Whatever your intranet's capabilities are, they are a smart investment for most businesses; nonetheless, the cost will always be one of the primary factors influencing what sort of intranet solution you get, how it will be built, and who builds it. This article highlights the measures you can take to ensure your workplace intranet is cost-effective, as well as essential questions to ask, beginning with why you need one.
What Exactly Do You Want Your Intranet to Accomplish?
What do you want to gain from your intranet? How may having an intranet benefit your organization? What issues would an intranet solve? These are all questions to consider when selecting what your intranet should accomplish and how it should benefit you. You may want your intranet to boost employee engagement, facilitate team communication, centralize documentation, encourage collaboration, and break down organizational silos.
Putting Together an Intranet Plan
Consider the following as part of your strategy:
Your Organizational Goals
Roles & Responsibilities
How will data be organized and accessed?
Branding — Will your intranet be company-branded, or will you be satisfied with an off-the-shelf solution?
Installation and implementation - who will set up the intranet?
Employee involvement - how will you encourage workers to utilize and participate in the new intranet?
Internal training - Will users are trained, and if so, who will provide the training?
Evaluation and analysis entail determining what type of analysis and reporting will be required to monitor its use. Who will be held accountable for this?
Should Our Intranet Be Hosted On-Premises or in the Cloud?
An on-premise intranet strains your servers, and if it is not cloud-hosted or given as a service, you will be responsible for executing software upgrades and updates. This may be costly and time-consuming.
For these reasons, many businesses choose a cloud-hosted intranet delivered by a third party as a monthly service. As a result, as part of the monthly charge, the third-party supplier is also responsible for executing upgrades and updates.
Should We Construct Our Intranet In-House or Outsource It?
Building your intranet in-house has some risks that an external provider does not. If it is not constructed properly, the intranet may function badly, encounter issues, and experience downtime when it cannot be accessed at all.
Outsourcing your intranet to an expert, whether as a one-time or continuing service, will typically result in a sleeker, quicker, more efficient intranet with fewer future concerns. The initial investment may be more than developing in-house, but it is likely to be more cost-effective in the long term.
Should Our Intranet Be Customized or Pre-built?
Customization may be costly, so before you make a decision, consider whether you are overcomplicating things. Do you have unrealistic expectations? Are you including things that you don't actually need? Is your intranet filling up with "nice to haves" as well as "must-haves"? If you still believe you want a customized intranet solution, shop around and provide all of your requirements in a request for quotation.
Updates and Upgrades
You will need to do frequent updates and upgrades to keep your intranet as current as possible. Depending on the software, you may also need to renew licenses. Updates are especially necessary if the intranet interfaces with other platforms to ensure that everything runs as smoothly as possible.
Ongoing Assistance
To perform successfully, your intranet will require regular and continuing upkeep and maintenance. It is entirely up to you whether to do this yourself or hire someone else to do it. If you have outsourced your intranet, your support and maintenance may be included in your deal, just like updates. Outsourcing IT assistance is frequently more cost-effective than using in-house resources.
Encourage Others to Utilize It!
You need people to connect with and enjoy using your new intranet to receive a return on your investment, and you need your intranet to stay current. Depending on the size of your organization, a project manager may be required.
Conclusion
This article explains the benefits of having a workplace intranet, but convincing those in charge of the purse strings that an intranet is a wise investment can be difficult. When making a business case for an intranet, it might be beneficial to look at it from a different angle. Instead of asking if your firm can afford an intranet, explain why it can't afford to have one!
