Publication Date: September 20, 1996

Related articles - 20 Intranet Lessons Gleaned From Major Companies and Corporate America Goes Intranet Shopping

Net Asset: Intranets Have Much To Offer Businesses

By Anita J. Freed

It almost seems too good to be true: a network for distributing information that's fast and easy to set up, easy to use, works across any platform, and is relatively cheap to implement.

Sound a little like the Internet? It should. Intranets are corporate networks that take Internet-related tools and standards—such as Web browsers, search engines and HTML—and turn them inward, enabling employees to receive and share in-house information through their PCs. Intranets can be used to provide quick access to stores of corporate data; to publish company announcements, news releases and personnel material; and to enhance employee communications through electronic mail or chat room-style discussion groups.

"The cornerstone of any successful company is quick and effective dissemination of information, and that's what an intranet is all about," says Dave Taylor, president of Intuitive Systems, a Redwood City, Calif., consulting firm. "It's important to keep your customers and potential customers informed, too, but making sure that everyone inside the firm knows about current and future products, sales and marketing strategies, strategic directions for the firm, and even how to work with human resources or accounting, can make the difference between a firm mired in bureaucracy and one on the cutting edge."

Advantages and Disadvantages

Considering the explosion of interest in the Internet, it's no surprise that intranets, too, are getting so much attention from corporate America. After all, here's a way to adapt the open standards, cross-platform functionality, and multimedia qualities popularized by the World Wide Web to corporate use.

Among the tangible benefits of an intranet are operational efficiencies that save companies time and money, says Mellanie Hills, the author of two books about intranet strategies and founder of a consulting firm, Knowledgies, in Plano, Texas. These include:

• Faster and easier access to more accurate company information.
• Faster and better communication among employees.
• Less administrative work for the IT department, in comparison to client/server applications, particularly if the responsibility for Web server setup and content publishing moves from IT personnel to users.
• Reduced paper and distribution costs as online publication replaces printed material.
• Streamlined operational resources because an intranet does not replicate e-mail messages or databases the way certain groupware products do.

An intranet also offers extraordinary flexibility, because you work with applications on a single server and not on multiple desktops; and more scalebility than client/server applications, because the tools are designed to be used with the massive Internet. Hills also says that intranets offer many of the advantages of proprietary groupware and workflow products with a far smaller investment in hardware, software, training and administration, though their capabilities are not identical.

Less tangible, Hills says, are the ways better communications improve company operations by enhancing coordination and collaboration on projects, by providing opportunities for brainstorming, and by enabling employees to share knowledge and expertise.

"The tangible benefits are the ones the bean counters love … but the intangible benefits are far more valuable to you," Hills says. "If you are doing a better job of serving customers, if you are increasing sales … all that falls to the bottom line. You just can't say it's because of any one thing."

And while no technology is perfect, Hills says intranets have few disadvantages.

Security issues, naturally, top the list of concerns. Firewalls can prevent unauthorized access to sensitive company information, and additional protective measures may be needed if users will dial into the internal network from remote locations. But if the intranet server is properly isolated from any public Internet connection, the risks (from outside sources, at least) are minimized.

The other risks are mostly illusionary or temporary, says Hills, who led J.C. Penney's Internet/Intranet Team before forming her own company, and who researched the experiences of a dozen other major companies—AT&T and Rockwell International among them—to write her books.

Hills says there is the potential for chaos if users set up their own Web servers, but effective leadership by IT can help bring together the various areas to develop an intranet that meets the needs of the business. As for management's fears that workers will waste time surfing the 'Net, Hills finds that the novelty of the technology wears off in a few weeks and workers buckle down to do serious work. And while until recently a company had to piece together an intranet using components from various sources, vendors are now coming out with integrated suites.

Getting Started

So what does it cost to set up an intranet? It depends on how much you want to spend.

According to Taylor, of Intuitive Systems, an intranet setup can run from a few thousand dollars—if you drop a free Web server onto an existing workstation—to many millions—if you hire a few Web developers, translate large bodies of text to an online format, and buy commercial-quality indexing software for searching. For a modest start, you will need a server; server software (much of which is available free on the Internet); a browser, such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Explorer; and some expertise with HTML or Web authoring software.

You will not need an external Internet connection, though the benefits of having Internet access can be tremendous in their own right. You will, however, need a basic network infrastructure so that your employees' PCs can be linked to one another. "If [companies] don't already have LANs and WANs, they will have to plunk down some serious money to get this part of the infrastructure built," says Hills. It's also somewhat time-consuming to have someone install TCP/IP (the basic Internet protocol) onto each computer; and negotiating a corporate license for some browsers can be a hefty up-front expense.

Training and support costs, however, are minimal. Users need to know little more than how to point and click with a mouse, though it's important for them to learn how to use the applications effectively and to have an overall understanding of how using the intranet helps the business.

The time investment, of course, will vary, but Taylor says a company building an intranet should expect the project to take at least a few months of planning and education. "The more thought that goes into the process, the more value comes out when it's online," he says.

Anita J. Freed is an Internet project manager at DCI.

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Dave Taylor and Mellanie Hills are featured speakers at DCI's Internet Expo. Hills is the author of Intranet Business Strategies (now available) and Intranet As Groupware (available in November 1996), published by John Wiley & Sons.

For more on this topic, please see 20 Intranet Lessons Gleaned From Major Companies and Corporate America Goes Intranet Shopping.

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