How to Prepare Your Business for Intranet Deployment (In 3 Steps)

Intranets are fast becoming the lifeblood of every major brand.

They bring workforces together on a micro and macro scale, acting as the central information and collaboration hub for the entire business.

In a typical Intranet setup, staff members can share ideas, communicate privately, arrange events, collaborate over documents, engage casually with the rest of the company, and much more.

But how should an intranet-less brand prepare for the deployment for their very first intranet? Here are some useful insights.

1. Define Your Goals

The number one aim of a corporate intranet is to boost engagement and efficiency among staff members.

But along the way to that goal, an intranet can bring many more benefits to the table.

The modern enterprise is constantly looking for ways to streamline the working life of their workforce, and so, before an Intranet is deployed, the strategy behind that goal needs to be honed.

Some goals which can act as stepping stones toward the final objective may include:

• Increasing engagement among workers.

• Increasing user generated content.

• reducing emails.

• reducing meetings.

• Improved organization.

• Improved collaboration.

Identifying the most relevant goals is the best first step a brand can take when approaching an intranet solution, whether they lie in the list above, or whether they surpass that list.

Those goals need to be identified so that the brand can begin searching for an Intranet platform that can provide the features needed to reach them.

Which brings me to my next point.

2. Choose the Right Technology

A brand’s goals and objectives may be achievable, but that doesn’t mean that just any intranet platform can achieve them.

With clients such as Hyundai, The Fred Hollows Foundation, Raine & Horne & Taking Shape, elcomCMS’ mobile-friendly Intranet solution is one worth considering.

The enterprise-grade platform boasts a wide range of built-in features right out of the box. Those features include; powerful workflow & forms, team workspace, blogs, polls, enterprise search, asset management and version control.

More functionality can be added via optional modules such as; calendar, events, social, corporate directory, task manager, and more.

Integrated social features also help to round off a user experience which grasps and maintains the attention of workers.

Social feeds, like the ones found on Facebook and Twitter, help to keep everybody up to date on the latest news and ideas floating around the company. Meanwhile, features like; blogging, discussion forums, social Q&A, hash-tagging and @tagging, all promote engagement in a way which is familiar, professional, and yet casual.

Third-party tools like Microsoft Office, SharePoint, and HP Trim can be integrated with too, in order to keep existing documents in check, and also to cause minimal disruption upon deployment.

3. Prepare Your Workforce

Finally, it’s highly recommended to prepare your workforce for the arrival of their brand spanking new intranet.

Provide them with the platform’s instructional material, webinars, blog posts and marketing content, in order to get everybody familiar with the features they’re about to tinker with.

This will help to ease the learning curve upon the deployment of the intranet.

As far as real life examples go, elcomCMS has aided a number of high-flying brands and organizations to identify their goals and prepare for an intranet deployment. Here are two case studies detailing the Hyundai website & intranet project, and the Taking Shape retail intranet project.

Be sure to visit elcomCMS on our CMS Directory for more insight, and stay tuned for more featured coverage throughout the rest of this week.

Further information on how to map your business requirements to your intranet can be found in this article. Also, elcomCMS has recently released a beneficial eBook titled, “8 signs you need a social intranet”. You can download your free copy here.