An Enterprise intranet must be a central hub of information and communication. It should include a clear information hierarchy and advanced smart search functions to help employees quickly find what they need.
It should also connect and store data with corporate enterprise systems, allowing for connected workflows. Plus, it should facilitate professional development by providing a single platform for training materials, a dynamic news feed, and employee recognition and rewards.
Collaboration
One of the main purposes of an enterprise intranet is to improve collaboration. A well-implemented intranet will facilitate this, allowing teams to work together seamlessly, regardless of location or time zone. It will also increase productivity by enabling team members to share information and resources easily, and by providing access to tools that help employees communicate, learn, and innovate together.
A robust enterprise intranet will have a variety of collaboration tools, including forums for discussion and announcements. It will also include document management features and integrations with other common systems, such as email and project management software. In addition, it will have an employee recognition feature to help companies build a sense of community among their staff.
When choosing an intranet solution, you should consult with internal stakeholders to understand what their goals are for the platform. This will help you choose the right tools and features for your company’s specific needs. It will also allow you to better predict your company’s future growth.
The best intranet solutions will be able to integrate with popular collaboration and communication tools, such as Google Docs. This way, you can streamline your workflow by using the same tool for both project planning and internal communications. In addition, it will provide an easy-to-use interface and support for mobile devices. The software is designed to boost productivity across teams, allowing users to collaborate on projects in real-time.
Content Management
An intranet is a private network that uses web programming languages like HTML to display information on employee’s computers, tablets, and mobile devices. It also provides seamless integration with other digital tools that employees use daily.
A good content management system helps to organize and manage content within the enterprise intranet. This includes document management and collaboration tools, as well as features for archiving and deleting documents. It can also help to categorize content by personas. This will ensure that the right content is delivered to the right people.
In addition to these content management features, it is important for the platform to provide a visually-stimulating user experience that encourages engagement. This can be accomplished through the use of photographs, videos, graphs, slides, and other forms of engaging content. Using these types of visual content will make it easier for employees to find and absorb information quickly and effectively.
Another essential feature is the ability to create a variety of content templates for employees to follow when producing content. This will help to ensure that the content is consistent and that it adheres to the company’s communication guidelines. Additionally, it will reduce the likelihood of inadvertently posting offensive content. The system should also include a mechanism for reporting inappropriate content and an option to delete it.
Security
As more businesses rely on remote working, they must ensure the security of their intranet systems. They store critical data and tools within the platform that must be protected from hackers, cyberattacks, and data breaches. This is especially true for businesses in regulated industries.
A secure intranet includes a firewall that protects the network from outside attacks and encrypts data while it is at rest or in transit. Multi-factor authentication and information audit trails also help prevent data leaks. It’s also important to consider omnichannel solutions that connect user profiles, replies, and history across communication channels for a comprehensive view of the individual with channel-specific context.
Educating employees on best practices is also an effective way to increase intranet security. For example, the IT team can encourage remote employees to use their company-owned laptops or mobile devices for intranet access rather than personal ones. They can also ask them to use a virtual private network (VPN) when connecting to the intranet and require them to install anti-malware software on their devices.
It is also crucial to educate employees on how to spot malicious links in emails and instant messaging. For instance, they should be instructed to never respond to messages that request confidential client information or other sensitive data unless they can verify the sender’s identity. In addition, they should not save logins on their devices and must always clear the browser cookies when leaving a session.
Integrations
For enterprise businesses, the best intranet portals provide a single source of truth that seamlessly integrates with the digital workplace tools employees use. When choosing an intranet system, look for a vendor that offers single sign-on integrations with your business’s email servers, document management apps, instant messaging platforms, and calendar systems. This enables the platform to act as the hub that ties all of these systems together and eliminates the need for employees to bounce back and forth between different applications, which reduces productivity.
An intranet should also include collaboration tools that allow employees to work on documents simultaneously from anywhere. This may include features like tagging colleagues to alert them to specific files, sharing content and resending it to those who haven’t seen it, or creating topic-based information wikis within the portal. Some systems also allow for more advanced document versioning and editing functionality.
Intranets should also feature an internal communications tool that allows admins to send out notifications across multiple channels and segments to ensure all employees see critical news and updates. The intranet should also have a dynamic and interactive employee directory that enables employees to search for colleagues by name, department, or special skill set. These types of search capabilities are especially helpful in large organizations and can be augmented with click-through options to launch direct conversations.