Intranets: Increased Productivity leads to Striking Returns on Investment
by William P. Marino and Rainer Schelp
Intranets - the prodigy of the global
Internet, implemented within corporations.
A corporate intranet is the MBA of the
family von Web - the Internet with a
tailored suit. Intranets have received more
press than Tiger Woods and his
ubiquitous Nike swoosh, and with good
reason. Like the golfing phenom, intranets
have taken on a mystical quality: if you
build it, profits will come. While intranets
can't insure profitability anymore than a
good phone system - like any tool, it's the
people that use them that count - there is
sound reasoning behind the rage.
The World Wide Web greatly expanded
the type of information individuals and
organizations can access and share via
the Internet - and intranets have done the
same for companies. Communications
can now move beyond the restraints of
text-only e-mails to a more robust
presentation of text, graphics and
applications. Furthermore, intranets span
continents, link global companies together
seamlessly with the information needed to
compete in this ever-evolving,
knowledge-based economy.
A review of the benefits of intranets reads
like a wish list from any executive suite:
increased productivity, streamlined
processes, team work, 24-hours global
information access, efficient workflow,
and empowered employees. Can a
technology really have such impact?
Indeed, it can.
Most importantly, for those of us that must
keep an eye on the bottom line, is the
significant return on investment. Real
examples yield some impressive returns.
Silicon Graphics employees in Denver or
Australia or elsewhere around the world
can now sit at their desks and "attend"
meetings taking place at its World
Headquarters in California via the
company's vast intranet. In just a few
months, SGI has integrated its intranet so
tightly with its operation that it is not only
the way its employees communicate, but
also the way they think - it's their virtual
electronic community. The SGI intranet,
named Silicon Junction, contains over
130,000 searchable pages of information
and hundreds of applications - all available
to employees in over 60 countries.
SGI executives report the top uses for
their intranet include publishing corporate
news and policies, data mining, accessing
sales tools, collaborative data exchange,
retrieving support details, and employee
training - sounds like that executive wish
list, doesn't it?
Still a skeptic, wondering what the
financial impact was to achieve such
streamlined operations? How about a
1,427 percent return on investment. This
remarkable ROI is not an isolated case.
Lockhead Martin's implementation of an
intranet returned 1,562 percent; Cadence,
Inc. 1,766 percent; US West, over 1,000
percent. Once you look at the aspects of
savings, it all makes sense - dollars and
cents.
Publishing information electronically saves
a tremendous amount of paper and
printing, plus the cost of shipping it to
distributed locations. Add in the employee
hours required for processing and this one
aspect can save large companies
hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
For more savings, consider the costs
involved when this printed material is
changed.
Other factors that produce such
impressive ROI numbers include fewer
meetings, which means less travel, and
reduced long distance costs. But the
biggest savings comes in the form of
employee productivity gains. Empowering
employees with the right information
saves time, which in turn, makes a
company more responsive to its
customers. With personal control over
their information needs, they are
empowered to act decisively - and an
empowered employee is a motivated one.
The ultimate result: competitive advantage
and increased market share.
Unmeasured in the ROI results is the
synergy among employees who now have
the information they need at their
fingertips. Progressive companies, such
as SGI, want to offer an opportunity to
employees to participate in an electronic
community, to build better lateral
communications and virtual team
opportunities - to harness the synergy of
an entire organization. In a competitive
environment, it's integral to have
employees sharing information with one
another - information about customers
and opportunities and ideas concerning
better processes. An intranet makes it
easy. Extending your intranet to partners
and customers, creating an extranet, can
further enhance the power of this
technology.
What's the next step for corporate
intranets? Consider this: Every hour,
every minute, new information is added to
existing corporate intranets and the public
Internet to help employees do their jobs
better and faster. Helping transform these
changing resources into assets is the next
element of a comprehensive intranet
strategy - "push" technology. The ability to
leverage this new information is limited by
the sheer volume of data available and the
means by which employees can access
it. That's where "push" technology
innovators, such as Wayfarer
Communications, play a key role.
What is "push" technology? In essence, it
finds relevant information and delivers it
directly to the desktops of employees,
based on their specific needs. By setting
certain criteria, or user profiles, within
Wayfarer's INCISA System, marketing
managers receive competitive updates
and breaking industry news from the
Internet; inventory managers receive
inventory data from internal systems;
customer service agents receive product
and service updates, etc. - all delivered
proactively to their desktops. Incorporating
a "push" component to your intranet adds
a real-time element, ties into existing
legacy systems, and reduces or
eliminates the need to surf for information,
providing yet another productivity gain and
a further opportunity for a competitive
edge.
Information strategy decisions are being
driven from the top of the company down.
Visionary executives could see the boom
in productivity and were first to implement
an intranet strategy - now many
companies are playing catch up. More
companies are beginning to see corporate
intranets as critical to their success. And,
it's leveled the playing field. An intranet is
an equal opportunity technology; it can
help large companies solve their
communications problems, and it can
help smaller firms compete in the same
market and appear much bigger.
So whether a company's corporate
culture is pin stripes or khakis, the
benefits of intranet technology can dress
up the bottom line.
About the authors:
William Marino is Regional
Director for Wayfarer
Communications, the leaders in
corporate webcasting
technologies. Rainer Schelp is
President of FirstSolutions,
specializing in helping companies
improve communications,
increase productivity, and boost
revenue by designing and
implementing enterprise-wide
information technology solutions.
For more information on intranet
solutions, contact Rainer Schelp
at (303) 779-1898. For
details on Wayfarer's "push"
technology, contact Bill Marino at
(303) 988-5133.
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