Moving beyond an internal website, the intranet has changed. While many organisations still use this to improve internal communications, more often it is impacting other areas of our workplace. In recent years the term ‘digital workplace’ has been popularised to begin to define the use of technology at work, with the intranet sitting front and centre. Which brings me to my question, is the digital workplace the new intranet portal? To find out about this, and more, book a personalised demo.
What is an intranet portal?
In my opinion, one of the biggest benefits of an intranet as a platform is that it is (or should be) securely accessible to everyone within your business. Like the hub in the centre of a wheel it centralises business communications and provides a place to store documents and knowledge.
Now, the modern workplace provides us business systems that help automate and manage processes for us. The intranet portal enables us to link to these systems, either directly or by securely integrating to them and displaying useful information or statistics to the relevant audience right within the intranet.
What is the digital workplace?
The digital workplace is a relatively new term that attempts to describe the digital work environment. In a blog written for CMS wire Sam Marshall describes five capabilities of the digital workplace:
1) Communication and employee engagement
2) Collaboration
3) Finding and sharing of information and knowledge
4) Business applications (process specific tools and employee self-service)
5) Agile working -- the ability to be productive any time and place
Each one of these could be applied to an intranet portal. Modern intranet software delivers capabilities to improve communication and employee engagement. It delivers features that let colleagues collaborate on work, powerful search and taxonomy to help find relevant information and both business applications within the intranet as well as links to systems elsewhere in the business all the while being accessible on any device.
That being said the digital workplace seeks to move beyond technology. It incorporates a business strategy, governance, usability and a proactive approach to user adoption in addition to the technology that is involved. It recognises that these are equally important in achieving success.
You could argue that even these describe some of the key ingredients to a successful intranet. In my opinion, however we describe the way we use digital tools to improve our workplace we are, at the very least beginning to take this seriously. Organisations are considering the holistic impact of digital tools and how they can work together to facilitate productive, engaged employees.
I hope you have found this blog useful. To find out more, book a demo with one of our intranet experts.
