If you're reading this book, you probably know a fair amount about the Internet-what it is and how it works, its scope and its limitations. You may use it extensively in your work or at home, or you may rely on it for business research, interchange with peers, or simply for information or entertainment.
What you really want to know, however, is whether the Internet can be used as a business or organizational tool-and, if so, how to make that happen.
Intranets offer the means to that end, by harnessing the raw power of the Internet and applying it to individual organizational requirements. The real beauty of an intranet is its flexibility. There is no single formula or universal template, meaning that each organization can-and should-define, design, and use the intranet in the manner that best reflects its individual culture and supports its business objectives.
This chapter introduces the intranet concept and illustrates its usefulness.
An intranet is a self-contained, internal network linking multiple users by means of Internet technology. In effect, intranets put a fence around the Internet's limitless territory, establishing controlled-access sectors within which users can communicate freely and interact. Built and managed by companies or organizations (called sponsors), these networks reside on the World Wide Web, enabling cross-platform communications among authorized users in real time.
Intranets as such are not a new idea. In fact, some of the most commonly used Internet applications-such as bulletin boards (BBSs) and commercial access services such as America OnLine (AOL)-are, in effect, large-scale intranets. That is, they link designated groups of users whose access to a given Internet site is determined by password or other user-recognition mechanisms. For example, each AOL subscriber has an individual account for which a password is established to control access. The password system enables users to pick and choose Internet features that interest them, to contract for services on an individual basis, and to engage in a number of Web-based transactions. On the other side of the equation, the system allows commercial service providers to track subscribers' usage and maintain account and billing information.
In contrast to these broad commercial services, the intranets discussed in this book are designed by and for specific user groups. They are smaller, more customized, and more sophisticated in terms of their features than the broader services. In addition, given their usage as an internal communications medium, intranets-not surprisingly-tend to have more elaborate security mechanisms built into their designs.
The basic difference between general-access subscriber services and an organization's own intranet lies in the structure and intended usage. Although the concept is essentially the same, the difference in one sense is that of mass versus class. Broad-based consumer-oriented services tend to offer all things to all people for all reasons, while organization-specific intranets focus on a finite group of people requiring a defined range of capabilities to achieve specific goals.
A common mistake in considering intranets is to think of them as electronic mail. Conceptually, e-mail and intranet applications share some common traits; for example, both offer a private, or captive, forum, and both enable the exchange of messages. However, an intranet is fundamentally different by virtue of its residence on the World Wide Web. As a result, intranets are both more sophisticated and more versatile than the relatively static electronic mail.
In essence, conventional electronic mail uses a central routing system to provide linear, sequential communication between two users. Intranets, on the other hand, function using Internet technology. This means that multiple users can effectively interact in real time, store and search document archives, collaborate on documents, and exchange graphics, audio, and video media. Depending on how an intranet is designed, users can "jump out" of an intranet and onto the "regular" Web for research or other purposes without noticing that they're moving from the intranet to the Internet.
As discussed more fully in Chapter 35, "Creating Real-World Applications," a little discipline on the front end yields significant long-term benefits for any organization considering an intranet. There are numerous examples of major corporations and associations that have made expensive mistakes by racing pell-mell to embrace a technology whose strengths and limitations they do not fully understand.
For example, in one case, the sponsoring organization badly underestimated the resources required to manage its intranet effectively over time. As a result, internal message traffic quickly overcame the sponsor's capacity to respond, and posted content became first chaotic and then stale. As a result, despite much initial fanfare, company users soon reverted to traditional patterns of interaction-telephone, fax, and haphazard hallway meetings.
In another instance, the sponsor-an international trade association-failed to consider extreme variations in users' technological capacity and local connectivity. The result was a state-of-the-art intranet that could be used only by a select few-completely undermining the original goal of democratizing the communications process by enabling equal access.
In still another case, a corporate sponsor wanted an intranet largely for reasons of prestige. The CEO envisioned a showpiece that outsiders would admire, as opposed to a management tool that company insiders would actually use. This extremely hierarchical company traditionally has discouraged interaction among its various business units and staff functions, and, as a result, information is jealously guarded. Once the intranet was introduced, most users saw it as an electronic outlet for disseminating official corporate communications. However, top management was appalled to discover that a few subversive middle managers found ways of using it to collaborate, and quickly reconfigured the site to restrict information exchange.
