Working as a private Web site, an intranet provides a catchall for company communications with the ease of electronic updating and storage. No more waiting for days while news of staff promotions or revised vacation policies trickles into mailboxes across the company. Post the information to your intranet and send an e-mail reminder to instantly update your workforce. Want to schedule a meeting? Check the availability of key people on the shared calendar rather than waiting for them to return your calls.
Building a company intranet, however, is no small feat. For starters you'll need an IT guru who can navigate heavy technology purchases, bandwidth requirements, and data security issues. You can expect to shell out thousands of dollars for servers and other equipment, wait weeks or even months for setup, and then hire a Webmaster to maintain it all.
Sound out of reach? There's hope.
For pennies per user, you can rent a full-fledged intranet complete with online calendars, threaded messaging, shared schedules, department-level project areas, corporate directories, document sharing, and more. That's what Loretta Callahan did. Now Florentine managers and chefs watch the company intranet, hosted by intranet service Bluetrain.com, for Callahan's messages. "We use it to store and share recipes; if a store has a special that sells well, we post the recipe for the other locations to try," she says. "We also use it to announce meetings and keep our managers in touch with each other. It does a great job of bringing everyone together, and I don't have to spend my time on the telephone anymore."
Here's what you need to know before you decide to make an outsourcing company the backbone of your internal communications strategy.
