Productivity, efficiency and savings with Microsoft Intranet

Old truths about intranets

Many people think of intranets as a portal for sharing information with the employees of a company. As an internal website with a number of different functions and a collection of links leading to different types of documents. Or as a digital bulletin board where organization-wide news is published. The intranet is a focal point for information that, for example, a new employee can use to learn more about the business, look at the staff handbook and read about internal processes and policies. This can be both organization-wide and unit-specific information for the business.

One of the challenges has been to get staff to actually use the intranet. Historically, intranets have mainly contained static information, which has not encouraged staff to use them because there has rarely been anything new to find there. In addition, only one person in the IT department has often been responsible for updating the information, which has meant that other parts of the organization have not been involved in keeping the content alive.

The new generation of intranets from Microsoft

The new generation of intranets focuses on participation and interaction and allows all company employees to provide input. Simply put, the intranet is becoming more democratic. In the past, making changes and updating content required IT expertise, and for most people it was too lengthy a process to change anything. Now, with Microsoft's intranet, maintenance responsibilities can be shared across the organization because making changes is not as technically challenging. The content can therefore be more easily kept up to date and relevant.

You can also create reactive content - that is, the intranet knows who you are and presents information that is relevant to you in your role in the company. It can show your last used documents, your tasks for the day, your user profile in the intranet and so on.

Instead of the digital bulletin board used in the past, you can now use completely new types of communication platforms that are integrated with the intranet. Specifically, as an Office 365 user, you can manage communication in Teams, Yammer or a combination of the two.

The intranet toolbox is suddenly much bigger. You have access to tools that didn't exist in older intranets that can now help you automate internal processes. In the past, if you had to make a vacation application, it might have been posted as an Excel file on the intranet. Today, you can use an app on your computer or phone to automate the entire application process and keep the right people informed about what is happening with your application.

Think right when building your Microsoft intranet

An intranet used in the right way adds value to your organization. To realize this value, there are certain things you should consider when building an intranet. When implementing a new system in an organization, it is usually 80 percent technology and 20 percent implementation - it should be the other way around. Technology should not control; the processes must be put first. Think instead - which processes do we have problems with and how can the intranet support them? Not everything will magically resolve itself because you have an intranet.

Don't be too ambitious - an intranet is only as good as its maintenance. If you're going to create an intranet that you then don't have time to do anything with, you might as well not have one at all. Rather do too little than too much at once and instead build up gradually. You can start on a very small scale.

The most important thing is to have a clear vision and strategy. What do you want to achieve with an intranet? Therefore, create a clear framework for how your Microsoft intranet will be used and who is responsible for the different parts. Keep in mind that the responsibility can be spread over a larger number of individuals and completely different types of skills within a company. Since it is now individuals within the business who can add information to the intranet, unlike before when there was a small percentage of employees with IT skills, it should also be people close to the core business who are responsible for the different parts of the intranet. You must also work to create incentives for staff to use the intranet. The goals and objectives must therefore be clearly communicated internally and early in the process, so that everyone understands what you want to achieve and what the individual benefits will be.

Don't worry - we will help you!

We at WeSafe can help you build your Microsoft intranet based on your needs and wishes. We start with workshops where we identify the needs, help you in how to think to create a clear target image. Then we build, technically, the solution for you. In other words, we create the intranet, do the migration and help with the subsequent work.

Increased productivity and efficiency is of course a big part of the benefits of the new generation of intranets, but it's also a question of savings. Traditionally, intranets can be very expensive, but because the step is smaller to adopt Microsoft solutions and not as technically complicated as it has been in the past, it costs less - even though it goes further.