Intranet business case
Digital transformation moved to the forefront during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, driving investment in digital workplaces and underscoring the strategic importance of the corporate intranet.
As organizations continue to adapt to new ways of working, making a strong business case for the intranet has become crucial. A modern intranet plays a vital role in fostering collaboration, enhancing communication, and strengthening long-term business resilience.
The starting point is identifying the main issues and how intranets can solve common business pain points. These include:
- Information silos
A corporate intranet can serve as a powerful tool for addressing information silos within an organization by fostering greater connectivity and transparency across teams and departments. Modern intranets typically incorporate a range of collaboration features, including shared workspaces, project management tools, and discussion forums that actively promote cross-functional collaboration and help to break down traditional barriers to information sharing.
By broadening access to knowledge and enabling more seamless interactions, these tools contribute to a more integrated and informed workplace. Furthermore, advanced search capabilities empower employees to quickly locate the information they need, no matter where it resides within the intranet, significantly reducing the time spent searching for resources and ensuring that valuable content is easily discoverable and not inadvertently overlooked.
- Inefficient communications
By providing a unified platform for internal communication, an intranet ensures that important updates, announcements and news are available to everyone. This prevents fragmented communication and allows audience targeting, ensuring the right messages reach the right people.
- Lack of central resources
An intranet serves as a central repository for all organizational information, ensuring employees across teams and departments can access the same data and resources. This prevents duplication and scattered versioning across the organization.
- Knowledge findability
Intranets often support knowledge management through knowledge bases, wikis and document libraries where employees can contribute and access shared knowledge. This promotes a culture of knowledge sharing and prevents the trapping of important knowledge in inaccessible repositories.
Cost–benefit overview
Investing in a company intranet can yield significant benefits – both tangible and intangible. An intranet strategy should include an overview of the costs versus the benefits of the investment.
Costs
The costs associated with the initial setup of an intranet, including software licensing, hardware, and implementation expenses can vary considerably depending on the complexity and scale of the project. To ensure a successful launch, many organizations choose to engage intranet consultants to assist with the initial design and implementation process. Although this approach may increase upfront costs, expert guidance at the outset can help to avoid common pitfalls, streamline deployment, and ultimately lead to significant cost savings over time.
It is also important to factor ongoing maintenance and support costs into the overall financial analysis. These recurring expenses typically include IT support, software updates and renewals, and hardware maintenance. In cases where a software-as-a-service (SaaS) intranet solution is selected, organizations should also account for ongoing subscription fees as part of the long-term cost structure.
Beyond the technical implementation, additional costs will arise in connection with change management efforts. Employees will require comprehensive training and ongoing support to ensure they can adopt and use the intranet effectively, helping to maximize user engagement and drive overall return on investment.
Benefits
While the associated costs of implementing a corporate intranet can be significant, the benefits almost invariably outweigh them, even though these advantages are sometimes difficult to quantify and are often best demonstrated through qualitative measures.
One of the most frequently cited benefits of a corporate intranet is the time it frees up for employees, enabling them to focus on high-value tasks rather than spending valuable hours searching for the documents and information they need to perform their work effectively.
Enhanced communication and collaboration tools, which are typically integral to a modern intranet, often contribute to improved project outcomes and more informed, timely decision-making across the organization.
In addition, a thoughtfully designed intranet can have a positive impact on employee morale by providing an engaging platform for recognition, feedback, and social interaction. Higher levels of engagement often translate into lower employee turnover, which in turn reduces recruitment and onboarding costs. Moreover, improved knowledge transfer and sharing across the organization help to mitigate the impact of employee turnover by preserving valuable institutional knowledge.
By taking into account both the tangible and intangible benefits of a corporate intranet, organizations are better equipped to make informed investment decisions. The return on investment (ROI) will naturally vary depending on the specific use case and the extent to which the intranet is effectively implemented and embraced by the workforce.
Alignment with business objectives
For a successful intranet business case, it is important to ensure that the goals for the intranet will deliver tangible value to the organization. Common business objectives include:
- improving internal communication
- enhancing employee satisfaction
- fostering innovation
- supporting a dispersed workforce.
Gaining a clear understanding of the organization’s priorities is a critical first step in designing a tailored intranet that effectively meets the specific needs of the business.
Closely related to this is the importance of ensuring that the intranet’s features and functionalities are purposefully aligned with the identified business objectives. For instance, if enhancing collaboration is a key priority, the intranet should incorporate tools such as shared workspaces, project management platforms, and discussion forums to facilitate seamless teamwork across departments. Conversely, if promoting knowledge sharing is a primary goal, the inclusion of a well-organized knowledge base will be essential to support that objective.
The ability to bring this vision to life and clearly demonstrate how the intranet will contribute to the organization’s broader goals is vital to securing buy-in and driving engagement. It is equally important to communicate the value of the intranet clearly and consistently to all employees and stakeholders, helping them understand how it will support their individual objectives as well as the organization’s overall success.
Making the intranet business case
Pitching an intranet business case to leadership requires a strategic approach to ensure buy-in and support.
The first step in building a compelling intranet business case is to clearly identify and define the specific problem or set of challenges that the intranet is intended to address. These may include existing business pain points such as ineffective internal communication, time-consuming and inefficient information retrieval, or a lack of cross-functional collaboration that hampers productivity and innovation.
To strengthen the case, it is important to use concrete examples and relevant data to illustrate the tangible impact of these problems on the organization’s performance and outcomes. Wherever possible, incorporating key performance indicators (KPIs), such as employee engagement scores, productivity metrics, or potential cost reductions will provide a more quantifiable basis for demonstrating the need for improvement and the potential value that an effective intranet solution can deliver.
It is important to anticipate and proactively address any potential concerns that may arise from leadership and other key decision-makers. These concerns might include questions related to data security, the intranet’s ability to integrate seamlessly with existing systems and workflows, or the long-term costs associated with ongoing maintenance and support. Providing clear, well-reasoned answers and practical solutions to these potential roadblocks will help to build trust and confidence in the proposed intranet initiative.
In addition, involving key stakeholders early in the planning process ensures that the intranet is designed to address the diverse needs of the organization and fosters broad-based support. By actively highlighting how the intranet will deliver tangible benefits and provide meaningful support to each team and department, you can further strengthen engagement and encourage a sense of shared ownership across the organization.
Ultimately, pitching the business case is storytelling. It needs a compelling narrative that ties the intranet project to the company’s vision and mission.
For more digital workplace resources, DWG members have full access to exclusive articles, events, peer insights and a Research Library of 100+ reports covering key areas such as intranet management, digital employee experience, AI readiness, strategy and governance, change management and more. Contact us to learn how to gain access to this library via DWG membership.
Categorised in: Intranets
