In 2010 no one questions the value or how essential it is for a company to have a website as a way of doing business. Instead, the question faced by many company directors is: “Do I need an intranet?”

Before one can answer this question, it is useful to define an intranet. An intranet is a private computer network to securely share any part of an organization’s information within that organization, according to Wikipedia.  “Intra” means internal or within, while “inter” means between or among, hence the difference between the Internet, an external site and an intranet, an internal site.

An intranet is similar to a website, as it uses internet protocols. However, it is an internal network exclusive to one company. Intranets use a TCP/IP connection and support Web browsing, just like a typical Internet connection. The difference is that websites served within the Intranet can only be accessed by computers connected through the local network. 

One valuable feature of a small company is the ability to act quickly. Decisions are not bogged down by layers of management. In fact, most moves are made with the interested parties meeting around a conference table. But there may come a point when your business outgrows this arrangement. You need constant, reliable and secure communications with others in the company to ensure successful growth—you need an intranet. 

There are at least three major reasons why your small business should consider investing in an intranet. Here they are: 

1. Communication suffers when dealing with more than one person. 

Even a very small company has communication issues. Most people find out what’s happening while gossiping around the break room. Stories change as they spread, leading to a misinformed and possibly disgruntled staff. If you have telecommuters, off-site workers, employees who travel a lot or a virtual company, communication issues become even more challenging. 

Business 101 principles say that in order for a company to succeed, all players must understand its goals. Neither long-term or short-term goals should be confined to upper management meetings. Everyone needs to be working toward common goals, and an intranet is the perfect place to post weekly reports, memos and goals. This way, everyone is on the same page. 

2. Time is money.

Yes, this is a cliché; but it’s too valid not to use here. An intranet allows you to post critical information for all employees to see. Even having human resources information posted is valuable. How much time do people in your office spend getting answers to simple stuff like trying to find out if the day after Thanksgiving was a paid holiday? Posting of calendars, company policies and company benefits is a great start. These internal postings will reduce wasted time—but an intranet can be used for more than basic information. The beauty of an intranet is its interactivity. You can save time (and trees) with interactive forms. 

3. It’s better than e-mail. 

You may be thinking, “Why doesn’t the personnel person just e-mail the form?” Or, “I communicate well with my employees through meetings and postings on the cork board.” The problem is this: E-mailing multiple versions of the same document or presentation leads to confusion and sometimes information overload. Imagine five people simultaneously trying to collaborate on one PowerPoint file. By using an intranet, people can work on a shared file and have a central location for the most recent file. This will also help save space on your server. Having incongruent versions of various files on everybody’s computer takes up valuable space and leads to wasted time on everyone’s part. 

If you decide to create an intranet for your company, decide how it will be used, whether or not you want to build your own or purchase an off-the-shelf product like Microsoft’s SharePoint, and whether you want to host it or have it hosted for you. 

Before you start creating an intranet, take the time make sure you understand what you want it to do. Understand how employees will use it. Finally, adhere to good design principles. If it takes five or six clicks to find a vacation request form, it’s too complex and employees will be less likely to use it. 

You’ll also have to decide if you want to build your own solution. A consultant can build an intranet to your specifications. It will have the look and feel and design principles you specify. This route will cost you at least $10 and possibly as much as $100 per person per month. There are also commercial software packages such as SharePoint that allow you to customize and design most everything yourself, using standard templates that give you basic intranet right out of the box. 

You will want to also invest in time for employee training on your intranet. For starters, you may have to spend time convincing some old school employees to use the intranet and its shared libraries of company digital content. It is a given that your intranet will impact your company’s digital storage and communication policies. You will need to develop new procedures based on the intranet and then train your staff on how to follow these practices.  However, once the system is up and running and everyone understands how the new system works, the return on investment will be significant.

Small businesses, especially those with Microsoft Windows and office environments that have amassed a large amount of documents, images and other types of files residing haphazardly on network drives, will benefit from SharePoint server. This is particularly true if collaboration is mission critical and if the infrastructure is already Windows-based. For such a business, SharePoint offers granular content management plus a lot of other features making it an expansive collaboration platform. However, SharePoint may be overkill for a small company that does not generate a lot of digital content and does not need robust content collaboration.  

SharePoint can be purchased and hosted on your own network and this is the preferred way to go for large companies with ample IT resources. However, because of the SharePoint’s hefty infrastructure requirements, most small businesses will find it more cost effective to pay for hosting rather than hosting their own SharePoint site. For example, a small business can have a basic SharePoint site hosted for about $50 a month for up to 100 users.  

In May of this year, Microsoft released SharePoint 2010. It has even more capabilities than its predecessor, SharePoint 2007. Some of the most noteworthy features include stronger integration with email and social networking. For example, SharePoint 2010 takes advantages of social networking by providing a new set of community features that allow users to share data as they do on Twitter and Facebook. This new version of SharePoint was designed to provide the Microsoft Office experience, across the Web, desktop, phone and browser.   

There are other commercial intranet options besides SharePoint; other intranet software products available include InfoStreet, IntraSmart and Intranet Suite. Pricing for each option varies, depending on the number of users.

			Phil Deschaine is a sales executive with PTD Technology with over 23 years’ experience in the information technology field. He can be reached by e-mail at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .