Top Ways to Solve Problems Using an Intranet for Small and Midsize Businesses

by Michael Freeman

“What exactly can an intranet do for me?”

That’s a good question. And the services provided by an Intranet are really tied to your company’s mission.

If you’re a growing company, bringing on new employees, you understand how important it is to connect them all. Chances are you also recognize the ways intranet software can help you do that.

The private network created by an intranet that only your employees can access solves a genuine problem. Now they could communicate more effectively than by using email.

But there are more advantages to using an intranet to enhance work operations than simply connecting your workers digitally.

That can include:

  • Automating everyday tasks to ensure they get completed
  • putting the latest company news in one easy-to-access location
  • and enabling management to get worker feedback

Collab Hub was built for companies looking for that kind of platform. It serves you by being simple to install, easy to use, and coming at a price that won’t bust the company budget.


That’s why Collab Hub offers the kind of unique features your company needs for internal business communications.

So let’s take a look at the kind of problems that an intranet like Collab Hub can solve.

 

The Top Problems That Are Solved by an Intranet

 

1. Stronger Internal Communications

 

intranet internal communications
By installing an intranet like Collab Hub, you create an internal network that isn’t available to the outside world. You decide who has access to it, establishing a special network for your various department heads and the employees that work under them.

You can expand or limit access to this Intranet, ensuring the only users will be members of the company or organization.

In “How To Grow a Business Using Intranets,” Intranet Connections noted that:

“It can be a challenge for employees to get to know each other when growing a business. Because you are often hiring new employees during your growth period, it sometimes makes it difficult for long-time employees to keep up … Because people don’t know each other, you can hold a company-wide event to help everyone get to know each other. Utilizing Event Sites on your intranet, you can display all the event details in one central location that is easy for employees to see.”

One of the strongest reasons to use Collab Hub is to boost communication options and functions between your employees. To make internal communication easy, you need to adopt a social-friendly and responsive Intranet software.

In effect, you’re giving employees the tools to more productively and resourcefully communicate with one another.

An intranet isn’t just for your company, but for your workers, providing them with:

  • A centralized place to post news
  • The ability to schedule events
  • Opportunities to comment on ongoing company projects
  • Answer questions
  • Quickly access company updates and information

 

2. Increasing Worker Engagement

 

Workers communicating

You don’t want an intranet that fails to provide any use to your employees, which is why Collab Hub is ideal for small to midsize companies.

Your intranet can become a focal point for your workers. It also gives managers a better understanding of how your employees are using technology in their jobs.

Being able to communicate more smoothly and efficiently with coworkers also means workers are likely to become more productive.

An intranet is ideal for promoting employee engagement and fostering collaboration and employee participation.

Trey Galletly wrote that:

“When an intranet is designed with end-users in mind, organizations have higher user adoption and more engaged employees. When employees aren’t engaged, low morale results. Having space for departments makes it easier to recognize your workforce and deliver department-specific visions, goals, and tasks. The better an employee understands their role and how parts of the organization work together, the more effective the employee becomes at communicating. Giving employees ownership over their content makes them feel a sense of responsibility. Make it easy for content owners to create and edit content and make it even easier for users to interact.”

 

3. Having a Centralized Repository

The reason you want an intranet is that you have communication problems that need to be solved. But you’ve also come to recognize that you need a platform for addressing that.

The tools you’re given from the Collab Hub software become the vehicles for improving internal communications and enhancing the interactions between different users. That can include employees within a particular department, or across the entire company.

The last thing you want is weak usability. An intranet solves this problem.

You don’t want a system where information gets dumped in there, then forgotten about. With Collab Hub, it’s easy for each department to maintain ownership responsibility for their content.

And it’s even easier to successfully deliver it to all users.

 

4. Posting Announcements and Events

 

Upcoming events

It’s important for you to get company information out to everyone impacted, and to be regularly updating your workers. That can include information about:

  • Upcoming company events
  • Critical company news
  • New hires
  • Promotions

This is exactly what workers need to stay updated on. The Collab Hub software is the perfect vehicle for each department to post their news.

This is particularly relevant if you have different offices and locations, remote workers, and multiple departments. You want to have the ability to send a notice out to everyone immediately, and that it is easy for your staff to find and read.

No more worrying about whether a notification sent by email gets buried under 50 other emails in each worker’s account.

This is also about having a highly organized system. As a company, you don’t want your files to be left in a disorganized state, and quickly get forgotten and become out of date.

Collab Hub graphic

Collab Hub allows your content to:

  • Be organized in a highly structured way
  • Be easy to publish
  • Get separated by different departments or teams
  • and eliminate the problem of employees spending too much time searching for these updates

Your content isn’t irrelevant. Now you want to be sure it’s easy to locate.

Content, the information that truly counts, needs a system that allows for a healthy and steady flow of what you want workers to know. You want to make sure it’s easily available to them.

 

5. Staff Directory

An intranet also serves as your crucial staff directory.

staff directory

It’s a system where employees can create a profile of themselves on the company’s intranet. That includes a photo of each worker so they’re more than just a name and a title and it can also include:

  • A description of their tasks and job functions
  • Their company email
  • Their office phone number
  • The hours they work
  • Even a description of their personal interests, education and background

Employees can quickly learn more about one another through the intranet staff directory.

And finding a colleague within a larger company doesn’t get much easier than through an intranet.

James Robertson, managing director of Step Two, noted:

“Intranet-based staff directories are only truly useful when they contain comprehensive information about staff members. This means going beyond just a name, phone number and email address. Staff directories should provide a photo, job title, organizational unit, reporting structure, plus much more.”

 

6. Managing Projects

An intranet can ideally be content-based for communications, Human Resources outreach, and other valuable departmental transactions. Your site is a destination for your employees, driven by the value of your content.

If it’s critical to get your content in front of your workers, Collab Hub is the way to do that.

Your intranet is also your tool for collaborative sharing among workers, arming them with the ability to post their own content.

For the average worker, productivity gets boosted because they’re now publishing and sharing content in real time, while also easily finding the information they need, and successfully executing their work assignments.

 

7. Process

To function properly, an intranet needs:

  • Usability
  • The opportunity to routinely update content
  • The ability to combine access to internal news and communications with important social and collab functions among users

Your intranet has to support the things your employees do every day; it has to be a site that allows them to learn, plan and accomplish tasks.

Human processes are often overlooked in favor of technical development. The best intranets help employees achieve key business objectives while also enabling them to do their jobs more efficiently.

It also can introduce them to colleagues not working in the same office, but ones who need to be accessible to them nonetheless.

You don’t need to settle for “Business as Usual” anymore. With Collab Hub, productivity increases because you can now:

  • Ensure users work toward a cleared stated goal
  • Measure and track their progress
  • Quickly make needed changes to the system when necessary
  • Allow users to post new ideas and offer feedback on projects
  • Clear the fog when workers are confused about their role in a top project
  • Ensure no workers get sidelined along the way by not knowing where to find the information they need
  • Ensure the company has a clear strategy, and everyone is on board
  • Have a structured system for articulating and posting your organization’s goals, achievements, and future projects

Conclusion

What companies need from an intranet is:

  • Improved communications
  • Better productivity
  • The ability to end a reliance on emails
  • Employees who feel better engaged, and happier about what they’re accomplishing

Collab Hub significantly improves internal business communications. This is a self-hosted intranet software powered by the Content Management System (CMS).

And this system is perfect for your company because:

  • It’s easy to install on your company’s website
  • It creates a private network accessible only to your organization’s staff
  • It provides you with a central portal that employees can use to access company resources and tools

Our goal at Collab Hub is to arm your company with the tools needed to improve communications, boost productivity, and get the most important company news to your workers, instantly.

Best of all, Collab Hub costs just $1299.  After your initial purchase, you get free support for one year which includes the latest updates, security patches or new features. After those 12 months, you have the option to renew for $299 per year. The Collab Hub team is also available to answer all your questions about the system – long after you’ve installed it.

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Michael Freeman

Michael Freeman

Content Writer and Editor

Michael is the Content Writer and Editor at Chatter Buzz. A native of Massachusetts, Michael has lived in Orlando since 2002, and has more than 20 years of experience as a print and online journalist. Michael has worked at some of Florida’s top newspapers, including The Orlando Sentinel, The Sun Sentinel, The Lakeland Ledger and The Jewish Journal. Michael has also worked as a marketing writer for private firms, and his industry clients have included a property management firm, a real estate company and a political consultant. He has taught communications to college students. Michael earned his BA in writing and communication from Hampshire College and a Masters in political management from George Washington University.