Each of these examples illustrates a mismatch between technological capability and organizational requirements. At best, disconnects like these mean lost opportunity; at worst, they can result in actual setbacks. Each of these organizations wasted time and money; in some cases, the effort significantly eroded credibility as well.
Perhaps because the underlying technology is new-and in many respects revolutionary-many organizations fail to apply basic analytic disciplines as they consider the pros and cons of intranets. In the most extreme instances, common sense seems to fly out the window, and managers abandon years of training and sound business judgment. While this can be exhilarating in the short term, it doesn't make for productive use of this medium.
A far sounder approach is to consider or evaluate intranets in much the same way as any other major organizational initiative. No successful organization undertakes a new product introduction, a major marketing campaign, or a fundamental shift in business strategy, for example, without a clear understanding of goals, consequences, risks, benefits, and costs. So, too, should you or your company subject an intranet to the same exacting scrutiny. And while the technology may be revolutionary, many of the standard tools of business management should be applied.
Adopting a programmatic approach to establishing an intranet helps the sponsoring organization perform functions such as these:
Such an approach need not be unduly complex or time-consuming. Rather, it simply means that you should look before you leap. Applying common sense and business discipline at the outset greatly improves the likelihood of success in deploying the full power of this medium.
Intranets offer a range of benefits that fall into two broad categories: efficiency and effectiveness. In this context, efficiency means improving the mechanics of information exchange-overcoming logistical obstacles to gather and disseminate necessary information in a timely manner. Effectiveness speaks to the organizational impact of enhanced collaboration and decision-making.
Improvements in efficiency can be readily identified and lend themselves to quantitative measurement. For example, many intranet sponsors report significant savings in out-of-pocket expenses (such as overnight mail, postage, or long-distance telephone charges). Other savings derive from diminished reliance on "produced" documents, such as company manuals, product brochures, or customer relations materials, which can be disseminated electronically rather than printed and mailed.
Hidden in the efficiency equation are savings in staff time. A fully functioning intranet can drastically reduce "phone tag," swapping multiple document drafts, and other time spent in coordinating information-gathering. For example, intranets can greatly expedite the peer-review process for technical research publications by enabling quick distribution and auto-mating the compilation of responses and comments. In many organizations, an intranet centralizes the news clipping function; cutting, pasting, and circulating news articles is now done electronically from a single location, rather than literally at multiple company offices.
The sales force of one company uses its intranet extensively as a customer relations medium. Sales representatives access complementary online product information from clients' offices as they need it rather than carrying multiple slide decks or printed literature. For some of the company's more sophisticated products, the marketing department has established an intranet sector specifically for customers, who use passwords to access the latest in relevant research and development (R&D) and product safety information.
A multinational trade association uses its intranet for, among other things, organizing its complex schedule of meetings. At any given time, this organization is conducting technical symposia, task force meetings, and business conferences-in addition to its quarterly and annual plenary meetings, which usually attract hundreds of participants from around the world.
Each of these meetings has its own attendance list, agenda, briefing materials, venue management, logistical considerations, and expected output. In the past, managing printed materials in support of these meetings required five full-time staffers and cost thousands of dollars per year in reproduction and distribution. All of these materials are now posted to the association's intranet site, organized to correspond to recipients' passwords.
Notification and scheduling of the association's meetings are also handled via the intranet; a central calendar displays all scheduled meetings with the particulars attached so that members can see them all at a glance, see the details as needed, and register online.
Less tangibly-but at least as significantly-intranets can improve the overall effectiveness of the sponsoring organization. Intranets, virtually by definition, encourage the exchange of information across traditional boundaries-both organizational and geographic. Properly managed, such enhanced exchange becomes the springboard for substantive collaboration among previously fragmented sectors of the sponsoring organization. Creative use of an intranet can expedite an organization's evolution from a hierarchical, top-down model to a more nimble, interdisciplinary structure, by promoting coordinated interaction.
