What exactly is an intranet?
An intranet is a digital platform that aims to improve the efficiency of an organization or group of people. An intranet is based on the same kind of technology as the ‘regular internet’, but is only accessible to, for example, employees within a company or organization.
An intranet is the most basic tool for internal communication within a company and can serve as the sole form of communication within the company.
The benefits of using social intranets according to research by SiteVision.
Why is an intranet needed?
The larger an organization becomes, the more problematic it becomes to maintain communication so that all employees can share information. If there is a lack of communication within the company, employees can feel left out, customers can become dissatisfied and problems can fall between the cracks, which is something you want to avoid in a company.
Using a platform or forum, the intranet itself, makes it easier to maintain guidelines for both internal and external communication within the company. However, to achieve these positive effects, the intranet must be adapted to the way the company works and operates.
Social intranet or wiki?
There are different types of intranets and to know what is best for your company or organization, you first need to understand your business needs. Using WordPress, you can either build your own intranet or you can add an intranet to your organization or company for a better business structure.
Social intranet
A social intranet is like a social network for a company or organization. A social intranet creates the opportunity for employees to easily share ideas, exchange information, socialize, and create engaged employees. A social intranet works similarly to a social network, such as Facebook, but instead of having your friends on the network, your colleagues and managers make up your circle of friends. This creates the opportunity for employees to maintain communication and feel included in the company.
For a social intranet with WordPress, BuddyPress is a good solution, but there are other solutions such as Facebook for Work. The important thing to know is that the intranet should fit your company and your business, so read up beforehand and test yourself to find the tool that best suits your needs.
Buddypress
Buddypress is a plugin for WordPress that works as a software that takes on the most common social media features, to create a common social platform for the organization. Registered users can create profiles, have private conversations, create friend connections, create groups and much more.
Workplace by Facebook
Workplace by Facebook is a social intranet based on Facebook’s common tools, such as wall messaging, direct messaging and commenting on each other’s posts. Workplace by Facebook also allows companies to communicate with each other, if needed for collaboration. As employees are used to the Facebook interface, Workplace by Facebook may be a suitable option.
Wiki
A wiki is a website where pages can be edited by visitors themselves. A wiki is a very suitable structure for an intranet, as it makes it easy for employees to find, add and edit information. By allowing users to add and change information, a wiki is a suitable platform for collaboration between employees. The most famous wiki is Wikipedia, which allows the public to read and modify the information contained on the platform.
A wiki allows you as a company to customize your intranet according to your needs. Since all the tools are not gathered in one big application, but in many small ones, you as an organization get a very flexible platform where it is easy to replace the different components.
Either you can use WordPress as a wiki solution, or a tool like Confluence is an alternative solution. When working with a wiki, you often need to supplement with a good communication tool, and then Slack or Briteback can be good options to speed up daily communication, and then the Wiki solution can be how you choose to document things internally.
Wiki plugins
There are a variety of plugins for WordPress that turn WordPress into a wiki solution. The most widely used is WP Knowledgebase, but if you’re using BuddyPress, BuddyPress Docs can be a good option for creating a similar solution that integrates into a larger, social intranet.
Confluence
Confluence is a kind of wiki, which is a service that allows employees to work together on projects and documents. Company rules, meeting notes, and collaboration documents are easy to organize and share to all employees in the company, making Confluence a suitable collaboration platform. Confluence is also a suitable option to combine with other solutions.
Slack
Slack combines text communication with phone calls and creates the possibility for employees to create both direct groups and channels, between certain employees and for everyone in the company. The ability to send and save files in the channels, make video calls and share screens with each other makes Slack a very suitable social tool for the company and through shared information flow a very suitable wiki to use.
Briteback
Briteback simplifies communication and collaboration in the company, with a customizable app. Briteback combines different services that the company needs, such as email, messaging, calls and much more. If you need a more customized solution, Briteback helps you add more features. Briteback works as a kind of combination of a social intranet and wiki.
What kind of intranet do you need?
The possibilities are endless for how an intranet looks and works in a company. An intranet can also be built compatible with your WordPress site, where the ability to both manage the administration of a page and the communication between employees can take place in the same forum and will thus facilitate the work.
We can help you create an intranet and/or develop a communication strategy for your company that streamlines your communication.