An intranet is "a collection of private computer networks of an organzation"1 which can help increase productivity and effective communication with minimal investment by the organization. Intranets are designed for ease of use and usually bear a resemblance to a normal web page found on the internet. Many of the same protocols that are used to on the internet may also be applied to an organizations intranet. Protocols such as, Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol(TCP/IP) a protocol used to communicate over a network, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol(SMTP) and Post Office Protocol(POP)which are used to send and receive emails over a network.1 With the help of an intranet managers are able to communicate with their staff more effectively therefore increasing productivity.
There are a wide variety of benefits an organization may take advantage of by implementing an intranet system. One benefit of using an intranet is that it provides a location for employees to share and access resources. This allows a greater collaboration of work to aid in the completion of large projects. Another benefit is secure communication within the company. An intranet is usually only available from either a company computer or an outside device through a Virtual Private Network(VPN) which requires the user to enter a username and password to gain access. The VPN also encrypts the data packets making the data unreadable if someone was to intercept them ensuring confidentiality.2This allows an employee to access the intranet and use its resources from home or when travelling while still keeping the information sent and received secure. Intranets improve communication between employees by allowing them to send memos to a single person or the whole company. By Sending these memos electronically managers may more efficiently conduct workflow by checking the progress of projects, or assign new ones as simply as sending an email.
Proper implementation and usage of an intranet allows an organization to reduce many of its administrative tasks and costs. Companies are able to reduce their paper usage by sending memos electronically over the intranet, rather than printing many copies to distribute to their employees. This saves the company the cost of the paper as well as the time needed to distribute the memos. Another example of a reduction of cost by using an intranet, is from Cisco Systems who used their intranet to process expense reports. In 1996 before the intranet was implemented, Cisco used four of their staff members over four days to process the reports. The total cost of processing the 54,000 reports was $19 million dollars at about $50.69 per report. In 1999 the reports were processed by the intranet, requiring three staff members over four days to process 145,000 reports. The total cost this time was $77 million dollars and the cost per report was $1.90.3 Cisco was able to cut their costs significantly and nearly triple the amount of reports processed.
In conclusion, when properly implemented an intranet can , increase productivity through the sharing of resources and improved communication, and cut costs of several administrative tasks by using the information stored on the intranet.
No comments:
Post a Comment