look at a comprehensive corporate intranet portal using the SmartPoint Intranet product as an example. This is a digital workplace developed by SMART business engineers based on Microsoft products that meet global norms and requirements, unlimited scalability, and the highest level of security. SmartPoint Intranet is based on Microsoft SharePoint intranet, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Azure.
Data protection and security
The corporate intranet portal can be accessed only by company employees, all open sessions are recorded in the system, and information is stored in encrypted form on the cloud. SmartPoint Intranet complies with the policy and high security standards because it is built on the Microsoft 365 platform, which in turn provides protection for all derivative components. Typical vulnerabilities of other intranet portals include hybrid forms of data storage, lack of data encryption, and outdated security protocols.
Combining internal interaction on one platform
Communication takes place in the Microsoft Teams application, which is integrated into the company intranet portal. This allows team members to quickly interact and share files that are organized using Microsoft SharePoint intranet. This includes simultaneous work on files by groups of people. Setting and controlling work tasks, planning, recording individual indicators (number of working hours, vacation days, sick leave) — all this and much more is combined in SmartPoint Intranet. A typical problem with other intranet portal systems is the need to use personal accounts work tasks and the lack of control over different formal processes by managers and HR experts.
Meeting the needs of employees in terms of functionality
Let us emphasize once again: the web intranet system should fully cover the needs of experts without the involvement of third-party applications and programs. SMART business developers can customize and extend the functionality of SmartPoint Intranet so that the company intranet portal meets even your specific needs. The typical problem of other intranet portals is the lack of comprehensive functionality for organizing work.
Separate accesses, cross-device adoption
Managers need to have access to all processes within the organization, while developers or designers need limited functions to cover their needs. Roles in the intranet network should be managed by a narrow circle of people, which delimits the zones of influence and access to information within the company. It is also worth noting that SmartPoint Intranet is designed for a variety of devices: laptops, desktop computers, smartphones, tablets, and hybrid devices. Typical problems of other intranet portals: a limited hierarchy of access to data; logging into the system is possible only from certain devices or MAC addresses.
What are the components of an Intranet portal?
We propose to consider the components of a corporate intranet portal using the example of the SmartPoint Intranet product by SMART business engineers. Firstly, the components of this intranet portal meet the universal needs of the most complex software and product companies. And secondly, SMART business developers can always expand the list of company intranet portal components at your request. SmartPoint Intranet gets regular updates, so you can be sure that your corporate portal will match the newest standards on the market.
Personal employee account
Each employee receives a profile on the corporate intranet portal. Through this profile, a person can mark his or her activities in accordance with the tasks set. The system of personal profiles is also very convenient when checking the number of working hours, days off, and vacation days or applying for sick days.
In addition, each employee has access to a salary sheet in their personal profile on the intranet portal. And, of course, personal profiles provide the ability to use the built-in search of the company’s knowledge base. The great thing is that managers can open or close certain sections of the knowledge base for employees, thus managing their involvement in corporate intellectual property and developing company culture.
Services, including a built-in task manager
Work requests and orders for information or assistance from other departments and even specific experts—these functions are implemented in the service part of the intranet portal. The characteristics of the company intranet portal are flexibly configured according to your needs. Control of tasks and requests, change of statuses, automatic redirection to other departments and structures—there are a lot of ready-made functional solutions for your company intranet portal with SmartPoint Intranet, so customization is not necessary in most cases.
Video gallery and photo gallery
Galleries for media files in a corporate intranet portal can be easily organized using a folder structure. All portal users will be able to view photos and play videos directly on the intranet portal. There are two possible scenarios here: either the media files will be uploaded to the cloud and stored securely, or you can embed specific videos in your intranet portal via links to YouTube or Vimeo.
Map of offices and other public info sections
You can create pages on the intranet portal to post public information on them. Pages can be organized thematically. A good example of such a page is an interactive map with company office addresses. Of course, it can be any page of your choice, and you can use custom editing tools to create pages. For further servicing of the intranet portal pages, SMART business specialists provide training for your team. This way, you get additional benefits and flexible company intranet portal development tools.
Directory for internal use, including partly available information sections
This is a good solution for developing company culture and improving employee interaction with each other, especially in companies with a large staff. If a newcomer does not know the name, position, or other background information about any of the colleagues, one can easily use the relevant section on the intranet portal and get the necessary information. The search works across all sections of the directory, including files stored on the whole web intranet.
Organizational structure and department hierarchy
Information about the composition of departments and divisions is displayed on the web intranet portal in several different forms. You can see it in folders, graphically with areas of responsibility and associated managers, as well as on customized subordination forms that may be required by your organization. Such transparency guarantees a positive dynamic in the understanding of business processes. It simplifies both top-down and down-top interactions in vertically oriented structures and flexible communication between specialists in matrix organizations.
