An intranet has become a necessity for modern enterprises, enabling seamless digital employee experiences across many locations and devices. A next-generation intranet brings with it a host of benefits for futureproofing your enterprise technology, with the ability to transform digital experiences, boost engagement and collaboration, fuel productivity, and improve the reach of internal communications.
One of the greatest benefits of a next-gen intranet is its ability to completely restructure the way your organization communicates with your employees. Having a wealth of communication tools at their fingertips enables employees to communicate how they want. Email, voice, video, instant messaging and social means users can get the information they need from colleagues faster than ever before.
Armed with a host of powerful communications tools and an array of channels for reaching people, a modern intranet integrates with your wider digital workplace to form a comprehensive center for communication. Internal social networking tools, for example, encourage two-way communication across multiple channels. Social feeds provide quick updates and create a space for open interaction, taking connectivity to the next level.
As a hub for all employee needs, a modern intranet doubles as a place where your people can connect and collaborate with one another. Being able to communicate effectively with co-workers improves collaboration, but a quality intranet can take that further by enabling teams to work on the same document simultaneously or see exactly who has previously made what changes. Better communications, collaboration and storage of documents combine to enable staff to better share with colleagues those practices that work best, helping to reduce knowledge silos and improve productivity.
Removing physical boundaries and limitations to teamwork, features like people directories, enterprise search, social, and integrations with other applications from your digital workplace make collaborating on projects seamless and straightforward. Regardless of location or department, employees can take to your intranet to locate people with specific experience and connect with the expertise they need.
A go-to hub for tools, resources, and information makes it easy for employees to find what they need, when they need it. Optimize routes to applications with apps and tools directories and take advantage of customizable widgets to allows users to pin their most-used tools for streamlined access. By saving your employees' time, intranets save your enterprise money.
Ultimately, intranet software can improve the productivity of all of those that use it by providing them with everything they need in one place and helping to improve their disposition. A quality intranet creates a more efficient business where workers are more productive, loyal, collaborative and communicative, leading to greater efficiencies and profits. Several Unily clients have seen dramatic productivity gains since implementing their intranet platform. Shell, for example, save over $41m annually thanks to the ease of access and functionality of their intranet.
Interactive people directories that are searchable on a number of criteria (name, title, department, specialism) make it quick and straightforward for colleagues to get in touch with each other. Putting a face to a name is easy with in-depth user profiles that let people establish their professional identity complete with skills and experience. Within the platform, org charts provide an at-a-glance view of organizational structure that can synchronize with your IDP or HRIS to ensure consistent identities for your people across the digital workplace.
As with people directories, intranets can make it easier to find any document on a system, through in-depth, yet easy-to-use search functionality. An intranet platform like Unily will also be able to incorporate existing tools and apps, creating a single-pane-of-glass experience and eliminating time spent switching between applications. You can easily control your brand's identity and manage your brand assets from a centralized repository, or brand asset library. Unily’s intranet offers many features that help ensure a consistent brand message. Standardize visual assets and make sure every relevant employee has instant access to the latest versions. Rest easy knowing your brand’s identity is coherent across all channels at all times.
Employees that have a workspace specific to them, can communicate effectively with colleagues, and feel they can input ideas and concerns to management, are more likely to feel valued within an organization. Providing employees with a personalized experience of your company intranet, such as opening their home page with relevant news, updates, apps and documents, while enabling them to generate their own content, is a key driver of engagement. A major concern for many enterprises is how to best create inclusive workplaces. At Unily, we believe a big part of building a more inclusive workplace is investing in the right digital tools, especially as we move to increased flexible working which enables people to work from any location. Digital will continue to rise as a prominent place as to where these conversations will happen.
