Most organizations understand that a modern company intranet is a serious business advantage. Successful intranets save companies time and hassle by centralizing resources, managing files, and simplifying collaboration. But wanting to implement an intranet and knowing how to make it happen aren’t exactly the same. In our newest article, we’ll outline the most important steps of creating an intranet team, building a company intranet, and maintaining long term intranet success.

Put
A Team Together

The first step in building a company intranet is assembling a team to take on the task. Your intranet team should consist of several different departments from within your organization.With a diverse range of ideas, jobs, and interests represented from the very beginning, you ensure your intranet team accurately represents company needs as a whole and guarantee your established intranet will have the internal support and advocacy it needs to invite, encourage, and persuade all employees to actively participate.

Establish
Goals and Objectives

Once your team has been established,
it’s time to determine the actual goals of your company’s intranet. While a
modern intranet is excellent at solving all kinds of problems, it’s most
effective once you know what you want it to do. Firmly determining intranet
objectives also keeps everyone on the same page, outlines important vendor
details, and helps your teamwork better together. Intranet solutions are unique
to every organization but common objectives often include:

• Increasing internal company communication
• Increasing company and team collaboration
• Managing organizational content and knowledge
• Developing company culture
• Improving employee engagement

Choose
A Vendor

After you’ve created a general outline of intranet expectations, it’s time to choose a vendor.  Selecting the right vendor is one of the most important steps when it comes to building a company intranet. After all, your intranet vendor will ultimately determine not only your overall expenses, but also the capabilities, intuitiveness, security, and overall manageability or your entire platform. Always choose a vendor you feel comfortable with, who not only offers the specific services you need but is always willing to support and work personally with you. And a reputable intranet vendor should always offer a product demo before purchase. For a more detailed breakdown of vendor characteristics to consider, check out our detailed article about choosing an intranet vendor.

Make
The Intranet Your Own

Once you’ve finally selected your intranet vendor things start to get exciting! It’s finally time to start building groups and creating content, right?! Well, almost. While it’s tempting to just jump right in, a little organization beforehand will be a big benefit in the end. One of the best ways to get your intranet organized and off to a strong start is to personalize and brand your platform. A good vendor will make it easy to alter and add branding materials right into your intranet. You can add company colors, terminology, fonts, logos, favicons, and all kinds of other unique features to make the platform company-specific. Personalizing your intranet is a great engagement tool for employees as well. A distinctive and familiar company intranet creates an inclusive environment right away where workers know they belong and are part of the team.

Organize
Your Space

The final step in company intranet
organization is designating your different workspaces. Every intranet is
customized a little differently, so it’s important to think beforehand about
how your organization plans to share, distribute, and access content. While
there are dozens of different ways to organize details, most businesses arrange
content by company, department, and group information.

• Company information typically includes content like company announcements, newsletters, holidays, and other announcements or updates that are relevant at a company-wide level.
• Department news consists of content that is relevant to the different departments within your organization. While companies typically have only one area for company content, businesses tend to have several department areas. Department information varies greatly from group to group depending on what kind of information they need.
• Group content is the most specific and refers to different projects and teams within your organization. Groups can be determined by departments, locations, teams, or anything in-between. Groups also tend to involve more collaboration and back and forth communication than company or department areas do.

Establish
Important Features

A good intranet platform includes a wide range of useful out of the box features designed to encompass a wide range and combination of needs. Before you begin creating or incorporating content, it’s important to edit, enable, disable, or customize the available modules and features for both your entire intranet platform and each individual department or group area. You can even change permissions for different employees or make different areas public or private. With custom-tailored content, employees have easy access to all of the tools they need without a distracting interface or irrelevant information.

Incorporate
Existing Information

Once your initial organization system has been established, it’s finally time to upload any existing information. Company work documents, pdf’s, employee handbooks, floor layouts, images, and anything else employees need regular or easy access to can be seamlessly added to your intranet in just the right area. Uploaded documents can be added to as many or as few areas as you need and administrators can even control which employees are able to edit, open, or even see certain sensitive or confidential information. In addition to traditional documents and files, a capable intranet also offers users wikis, notes, calendars, and other flexible areas to maximize every kind of information.

Host
An Exciting Launch Party

An intranet launch party is the  perfect opportunity to unveil your new
platform, demonstrate product usage, and get all of your employees excited and
onboard. A successful launch party should incorporate advocates from various departments
to encourage employees in every area and showcase several potential
possibilities. Employees need to know the intranet is an effective tool for
everyone, not just one department or a handful of teams. The greater your scope
of representation, the higher your overall participation will be.

Transferring to a new communication and collaboration style can sometimes be difficult, especially for workers who aren’t particularly tech-savvy. A launch party helps inform and educate employees while also being a fun and inviting experience. With everyone’s participation and contribution, an intranet will become much more than just an information repository and truly reach its full collaboration potential. Take time to make your kick off a fun company event everyone is eager to be a part of.

Create
New Content

Finally, it’s time to create new content. Intranet content can be anything from new files and wikis to team events and meetings to just communication and collaboration among employees. No matter how workers decided to connect with each other, share content is the most exciting part of an intranet. Group, team, or department administrators can help drive discussions, manage groups, and encourage coworkers accordingly. As everyone works and contributes together your intranet will always be a relevant, useful, and long term asset to the entire organization.

Regularly
Update and Review

Over time your organization will naturally need to adapt and change as it grows in size, policy, mission, or mindset. As your company evolves it’s only natural for the intranet to adapt as well. A good intranet enables administrators to easily add, remove, or edit platform features at any time. A regular review of intranet functions, features, and abilities will ensure your platform is always aligned with your company’s unique goals and style.

MangoApps
Makes It Easy   

As an industry leader in company communication and collaboration software, MangoApps knows personally the importance of a modern intranet. Our intuitive intranet platforms are designed for businesses of every size and come with customized customer support every step of the way. With interactive tools, aesthetic designs, and state of the art technology, MangoApps Intranets always keeps employees focused, productive, engaged, and organized. To learn more about building a company intranet or to see MangoApps Intranet at work in your own organization, contact us or schedule a personalized demo today.