Intranet

Intranets : A company's private version of the internet

An intranet can perhaps best be understood as "a private version of the Internet," or as a version of the Internet confined to an organisation or company.

What is an intranet good for?

• Workforce productivity: Intranets can help users to locate and view information faster and use applications relevant to their roles and responsibilities.
• Time: With intranets, companies can make more information available to employees on a "pull" basis (ie: employees can link to relevant information at a time which suits them) rather than being deluged indiscriminately by emails.
• Web publishing allows 'cumbersome' corporate knowledge to be maintained and easily accessed throughout the company such as: employee manuals, benefits documents, company policies, business standards, newsfeeds, and even training, can be accessed using common Internet standards (Acrobat files, Flash files, CGI applications). Because each business unit can update the online copy of a document, the most recent version is always available to employees using the intranet.
• Business operations and management: Intranets are also being used as a platform for developing and deploying applications to support business operations and decisions across the internetworked enterprise.
• Cost-effective: Users can view information and data via web-browser rather than maintaining physical documents such as procedure manuals, internal phone list and requisition forms.