Organizations have been using intranets since the mid-90s. The recent developments have turned traditional intranet into a highly reliable collaboration solution. We are living in the era of the social intranet, an intranet with social, relationship-building features.
It is important to develop strong company relationships. A social intranet has many other benefits to offer. However, let’s start with the basic introduction to this collaboration solution.
Social Intranet Solution
It is a collaboration solution that makes employee communication easy, quick and enjoyable. Depending on your social intranet solution, you may get features like social tagging, document sharing and commenting, instant messaging and so on. In simple terms, a social intranet solution is your private social media channel that connects the entire organization. There are proven benefits of having this type of channel.
Managers have some understandable concerns. Does having a social intranet solution hurt the productivity of employees? However, these concerns are unnecessary as managers can set guidelines and restrictions for this collaboration solution. They can even monitor communication on their social intranet solutions.
When implemented correctly, the following are the four main benefits of using a social intranet.
- This collaboration solution increases collaboration by separating internal and external communication. Employees can use social tags and instant messaging, share large files, and share their thoughts and suggestions.
- Faster collaboration and communication, social tagging and ability to share files increase employee productivity. Everything is faster and better.
- Employees can share their thoughts and ideas. When their voices are heard, their job satisfaction is also increased.
- Social intranet is a powerful communication and collaboration tool that you can control on your own.
Before you reap the benefits of this tool, you have to be aware of the requirements and fundamentals of your social intranet solution. The intranet requirements of an organization depend on factors including organization type, culture, business processes, scope, goals and so on. These requirements fall into the following three fundamental categories:
- Knowledge management
- Line of business applications
- Communication coupled with collaboration
To select the right collaboration solution, start with the fundamentals such as key stakeholders, goals and key intranet functions. After that, examine the more specific needs of each stakeholder and team.
Knowledge Management
People in an organization create a lot of information. It is important to capture, share and manage this knowledge. This is a never-ending process. This process allows the organization to learn from its past and prepare for challenges in the future without repeating past mistakes. Organizational knowledge can have different types and forms. The following are the fundamental content types.
- Guidelines
- Documents and files
- Knowledge base articles
- Processes
- Videos
- Books
- Events
With more information accumulated over your social intranet software, you essentially need a convenient search function. This function allows your employees to search and access information. They can also search profiles of other employees.
Line of Business Applications
Your employees use various web and desktop applications for day to day operations. These applications play an important role in increasing the productivity of your employees. They use these applications for process automation, decision making and data collection. Following are the fundamental application types used in all type of organizations:
- Business intelligence (reporting, data collection, data management, data visualization)
- Human capital management
- IT help desk system
- Integration with third-party applications
- Custom apps for specific requirements
Communication and Collaboration
It is important to ensure smooth communication and collaboration across the organization. There should be quick and easy communication between all stakeholders and teams. Following are the fundamental communication and collaboration requirements:
- Sharing information and posting announcements via blog posts, news articles and internal newsletters
- Commenting on articles and ideas shared by others
- Engagement in discussions on given topics
- Subscribing to relevant RSS feeds
