Intranet ROI: providing value beyond employee engagement

When it comes to measuring intranet ROI, looking beyond employee engagement can reveal additional economic benefits. This article explores the hidden areas where intranets provide extra value.

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When organizations consider implementing a new intranet solution, employee engagement is often the primary focus. And for good reason – highly-engaged employees are significantly more productive, according to Gallup, and a well-designed intranet can be a powerful tool for connecting employees, fostering a sense of community, and driving engagement.

But engagement is just one piece of the puzzle. When it comes to quantifying the impact that an intranet can have on the bottom line, there are a range of “hidden” benefits that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Modern intranets can drive significant ROI in less expected ways, such as creating internal and operational efficiencies, improving business process agility, supporting better cost management, and enhancing customer relationships. For C-suite decision makers, understanding these additional areas of ROI is crucial for appreciating the full business value an intranet can provide. Similarly, for those making the case to leadership for a new intranet, highlighting these hidden benefits can be key to gaining stakeholder approval and buy-in.

By recognizing and communicating these undervalued benefits, you’ll have a fuller picture of the transformative potential a robust intranet can have on your organization.

Creating internal and operational efficiencies

A modern intranet platform can significantly enhance an organization’s efficiency by streamlining internal processes and optimizing operations. By serving as a centralized digital workplace, an intranet provides employees with seamless access to the resources they need, regardless of their role or location. This unified approach minimizes the time and effort spent navigating multiple platforms, allowing employees to focus on high-value tasks that drive business growth.

Several key factors contribute to optimizing employee experiences for peak productivity:

Accessibility

A user-friendly intranet ensures that all employees can easily access the tools and information they need to perform their tasks efficiently. Implementing single sign-on (SSO) and mobile optimization eliminates barriers to entry, enabling seamless access across devices and locations.

Integrations

Seamlessly connecting the intranet with widely-used enterprise applications, such as Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, creates a unified digital ecosystem and allows employees to access multiple tools and platforms from a single, centralized hub.

Search capabilities

A robust, intelligent search function is the backbone of an efficient intranet. By leveraging advanced technologies like natural language processing and machine learning, the search tool can quickly surface relevant content from across the intranet and connected systems, saving employees valuable time and effort.

Personalization

Tailoring the intranet experience to each user’s specific needs and preferences is key to boosting engagement and productivity. By leveraging AI-powered recommendation engines, granular content subscriptions, and location-based services like geofencing, organizations can deliver highly targeted, relevant content and tools tailored to every employee.

Human-centered design

An intuitive, user-centric design is essential for ensuring that employees can easily navigate the intranet and find the resources they need. By organizing content logically, utilizing task-oriented navigation, and incorporating visual elements like clickable image links, organizations can create an intranet that is both visually appealing and highly functional.

Multichannel communication

Providing employees with a range of communication channels, including instant messaging, mobile apps, and real-time updates, ensures that they can access and recieve information in the way that works best for them. This flexibility promotes continuous access to critical information and reduces delays.

In addition to benefiting individual employees, a modern intranet also creates significant efficiencies for internal communications teams. A streamlined content management system (CMS) and targeted content delivery capabilities enable comms professionals to create and distribute messages more effectively. Advanced analytics provide valuable insights into content performance, employee engagement, and sentiment, allowing teams to make data-driven decisions and continuously refine their strategies.

AI-powered features like writing assistants and content recommendations can also supplement communication efforts by providing employees with writing support and personalized information. This not only enhances the employee experience but also frees up time for communications teams to focus on strategic initiatives.

Improving business process agility

Organizations that can quickly adapt to changing market conditions, customer needs, and industry disruptions are better positioned for long-term success. A modern intranet can be a powerful tool for improving business process agility, enabling organizations to pivot quickly and seize new opportunities.

One of the primary ways an intranet enables agility is through digital consolidation. With the intranet serving as a hub, organizations can offer consolidated access to HR functionalities, communication channels, knowledge resources, and more. By centralizing access to these resources into an intranet, it reduces the friction that can slow organizations down.

Digital consolidation can significantly improve employees’ ability to work efficiently and be more agile by offering:

Simplified workflows

With fewer systems and tools from different vendors, employees can navigate their work processes more easily, reducing the time and effort required to switch between various platforms and interfaces.

Seamless integrations

Consolidating within an intranet allows for smoother data flow and reduces the need for manual data entry or transfer between systems.

Consistent user experiences

Having a more homogeneous set of tools and platforms leads to a more consistent user experience, reducing the learning curve for employees and enabling them to work more efficiently.

Faster problem-solving

When issues arise, dealing with fewer vendors means employees can quickly identify the source of the problem and get it resolved, minimizing downtime and disruptions to their work.

Enhanced collaboration

Intranets include built-in collaboration features, making it easier for employees to work together, share information, and communicate effectively.

It’s no surprise that almost every leader polled by CIO.com said that their organizations are working on digital consolidation. By breaking down silos and enabling cross-functional collaboration with features like project spaces, shared documents, and enterprise social networking, an intranet makes it easy for teams to work together regardless of their physical location or department. This improved collaboration accelerates innovation and problem-solving, allowing organizations to respond more nimbly to challenges and opportunities.

By simplifying processes, facilitating collaboration, and enabling rapid response to change, an intranet helps organizations operate more efficiently and effectively. This can lead to faster time-to-market for new products and services, improved customer responsiveness, and ultimately, a healthier bottom line.

Cost management

By bringing together multiple tools and platforms into a single interface, organizations can also reduce the costs associated with maintaining separate systems. This includes direct costs like software licenses and subscriptions, as well as indirect costs like the time IT teams spend managing and integrating disparate tools.

Modern intranet platforms offer a comprehensive suite of features that extend far beyond the conventional perception of intranets as mere knowledge management systems. They incorporate functionalities like employee apps, pulse surveys, digital signage, idea management, and social advocacy, all seamlessly integrated with the intranet. A company that previously relied on separate platforms for internal communications, project management, and file sharing could potentially save thousands of dollars per year by consolidating these functions into an intranet.

The savings extend beyond just the cost of subscriptions. Each separate tool requires time from IT to manage user accounts, configure settings, and troubleshoot issues. It also requires time from end-users to learn and navigate each system. By consolidating to a single intranet platform, IT can streamline their management efforts and end-users can benefit from a more integrated and efficient digital workplace experience.

Other areas where an intranet could help save on costs include:

• Reducing real estate costs facilitating remote work and collaboration
• Reducing training costs and inefficiencies associated with tool fatigue
• Freeing HR and IT teams up to focus on higher-value activities by enabling self-service for routine support requests

There are also significant benefits to data integration and analytics when consolidating to a single platform. With separate tools, data can become siloed, making it difficult to gain a holistic view of the organization’s digital workplace performance. An integrated intranet platform can provide centralized analytics across all its features, giving leaders valuable insights into employee engagement, collaboration, and productivity.

When the NSPCC, the UK’s leading children’s charity, wanted to replace a 10-year-old intranet, it turned to Interact. Not only was the old system inflexible, difficult to search, and lacked social collaboration tools, it was also running on unsupported software. With Interact, they created a new, UX-led, brand-relevant intranet platform that enabled the decommissioning of costly, complex IT infrastructure and tech support, leading to significant financial and time savings.

Of course, the exact cost savings will vary depending on the size of the organization, the specific tools being replaced, and the chosen intranet platform. But the potential for significant cost reduction is clear. By carefully evaluating their digital workplace ecosystem and strategically consolidating to a comprehensive intranet platform, organizations can not only save money but also improve the employee experience and gain valuable data insights.

Enhancing customer relationships

While the value of a great intranet experience tends to focus on its benefits to internal audiences, they can also have a significant impact on an organization’s ability to serve and engage external customers.

First and foremost, an intranet serves as a single source of truth for customer-facing employees. By centralizing access to the latest product information, service protocols, and customer insights, an intranet ensures that all employees are equipped to provide consistent, accurate, and up-to-date information to customers.

Improved internal collaboration and knowledge creates a domino effect that results in a better customer experience. When employees can easily connect with experts across the organization and access a wealth of institutional knowledge, they’re better equipped to solve customer challenges and provide insightful recommendations.

Consider a retail chain rolling out a new product line. By leveraging their intranet to distribute training materials, product specs, and sales scripts, they can ensure that store associates across all locations are prepared to effectively showcase and sell the new offerings. This consistency in messaging and execution enhances the customer experience and builds trust in the brand.

An intranet also enhances customer relationships by empowering frontline workers with mobile access to the information and tools they need. With an intranet that’s optimized for mobile devices, field sales reps can access the latest competitive intelligence and product collateral on the go, allowing them to have more informed and impactful conversations with clients. Home healthcare workers can use a mobile intranet to review patient information and care protocols in real-time, enabling them to provide better, more personalized care. Or a restaurant chain can use their mobile intranet to push out real-time alerts that keep frontline staff informed about important updates.

For example, Domino’s needed a mobile-enabled solution to connect the company with frontline and office-based staff alike. Interact designed and launched a mobile intranet solution for their dispersed audience of employees, which in turn helped them more effectively serve their customers across thousands of locations.

In complex B2B sales and service scenarios, an intranet can be a key differentiator by enabling employees to draw upon a wide range of internal resources. Sales teams can leverage the intranet to access case studies, white papers, and subject matter experts that help them craft compelling solutions for their clients. Service teams can use the intranet to tap into a knowledge base of best practices, troubleshooting guides, and escalation paths, allowing them to quickly resolve customer issues. By providing a centralized platform for collaboration and knowledge sharing across departments and geographies, an intranet empowers B2B organizations to deliver a more integrated and responsive customer experience.

Ultimately, by equipping employees with the knowledge, tools, and connections they need to excel in their customer-facing roles, a modern intranet can have a profound impact on customer relationships. And in a business environment where customer experience is often the primary competitive battleground, this can be a significant driver of ROI.

Intranet ROI: the bottom line

From creating operational efficiencies and improving business agility, to enabling cost savings and enhancing customer relationships, intranets offer a wide range of compelling ROI opportunities. By considering the full spectrum of benefits an intranet can provide, leaders can develop a more comprehensive and strategic view of the platform’s potential impact.

The decision makers who will ultimately approve or veto a proposal to invest in an intranet platform won’t be moved by another comms platform that will provide a 1% uplift in open rates on internal messages; they’ll be more impressed by an investment in a consolidated platform that consolidates their workloads and helps them make tangible improvements to revenue-driving activities. By demonstrating how an intranet can drive efficiency, agility, cost savings, and customer value, communications and HR professionals advocating for intranet adoption can position the platform as a strategic imperative rather than just a “nice-to-have” employee engagement tool.

Of course, realizing these benefits requires more than just implementing an intranet and hoping for the best. To truly leverage the transformative potential of a modern intranet, organizations must take a strategic and user-centric approach to design, deployment, and ongoing management. This means involving end-users in the design process, providing adequate training and support, and continuously iterating based on user feedback and data insights.

With a robust, well-adopted intranet in place, companies can create a more connected, engaged, and empowered workforce – one that’s better equipped to innovate, adapt, and deliver exceptional value to customers and shareholders alike.

As the business landscape continues to evolve at a rapid pace, the hidden ROI of modern intranets will only become more important. By identifying and quantifying these benefits, organizations can position themselves for success in the digital age and beyond.

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