As the world and the workplace have become increasingly social, the intranet is undergoing an evolution into a collaboration space for the sharing of content, ideas and skills.
So says Peter Reid, SharePoint solutions head at Intervate. Reid believes the intranet of the future will change the way people use the tool, focusing on design and the user experience, and creating an almost 'app-like' interface that engages employees through interaction and interactivity.
According to Reid, in order to cater to the needs of a changing workforce, the way intranets are used needs to change as well.
"Employees today demand a rich user experience that enables them to communicate, collaborate, share ideas, gain access to expert skills and more. This is a complete shift from the push strategy of the traditional intranet to a pull strategy, creating an intranet that makes people want to use it."
Lee Child, chief business development officer at Qorus Software, observes that many organisations force their staff to make use of the chosen intranet system with limited success.
As a result, he points out, there has been a growing trend towards social enterprise systems like Yammer to collaborate effectively among staff internally and cut down on the internal processes of e-mails for document sharing, feedback and approval processes.
"Businesses are leaning towards tools that manage and facilitate conversation around business operations and management; enhance collaboration; and have cross-platform capabilities available across devices and are Web-based," Child says.
He is of the view that any private network accessible to an organisation's staff needs to be easy to use, secure and well-planned out.
"User adoption can be one of the biggest challenges, so staff training and buy-in is a big part of utilising an intranet system and turning it into a successful enterprise tool for employees. Over and above the adoption process and secure functionality, any internal system should include relevant information that is easy to access and kept up-to-date."
Analyst firm Gartner says intranets came into being shortly after the invention of the Web browser and the World Wide Web. According to the firm, early intranet efforts focused on creating private transmission control protocol/Internet protocol networks and establishing enterprise services, such as single sign-on and corporate news pages that became the default home pages for employees' Web browsers.
Larry Cannell, research director at Gartner, says the technologies available at the time were almost identical to the features provided by portals and Web content management systems that were used on the consumer Internet.
"Over time, the market added enterprise-specific features and new products to meet the needs of organisations and teams. The emergence of Web 2.0 and social networks influenced the development of intranets a great deal."
Reid notes the focus of the intranet of the future needs to be the user, not the CEO, and thus the design and the user experience are of the utmost importance.
"Departmental intranets have also become outdated - the intranet should be a centralised portal for all internal organisational communications. Ultimately, the intranet should be a self-service portal that provides convenience for users, allowing them to log time, apply for leave, find relevant corporate information, collaborate on tasks and more," he says.
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