Calendar with event management
Scheduling meetings within teams should be easy and clear. The interconnected calendar and task manager allow even complex organizations to find simple ways for communication using the intranet portal. This greatly helps in the development of human capital within the work of HR experts. Onboarding processes also benefit from the ability to quickly schedule appointments and synchronize them with the work calendar on the company intranet portal.
News and other internal company content
And once again, we are talking about the development of company culture and business processes through the corporate intranet portal. It is convenient to receive notifications about company events on the intranet portal. You can always set up the sending of newsletters to work emails for additional informing of teams about important events and company news. The structure of the news display depends on the settings of the intranet portal, but in general, it is a simple sorting of news pages by date of release. There is also the option to filter and search by text elements, date, or other parameters.
Integrated Microsoft 365 services
A big advantage of the SmartPoint Intranet portal is the Microsoft 365 products built into the network. These components on the intranet portal enable communication and interaction between employees in Teams, work with Word and Excel documents, conversations via Outlook work email, preparation of both internal and external presentations in PowerPoint, and much more.
The highest level of data security: encryption and cloud storage
And as we explained earlier, the key feature of the SmartPoint Intranet product is that it is a derivative of Microsoft cloud technologies. This allows it to rely on Microsoft security protocols, which are among the most secure in the world. So, it’s all about information security on your company intranet portal.
The engineers of SMART business intranet portal development company have extensive experience in integrating the product and customizing its components into web intranet systems of any complexity. For us, no organization is too large or too complex; we dive deep into business processes and create systems that improve the performance of companies at all distances.
Important features of intranet software
Above, we have listed the components that compose the SmartPoint Intranet portal. However, a web intranet system should not be limited to the current product features that you can get now. The architecture of all intranet components, including the corporate intranet portal, should follow certain system unity concepts. We offer to consider them in more detail.
The portal’s benefits in combination with other web intranet applications
Regardless of the organization’s specifics and needs for extending the intranet through the integration of software applications, all of them must be met. This means that there should be no conflicts between the integrated components, such as the company intranet portal, financial applications, and other elements.
SMART business team developed the multifunctional and cross-platform SmartPoint Intranet productYou can contact us for a consultation, and we will provide you with an agenda for integrating the intranet portal into your closed work network.
Unlimited scalability of processes within the intranet portal
Businesses should not be concerned about the limitations of the software they choose. Using the example of an intranet portal, this element of a closed network should be responsive and adaptable to the organization’s constantly changing needs. Creating new accounts, deactivating old ones, and managing access to specific parts of the intranet—all these should be as easy as posting a photo on a social network. And the right products don’t have any limitations that will be a barrier to your business development.
The SmartPoint Intranet integration is one of the examples worth looking at. You only need to decide once, and you will get all the benefits of a scalable intranet portal without any software restrictions. Customization and development of product components are limited only by your imagination. We are really talking about the size of the need. Starting with the design adaptation of colors to match your brand’s identity and ending with any request to the intranet portal development company SMART business to deepen and develop the SmartPoint Intranet product to match your most delicate business processes.
High availability of intranet components and quick employee training on using them
We should also not forget about people who will use the web intranet for their needs. Developing a company’s culture should not be done by force-feeding technology to experts. After all, not all specialists have high technological competencies to work with software products of the intranet portal. Creators, designers, copywriters, and other representatives of no-code professions should be able to navigate the corporate portal as easily as developers with their huge expertise. Software should be easy to use. Pay great attention to this before deciding to implement a particular element in a web intranet system.
Let’s also mention the training of specialists. No one is interested in onboarding new experts for weeks. That’s why the intranet in general and the intranet portal in particular should be built with the most user-friendly features. If you choose SmartPoint Intranet as your corporate portal, the first iteration of training for employees will be provided by SMART business consultants, but you will be able to follow all the further training steps on your own and in a short time.
Meeting all current and future challenges of the organization
The development and improvement of existing systems should be based on the principles of openness and flexibility. The intranet is your private part of the Internet, and it should grow and change with the organization.
Let’s imagine the following situation: your product IT company has decided to open its IT school as part of the development process. And not just any school, but a complex training platform with a flexible sales system through external sales members. In this case, external sales need access to your intranet with limited roles to interact with the software components. Okay, but the company’s intranet portal should remain completely closed, right? It should also have all the necessary calculation and statistical sections to manage the processes of the IT school as a separate segment of your business. In addition, you need to provide access to the IT school for your employees to develop the company’s culture. But this shouldn’t be the same access that your external students get for money, so we again have a complex structure with lots of nuances…
This whole complicated process is summarized in the phrase “meeting future business challenges”. The company’s business processes can take on completely different forms, but the system itself must be able to accept them. A properly built web intranet is capable of any transformation.