One international law firm, for example, uses its intranet to strengthen its environmental practice. The intranet permitted the firm's environmental specialists to exchange-in a secure environment-information about current cases and emerging regulatory and legal trends affecting them and to solicit their colleagues' counsel, quickly and privately. Bringing together practitioners in each of its offices enabled the firm to capitalize on its collective expertise, improving both their attorneys' knowledge and their marketing leverage.
In one specialty chemicals company, the R&D and marketing departments reside in different countries, creating barriers to customer-responsive product development. This company used its intranet to facilitate continuing interchange between the two disciplines, establishing a system that includes regular update meetings online, R&D participation in customer surveys, and routine exchange of departmental news. This system has enabled the company to factor customer requirements and preferences into the product development process at the earliest stages. As a result, customers effectively have input into product R&D-meaning that the company's products are better targeted and better received. At the same time, customers have better access to the company's R&D expertise by means of a sales force that is better informed about new technical developments.
An international public interest organization links together hundreds of chapters via an intranet that members use to keep abreast of regulatory and social trends. Many of these chapters are small, with highly localized agendas and rely primarily on volunteer staff. They lack the resources to monitor global issues, sponsor symposia, or attend conferences. Their intranet offers local chapters access to one another's experiences and strategies and helps them distribute information across the full range of the membership.
All of these cases illustrate potential efficiencies that an intranet can help achieve. At least as important, they point out a critical factor in getting value from an intranet: content. Every successful intranet provides content-information-that users value. Of course, the nature of this content varies considerably, depending on the individual user groups and their priorities. However, a few basic principles apply to any consideration of content, and intranet sponsors and users alike agree that the site's information must include such characteristics as these:
In considering questions of content, it's important to keep in mind that intranets are uniquely user-driven and that user needs and preferences should be factored into the initial site design and engineering. As with any other construction project, it is almost always more efficient to engineer in at the beginning than to retrofit after the fact. Site features and functions that make content relevant, timely, and accessible-and allow for easy updating-should be incorporated into site specifications on the front end.
The key determinant of intranet value is your organization's information needs. As a very general rule, intranets are most useful to organizations that
As this very basic list suggests, the criteria for intranet utility are both objective and subjective, logistical and cultural. At the very least, for an intranet to be meaningful, it must reflect a central focus-most often a common business or organizational objective shared by diverse individuals or groups.
It's important to keep in mind that not every organization needs an intranet. A small company, operating from a single location, for example, may exchange information more than adequately through memos, meetings, or at the water cooler. Such an organization may well use the Internet as a resource for gathering information or intelligence, but probably doesn't need an intranet's added power and efficiency.
By contrast, a company with multiple sales offices or operating divisions in different locations, or a trade association or not-for-profit group with numerous members or chapters, may benefit significantly from implementing its own intranet. Organizations such as these constantly strive to balance managers' needs for information that is comprehensive and timely; they are burdened by logistical challenges arising from multiple time zones, incompatible computer systems, and erratic local phone service.
As a result of these and other barriers, critical decisions may not have the benefit of full collaboration among key participants-or of comprehensive background information, equally available to all decision-makers. There may be gross inconsistencies between chapters or office locations in terms of their ability to disseminate information to members or staff. Similarly, widely dispersed organizations often experience needless headaches in relaying company data (such as sales figures, financial projections, and so on) to headquarters.
At their most powerful, intranets help create and further a common vision among disparate organizational components by empowering the individual. For many organizations, this is in itself a revolutionary concept: achieving collective clout by distributing-not centralizing-power.
Short of this "ultimate" vision for intranet usage, numerous uses may be less ambitious but offer significant benefits. For example, geographic dispersion alone may suggest the value of a central archive of corporate policy materials, a regularly updated analysis of current news or other information, or automated reporting of quarterly financial data, production statistics, or membership lists. Basic uses such as these help save time and aggravation by streamlining routine reporting and assuring ready access to standard information. Although a WAN can serve as such a central depository for files and possibly share e-mail, a WAN doesn't necessarily mean intranet. A WAN doesn't have nearly the full capabilities of an intranet, which, even in a basic design, overshadows a WAN in its ease and efficiency in performing numerous functions.
