Mar 14, 2018

An intranet is a private and secure website within a company, with the traditional main purpose of sharing company information, computing resources and facilitating internal communication. Since it is a private network, it differs from the internet, which is a public network. It started only as an interlinked local area network but has evolved greatly since its beginnings during the prehistoric years of the internet.

Why need an intranet?

Having an intranet can significantly increase employee productivity because it allows them to have all access to relevant announcements, tools and information to perform their jobs within seconds. It allows for global and cross-department communication and therefore creates stronger relationships between employees. Additionally, employees can easily upload, organise and access information which allows for broad information availability that gives a company a transparent culture. No wonder that many companies heavily invest in such a system and specialists that work with these systems, such as SharePoint.

Read more about our SharePoint course to see how you can make it easier for people to work together.

Future proof

However, to achieve these advantages, it is of upmost importance that the system used is understood by all employees. The willingness of employees to use intranet depends on the user friendliness of it, especially in today’s modern times.

Over the last 20 years, Intranets have seen a switch from a purely local network to a secure network that started to align with HR Systems, Internal Social Networks and Enterprise portals for example. This allowed for employees to use information more efficient and effectively. The first steps were made for Intranet 2.0.

In the fast paced, information abundant, geographically distributed business environment of today, companies need a system that is truly social compatible. Social, workflow and other engagement features, by using Office 365, within an intranet started to develop, making it possible to connect with E-mail, External Social Networks and CRM-systems for example.

Question now rises is whether this can still be called an Intranet, or is the Intranet Dead?

We are excited to join forces with Myriad in hosting our next webinar on "Is the Intranet Dead?" on 20 March.

*This webinar has now run, to watch the replay click here

To Learn more about this topic take a look at our Office 365 and Dynamics 365 courses. If you would prefer to talk to a Learning Solutions Adviser, please contact us.