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The time of the traditional intranet is almost over, as more and more organisations are moving to Intranet as a Service. But what is Intranet as a Service? And what are the benefits? In this blog we’ll explain what Intranet as a Service is, what the benefits are and why it’s important to include the intranet in your digital workspace. Find out how Intranet as a Service can help your employees to simplify their work, by integrating the intranet in their digital workspace.
What is Intranet as a Service?
Before we explain what Intranet as a Service is, it is good to know what the difference is between the traditional intranet and Intranet as a Service. Gartner’s definition of the intranet is:
“An intranet is an internal network that uses the same methodology and techniques as the internet but is accessible only to employees.”
The traditional intranet is a platform for employees where they can share information and news. The intranet was mostly used to send top-down information and didn’t involve a lot of interaction. Today’s intranet is about creating interaction between employees and to keep them connected. It’s all about creating a platform that increases employee engagement.
Intranet as a Service is described by Hubfly as:
“It is a cloud-based intranet offering, which involves paying a monthly subscription fee for the service (your company’s Intranet) instead of investing upfront in the resources and manpower required to build an Intranet solution from the ground up.“
With Intranet as a Service, you pay a subscription fee to use intranet software or an infrastructure provided by an external service. Most of the time this is a cloud-based platform.
Choose an intranet solution that keeps evolving
We advise you to choose a solution that’s constantly developing their functionalities and features requested by the customers. That’s when you know that the intranet will keep developing to your needs. Also, check with your employees with which solution they like to collaborate, for example Yammer, SharePoint or Microsoft Teams. You want your employees to do their work in the best way they can. An adaptive workspace will help to achieve this, by enabling you to unite your entire workday in one place, including the intranet.
5 benefits of Intranet as a Service
Intranet as a Service has a few benefits for organisations:
- Intranet as a Service is not expensive
- Reduce maintenance costs
- You have a lot more flexibility
- The environment is secure and safe
- You can use the intranet at any place at any time
Intranet as a Service is not expensive
When your organisation is building its own intranet, it takes a lot of time and will cost a lot of money. When you choose for an Intranet as a Service, you pay a monthly subscription and when you don’t want to make use of the service anymore, you can just easily stop the subscription. According to a telephone interview with Gartner, it appears that a monthly subscription for an intranet is around 2 to 4 dollar per user per month.
Reduce maintenance costs
As you don’t need to build an intranet for your organisation, you don’t have to worry about the maintenance of your intranet. By outsourcing your intranet, the external party is constantly developing it. New and better features are added all the time and the intranet itself keeps getting better, without you having to do anything yourself. This will save your organisation a lot of manpower and maintenance costs.
You have a lot more flexibility
If you want to expand or scale down your intranet licences within your organisation, you can easily do this with Intranet as a Service. You can implement the intranet really fast and you can choose a subscription that suits your organisation. This kind of flexibility is really important, especially for growing companies as you can quickly respond to changes.
The environment is secure and safe
The Intranet as a Service provider will make sure that you have a safe database and takes care of the server. This way you’re not responsible for updates, backups, data breaches and you can use the intranet in a safe way. Of course, this could always depend on the intranet provider you choose.
You can use the intranet at any place at any time
As the Intranet as a Service is cloud-based, your employees have access to their intranet from any device, at any location and at any time. This way, your employees are connected 24/7 and this will boost your digital employee experience.
Why you should include the intranet in your digital workspace
As people were forced to work from home due to the COVID-19 pandemic, more organisations embrace working from home, even after de pandemic. According to a Harvey Nash survey, almost a quarter of the 4.200 respondents say that their workforce will be working from home after COVID-19.
This means that you no longer see your colleagues on a daily basis, which makes the communication between teams a little more complicated. By integrating the intranet in your digital workspace, you can easily share information with all employees, which they can’t ignore in their digital workspace. Within Workspace 365 you can integrate your entire intranet or intranet elements. You can for instance integrate the Birthdays live tile, contacts, Announcements, videos, Yammer, RSS feeds and more!
One central starting point for employees
When you integrate the intranet in your digital workspace, it’s no longer a separate application and your employees can’t miss any information and are immediately connected when they open their digital workspace. This way, your employees only have one platform to open and don’t have to switch between applications.
When you integrate your intranet in the digital workspace, you not only make sure that your employees are more connected with their colleagues and the organisation. But it will increase the adoption of the intranet as well, because the employees see the digital workspace every day and you can push information more easily.
Unite the entire workday in one place
Collaboration and communication with colleagues is part of the workday too, and should therefore not be disconnected. In every organisation people need to collaborate and this should not happen on separate platforms. The platform where your employees communicate, needs to be the platform where they work with project files, documents, information etc. It’s the place where they crowdsource ideas and put those ideas into action. By integrating the intranet in your digital workspace, you simplify work for you employees by uniting everything they need to work in one place.
How to discover if an intranet keeps evolving
It’s important that you choose an intranet that keeps evolving. Your employees need to work with good technology in order to provide the customers with the best products and services and they are learning more and more each day.
It is important that the intranet and the way they communicate with their colleagues, keeps evolving as well. They need to be able to collaborate, share information and communicate in the best way possible. That’s why you need to choose for a digital workspace that integrates the intranet and includes the constant development and improvement of intranet features.
Within Workspace 365 you can integrate your entire existing intranet or integrate intranet elements based on your needs. We keep innovating and adding new features, improvements and updates very frequently. These improvements, features and updates are determined by customers and partners votes. This way, it constantly adapts to the needs of the customer and makes sure that they can do their important work in the best way possible.
