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ARTICLES | Intranet Marketing

Intranet is using Internet technologies within a company to facilitate communication and access to information. It is basically a corporate information network. As such the effectiveness of the intranet lies in the technologies used, the content delivered and the participation levels of the employees among other things. However, one would arguably agree that it is one thing to build an Intranet and another thing to make people use it effectively to their advantage.

A lot of issues come into picture with the above point of making people use the technologies that are made available to them. On one hand, one has building an able information resource with powerful communication channels that allow just about any employee to access any person or bit of information of his relevance. On the other hand, there's the imminent culture change that has to be brought about to make employees use technology instead of getting 'scared' of it. While the first is the bare essential for a corporate Intranet, the other has to be resolved for a justified use of the medium.

Points to remember:

1. Relevant Information:

The important part of building an Intranet is I making relevant information available to the employees. Here relevant information means that what they are interested in and not necessarily what they ought to. In other words the information that is provided to them should be able to assist them in realizing their job functions. This information could be sales leads information for sales executives, financial projections for accounts staff, objectives of each employee for better and regular review and so on. The idea is to start thinking from the customers' point of view and think of various pieces of information each employee would need to obtain that new customer or retain an existing one. The employees should of course be presented with an option, nay, encouraged to change the look ad feel of their area of interest on the Intranet, not to mention, contribute themselves to the pool of information.

2. Regular Updates:

Information is valuable! Stale information is useless! An Intranet has to provide as fresh information to the employees as possible. The Intranet tells people what is happening in the organization, provides news and information about the various processes being carried out. It is more dynamic and fresh than the external website of the company. Stagnant piece of information on the Intranet can psychologically affect the employee participation, not to mention the obvious decrease in use of the Intranet itself. The company undergoes a lot of changes, so the people and sometimes the culture. The Intranet has to reflect all this and as live as possible. Doing this also helps in inching close to the ultimate objective of an Intranet- to be a way of life for the employees in the work place!

3. Communication:

The Intranet is a powerful means of enabling communication between the top management and the employees of the company. If used in a proper manner this can help strengthen ties between the people at the top with the rest of the company. The overall morale levels also are bound to be affected in a positive way. Communication can be in any form, be it emails signed by the management or short speeches broadcast on the Intranet, to help in the success of the Intranet. Here if possible, information can be customized to the needs of different departments. This serves in getting different people actively interested and involved in the information sharing process.

4. Measuring Success:

Any technology needs to be measured for its success or failure in order to develop it further and put it to better use. Intranet is no exception. The work doesn't stop after the information network is built and ready in the workplace. It remains to be seen how well the Intranet is adopted and used in the company. Many companies use different measures for understanding the success and failure of the effort. The popular amongst them are measuring page hits or measuring the frequency of the use of the Intranet (once daily, constantly connected, sometimes, etc). Another way of understanding the usability is to keep an eye on the areas that receive more attention and also those that don't. While this helps in streamlining the information on the Intranet and making it more 'usable', it also provides a good insight at the needs of the employees, their work habits and efficiency. Of course, the ultimate test of an Intranet is to be able to positively affect the quality of work and output in the company.

5. Culture shift:

To face the truth, technology is scary to some people! For whatever reasons one might cite, the fact remains that not everybody is comfortable in using browsers and posting messages, not to mention maintaining files and schedules as per the computer. As such proper communication with a good amount of training in handling technology, the Intranet in this case is necessary to ensure better and a widespread use of the medium within the organization.