Intranets are, by definition, user-driven, and their design should
reflect user needs. Therefore, a good way to get started is to
identify those needs within your organization that you hope an
intranet can help you meet. This will help you establish realistic
goals, as well as a focus for your exploration of intranet options.
Chapter 35 discusses these options in greater detail. However,
the following sidebar may be useful in setting broad organizational
goals for intranet applications.
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As suggested earlier, goals for an intranet may be modest or ambitious, highly specific or very broad. Regardless of what the goals may be, what's important is that they be defined-clearly and in advance. As with any other major initiative, the sponsoring organization should ask itself some very basic questions before embarking on establishing an intranet:
At a more specific level, the sponsoring organization needs to define the following criteria as well:
The way in which an organization starts up an intranet initiative can powerfully influence its success or failure. Because a primary goal of most intranets is to encourage and facilitate collaboration across organizational boundaries, it makes sense to start from a collaborative foundation. An intranet project provides a natural opportunity for bringing together a range of relevant disciplines to focus on a single goal, and the finished product almost certainly will be all the better for it.
Impetus for creating an intranet can arise from almost anywhere within an organization: executive row, a regional sales office, a volunteer recruitment center, a research lab, the law department, or the secretarial pool. Regardless of where it begins, like any other broad organizational initiative, constructing an intranet requires leadership, direction, and resources.
In other words, a successful intranet project needs
In addition, so long as leadership and accountability are clear, such a project greatly benefits from a multidisciplinary team approach, which helps assure that the organization as a whole reaps maximum value from its investment. A common mistake is to assign intranet development exclusively to an MIS department. While this choice may make sense on the surface, because of the intranet's technological underpinnings, the results will be disappointing if the technical experts operate in a vacuum.
A better approach is to form a project team that comprises a full range of potential users within the organization so that software engineers have the benefit of user input as they develop the intranet's specifications. One industrial concern used this kind of approach: A division president formed a six-member intranet team under the direct leadership of his vice president of operations. Members included senior representatives of the division's MIS, corporate communications, R&D, environmental affairs, law, and product marketing departments.
Working together over a two-month period, this group developed a detailed work plan for the intranet, including explicit project goals, a user needs assessment, technical specifications, training curriculum, and implementation schedule. Team members called on staff within their own organizations to provide input, conduct surveys, and act as beta testers for a prototype intranet site; the MIS department designated a task group to design the underlying architecture and direct the efforts of a software contractor.
The design of this intranet included not only its technical specifications but also a detailed staffing plan for traffic and content management and for incremental roll-out to expand the site to include the full range of users, in this case, all 350 division employees at five locations. Full roll-out, originally projected over a nine-month period, has occurred faster than anticipated-in part because of the site's popularity with users and the project team's responsiveness to their comments. The original project team remains in place to provide oversight and quality assurance, evaluating new features and functions suggested by users and staying abreast of technological advances.
This division's intranet began with an idea, the designation of a leader to carry it forward, and the creation of a team to make it real. Along the way, success required planning, time, money, and, perhaps most important, a consistent commitment to the project as a business priority. As a result of this division's efforts, its intranet has been adopted as a model for replication throughout the corporation, which within the next 12 months expects to be fully online-well ahead of its competition.
Intranets offer tremendous potential for organizations that understand their potential and apply discipline and resources to achieving it. This potential is best met by defining goals clearly in advance and with the support of a collaborative foundation. This collaboration at the beginning will help avoid building an intranet that is only valuable to a select few employees. Knowing who the users are before laying out plans will ensure that that intranet offers value in the form of content and ease of use among all its users. Although an intranet is never all things to all its users, understanding the strengths and limitations of an intranet's audience will ensure that it offers value to all users at various levels.
At each exciting turn, proceed with caution. Technology can be addictive. Building the Mercedes of intranets is a waste of time and much money if your audience has neither the knowledge base nor the need for such a sophisticated system.
No two intranets are the same, but as intranets and all their potential are unveiled in the coming chapters, keep in mind that successful intranets do share fundamental characteristics. Here are the key determinants of an intranet's success: