A business, team, or enterprise needs an app to organize the workload and manage employee data communication. Apps that provide these features and are useful for streamlining the workload are called intranets. An intranet is an internal communications and collaboration platform used by companies and enterprises of all sizes and industries. An intranet is a method of sharing information, communicating, and collaborating effectively with trusted partners. If you are curious about the benefits of an intranet that will increase the efficiency and therefore the profitability of your enterprise, read on!

In this article, we will explore what an intranet is and examine its best practices!

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TL; DR

  • Intranet apps are tools that businesses, enterprises, and organizations use to share data, strengthen communication, and manage knowledge.
  • Intranets offer key features such as secure information sharing, clear communication, updates, news, and announcement sharing.
  • With intranets, you can communicate effectively with your enterprise members and streamline all workflows.
  • Since intranet apps also work as document and data storage tools, they allow employees to quickly find any data.
  • If you are looking for a more flexible and effective knowledge management tool than intranets, ZenoChat is designed for you with features that enable you to complete your knowledge management tasks with AI-powered assistance.

What is an Intranet?

An intranet is a private network used by organizations to share data, communicate, and manage tasks. An intranet acts as a company's digital headquarters to keep employees informed, so each employee can easily access the data they are seeking. An intranet can also be utilized to keep different teams in an organization connected.

What is an Intranet?

Key Features of Intranets

Intranets both keep teams in touch and facilitate knowledge sharing among employees. Key features of an intranet include:

  • Safely and securely share information
  • Clear communication between leaders and employees
  • Keep different teams up to date by sharing knowledge
  • Enable organizations to store important data such as guidelines, policies, and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)
  • Enable employees to quickly access the data they are looking for

Advantages of Intranets

By upgrading enterprises with an intranet, it is possible to both streamline the workflow and increase employee productivity. Effective intranet usage is crucial for enterprises as it helps them leverage their knowledge management and sharing between employees and leaders. Some of the key advantages of intranets are:

  • Improved Communication: Intranets provide effective communication about news, updates, and announcements between organizations, teams, employees, and managers.
  • Collaboration: Intranets allow employees to share data such as shared calendars, document sharing, task road maps, and work together.
  • Boost Productivity: Intranet tools provide a common storage area for information and resources, allowing employees to access data quickly and complete tasks faster.
  • Enhanced Security: Intranet tools allow administrators to set access permissions for sensitive data, keeping data safe.
  • Scalability: Intranets can be made more useful by evolving with new data, users, content, and features.

Intranet Use Cases

An intranet is a versatile and powerful tool that can change the way an organization operates. Intranets can help with communication, knowledge management, information sharing, task tracking, data recall, collaboration, remote work, and organizing workflow. Here are some popular use cases of intranets:

  • Internal Communication: Intranets allow the sharing of news, announcements, and updates among members of the organization.
  • Employee Library: Intranets provide a library function where employees can find the data they are looking for. According to studies, an employee spends an average of 18 minutes looking for one file, with intranets, you can reduce the time it takes for employees to find files to a few seconds.
  • Document Storage: You can upload documents related to the organization's tasks to intranets and share important documents with employees.
  • Collaboration: Intranets help teams working in different aspects of the organization manage their common tasks.
  • Training: Thanks to intranets, you can provide online courses to your employees and develop their skills.

Intranet Best Practices

If you want to implement an intranet in your enterprise but aren't sure how to use it, we've got you covered. Let's take a closer look at best practices of intranets for enterprises, businesses, organizations, and teams.

Effective Communication

The biggest benefit of implementing an intranet in your enterprise is that it provides effective communication. Unlike email and chat apps, intranets allow you to share updates, announcements, and news with all members of your enterprise in a professional way. Especially if you have remote or hybrid employees in your enterprise, intranets are an effective and organized way to communicate with them.

Intranet Effective Communication

When used correctly, an intranet allows all members and teams in your company to work collaboratively and complete tasks autonomously. In this way, you can both increase overall productivity and boost individual employee performance. According to worldmetrics 2024 report, 57% of employees report not being given clear directions and 75% of employees are dissatisfied with their company's communication. To prevent this issue, you can integrate intranets into your company and overcome the inefficiency caused by lack of communication by ensuring that employees follow and know what to do.

Instant Information 

You can use intranets to upload documents related to tasks and allow all employees to access these documents. This way, an employee can access the information they are looking for with just a few clicks and continue with their task without losing focus.

Intranet Information Access

An employee may distract both themselves and their colleagues to find the data they are looking for, which can lead to a decrease in overall productivity. According to research, people interrupting at least 2 people to find what they need up to 5 times a day, leads to decreased productivity by making it harder for employees to focus. With an intranet, you can allow employees to access the information they are looking for without interrupting other employees.

While intranet apps are useful for finding data, they are not functional for acquiring relevant information from longer queries. While you can learn information as it is with intranets, you cannot create new information after analyzing the data. If you want to enhance your data processing and information recall process, AI-powered knowledge management tools like ZenoChat’s Knowledge Bases are designed for you.

ZenoChat by TextCortex: Smarter way to manage your company knowledge than an intranet

ZenoChat offers an improved intranet experience thanks to its “Knowledge Bases” feature. With ZenoChat’s knowledge bases, you can create a workspace where you can upload and manage all your enterprise data safely and securely. Unlike traditional intranets, ZenoChat offers interactive and customizable knowledge management experience for enterprises.

While traditional intranet apps just provide raw data to their users, ZenoChat can also analyze their questions or queries and generate responses with insights using the data in the company knowledge. For example, while you can access the data of a weekly task list with traditional intranet apps, with ZenoChat you can access the number, type and content of tasks and create summaries about each, which leads to employees utilizing ZenoChat more flexibly and versatilely.

ZenoChat's Knowledge Bases feature allows its users to upload or connect their internal data. With our knowledge base integrations, you can import your existing data sources such as Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Notion into ZenoChat with just a few clicks and streamline your data upload process in continuous sync.

See the results from one of our case studies:

  • TextCortex was implemented for Kemény Boehme Consultants as a solution to tackle these challenges and today employees report increased efficiency and productivity (saving 3 work days per month per employee on average).
  • AICX, an ecosystem partner of TextCortex, was integral to the onboarding and helped achieve a 70% activation rate of the team within the first weeks.
  • Employee confidence in using and working with AI increased by 60%.‍

The implementation results in a 28x return on investment (ROI).

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Click here to try ZenoChat and see the difference it makes in communication and knowledge management!