It’s not a word that you may hear often but “intranet” remains very important. In fact, for many businesses, it’s one of the most vital tools to move files, store documents, train employees, and more.
Today, the intranet in a business can be filled with tons of great data-driven tools and they can all come together to create the sort of efficient intranet that can help a company thrive.
Know Your Needs
Before exploring the wide range of intranet tools that exist out there, you need to take a moment to really think about all of your company’s requirements, shortcomings, and goals. This is downright crucial when it comes to choosing the right solution and path forward.
So, what should you ask when you are looking to create a company intranet? Firstly, are you mainly looking to enhance collaboration throughout your team? And do you need a centralized location for storing documents? On the other hand, is boosting your employees’ engagement levels something you need to tackle?
Now, here’s an important thing that you need to remember: you and your company should always avoid making wild assumptions, they simply do not help your company and actually prevent making the right choices and moving forward. To that end, you should use available data to locate and then eliminate major problem areas throughout the business.
More questions to consider: what challenges are employees grappling with? What resources are lacking in their current tools? Conducting a straightforward survey can help uncover patterns in user experience challenges.
Examine how the existing tools are being used. Are your teams only relying on a fraction of their potential? Or are particular features being used too much due to them lacking in other areas?
By starting with data, your decisions will be based on facts rather than feelings and assumptions.
Look To Analytics
A quality intranet doesn’t just work well. Instead, it does a whole lot more than that and actually absorbs knowledge. It learns. Today’s intranet tools are built with strong analytics dashboards that provide in-depth and crucial insights into the behavior of users and so much more.
Imagine a scenario when you launch a sophisticated new intranet that comes with all the latest features, only to discover that half of them are not being used correctly. Not only would that be disappointing, it would also hold the entire company back. But analytics are able to provide valuable insights to help and find weak spots that need to be figured out and addressed within the intranet.
The intranet you choose will also be able to figure out which features are more helpful and popular for a company.
Are workers leaning towards the collaboration platform while disregarding the knowledge database? That might be quite confusing to think about but the bottom line is that the intranet system for a company is able to determine and prove what is working well, what is helpful, and what is just useless and unneeded.
What To Avoid
Now, it’s vital that you keep in mind the things that will actually hold you back when you;re purchasing and setting up an intranet for a company.
Firstly, getting enamored by feature-rich tools is simple, but having more features doesn’t always mean you are going to get better results. Concentrate on selecting tools with the functionalities you require, instead of investing in unnecessary features your team is unlikely to use.
No amount of data or high-tech analysis tools can fix a tool that is just straight-up difficult and confusing to use. If people cannot wrap their heads around how to use a tool, it won’t be any help at all. That means that you need to evaluate all tools from an end-user’s point of view. No matter how much data you have, engagement will plummet if the company’s intranet is clunky or hard to use.
If employees are not capable when it comes to ably using the best intranet tools, their productivity will be severely impaired.
Always Improving
One of the greatest advantages of data-driven tools is their ability to promote ongoing enhancement. After your intranet is operational, utilize its analytics features to continuously enhance its performance and appearance.
When it’s working, you should examine usage patterns and gather user opinions every three months. Modify content, adjust layouts, or implement new features based on the insights from the data.
Conclusion
Choosing the right intranet tool is about so much more than just addressing current issues. Instead, it also involves predicting future requirements. Intranet solutions driven by data are transformative as they not only function but also adapt over time.
By providing information on how users behave, the relevance of content, and identifying gaps within the organization, they enable you to create a more intelligent, interconnected work environment.
Keep in mind, your intranet is a dynamic system. Having the correct tools will guarantee that your organization grows simultaneously, allowing you to stay ahead of the curve in a rapidly evolving world.