Intranet applications can bring a new lease of life to your business. That's a bold statement we know, but imagine how some of the data in your organisation could be better distributed, and how current processes cause bottlenecks in your working environment. We're not saying that intranet applications will solve every problem process you have, but speeding up business transactions will, without doubt, save you money...

Imagine this scenario. Your head office in London has documents that you need to access from Manchester. Your current processes lead to you calling or emailing a colleague in London and asking them to fax or email the necessary documents to you. This might sound easy, but you have used 2 employees time to achieve this, and you've had to wait 10 minutes while your colleague searches for the document, and emails it to you...that's if they are even at their desk. And what if you are not in Manchester, but are in New York or Sydney? The time difference would make this a very slow process and could even lose you a deal!

Alternatively, it is far more efficient to have documents stored and accessible from your global company intranet. A global document or data store is by far a quicker solution. A little searching through a well organised intranet could save you many man hours a year, therefore saving you money, and perhaps clinching you that lucrative deal over your competitors.

This is not limited to employees who work outside the office. Intranets have great benefits within your local business environment also. The sharing of documents, procedures, news, events, calendars, diaries and ideas is invaluable to your business.

Intranets for the professional edge

You can use your intranet for your customers also. Securely allowing outside business contacts to view appropriate data gives your business a professional appearance. For example, your clients can monitor the status of purchases they've made from you. Although this does not replace your need for direct contact with your customers, everyday tasks can be automated to allow you to reallocate resources to more profitable tasks. Intranets can be simply 'member areas' of your main web presence also, so you can build one solution that allows restricted access to the people within your business, and share selected elements of that data with the general public.

Typical uses of intranets