Advantages and disadvantages of an intranet portal
We’ve already talked about the benefits of building a high-quality web intranet, and, using the SmartPoint Intranet product as an example, we’ve analyzed how individual components of an intranet, such as a corporate portal, can improve and speed up business processes. Now we would like once again to briefly review the main advantages of modern intranet solutions and move on to a section on the disadvantages of digital workplaces.
Advantages of an intranet portal
- Communication between colleagues is easier and faster. A user-friendly communication environment creates conditions for interaction between people. It is also very handy when your teams’ members can simply log out of the intranet network after a day’s work and feel relieved that the weight of the world is off their shoulders. This will help specialists recover better and faster, as well as improve their work-life balance.
- Files and private information are stored in a convenient, tamper-proof storage facility. Of course, the level of information protection depends on the intranet portal itself: how it is built, what security protocols are used, whether the developers have cared about the data storage and data transfer nuances, etc. At the same time, this is always a loud discussion when it comes to building a corporate intranet portal. In the SmartPoint Intranet product, SMART business engineers took care of security and data protection from the very beginning. The product is based on Microsoft software modules, so its backing is literally Microsoft security. The chances of hacking and invasion into such a company intranet portal are no greater than in the case of an attack on the servers and web hosts of the US government.
- Development of corporate culture through internal training processes. The intranet portal is the basis for team development. Inside the corporate intranet portal, you can build a human capital management and learning management system (HCM&LMS) that will be the basis for raising the level of the experts involved. When people in an organization can gain new expertise and even migrate to new positions, it increases the company’s operational mobility. And of course, it increases both the overall strength of the organization and the potential of each individual unit.
- Significant reduction in labor organization costs. In addition to integrating the corporate intranet portal itself, SMART business engineers can offer your company ready-made software products to expand your web intranet and deepen its functions. Our extensive experience gives us the right to say that all competent software integration should be considered an internal investment in the company. The results of integration usually exceed the costs: increased loyalty to the company and increased operational efficiency, reduced involvement of project managers and the need for micromanagement, reduced percentage of business trips and physical movements of employees. In addition, the integration of SmartPoint Intranet and other SMART business products often reduces the cost of maintaining the entire web intranet All thanks to the rejection of dozens of external programs and applications that were used to organize work at the previous stages.
Disadvantages of an intranet portal
All the disadvantages listed below relate to the so-called “traditional intranets”, which inherited all the problems associated with the old approach to development. Most of these disadvantages are eliminated by the integration of effective software products into a web intranet digital workplace.
- Difficulty in routing different elements within a large web intranet
- The need for constant involvement of IT staff to maintain and develop various elements of the intranet.
- The need to involve HR and content managers to generate and fill the company’s intranet portal with content.
How to set up an intranet? Is it secure?
We have already noted that the level of web intranet security depends on many factors. If you need consulting assistance in building an intranet network, you can contact SMART business for advice. Our consultants will do their best to answer your request.
Often, companies already have intranets that lack some important elements to improve their performance. And the main task in this case is to integrate and coordinate various software products for their simultaneous and consistent work. And SMART business specialists have extensive experience in such integrations. There are no impossible tasks for us, as we are sure you will be pleased to see.
How to manage (fill with content) the company intranet portal?
Each integration into an intranet system involves not only software development and customization but also the training of specialists on how to interact with it. This is a multi-stage process that requires the involvement of different experts at different stages. To get advisory support in setting up an intranet network and more information about SmartPoint Intranet, you can order a consultation from SMART business experts. We will answer all your questions and predict the improvements from integrating a company intranet portal and other programming elements into your organization’s intranet network.
Frequently asked questions about Intranet
We emphasize that it is impossible to answer all the questions about the intranet in this article. It would be more accurate to say that we are only touching the tip of the iceberg, so any serious discussions should be conducted by SMART business consultants.
What is the difference between internet, intranet, extranet?
All these definitions are based on the same technology, but with a difference in functionality.
- The Internet is a global computer network that is not owned by individual companies, countries, or corporations, but instead is a generalized network for users around the world.
- An intranet is a private piece of the Internet, a miniature version of it, owned by a particular company and having strict access settings.
- An extranet is the same web intranet, but with the ability to connect external team members with limited access to a closed network.
Can an intranet be hacked?
It depends on many factors, and we can say that there are no systems completely protected from hacking. Even if the technical security component is at a higher level, the risk of hacking always exists at the level of social engineering and the human factor.
What is an intranet site?
An intranet site is a part of your web intranet, such as a company intranet portal, that allows communication between employees, team training, and other interactions within your workers.
What is intranet software?
Intranet software is a separate software product, such as the SmartPoint Intranet portal, that can be integrated into an intranet network to strengthen business processes and develop the company from the inside.
