An intranet is a private, secure network that enables internal communication and collaboration within organizations, which is critical considering office workers spend 42% on average of their time collaborating. This guide covers what intranets are, their key benefits, practical uses, and best practices for successful implementation.

What is an intranet?

Intranet meaning and definition

An intranet is a private computer network accessible only to an organization's staff. It uses internet technology to securely share company information, enable collaboration, and centralize communication within the organization.

Some of the key things an intranet can provide are:

• A way to safely share internal information

• Improved communication between leadership and employees

• Increased alignment between cross-functional teams

• A home base for companies to store and organize policies, guidelines, and standard operating procedures

In essence, an intranet acts as a company's digital HQ and go-to resource for employees to stay in the know. It's an invaluable tool for keeping teams connected to each other as well as their company's culture and mission.

Traditionally, many organizations use SharePoint or custom platforms as their intranet. But as the world of work has changed, new user-friendly solutions have emerged, with benefits to meet the evolving needs of employees.

Benefits of an intranet

Modern intranets deliver measurable business value through improved communication, collaboration, and productivity. Key benefits include:

• Improved communication: Intranets facilitate effective communication across the organization, allowing employees to share news, updates, and announcements easily.

• Enhanced collaboration: With tools like shared calendars, project management software, and document sharing, they enable teams to work together more efficiently, regardless of their location.

• Increased productivity: Intranets provide a centralized place for information and resources, reducing the time employees spend searching for information—which can take up nearly 20 percent of the workweek—and allowing them to focus on their work.

• Cost savings: By using an intranet for internal communication and collaboration, organizations can reduce costs associated with printing, mailing, and other traditional methods of information sharing.

• Streamlined processes: Intranets can automate and streamline various business processes, such as HR tasks, expense reporting, and procurement, saving time and reducing errors.

• Better knowledge management: An intranet can serve as a knowledge base, capturing and storing the organization's collective knowledge and expertise, making it easily accessible to all employees.

• Improved employee engagement: Intranets can foster a sense of community and belonging among employees, and research shows that higher levels of team engagement can result in 21% higher profitability.

• Enhanced security: With proper access controls and security measures, intranets ensure that sensitive information remains confidential and accessible only to authorized personnel.

• Scalability: Intranets can grow and evolve with the organization, accommodating new users, content, and features as needed.

• Integration with other systems: Intranets can integrate with other enterprise systems, such as customer relationship management (CRM) or enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, providing a unified platform for accessing information and tools.

Why is a company intranet important?

In 2024, employees struggle to find information, stay connected, and align with company direction. A study by HBR found only 23% of employees are aligned with their company's strategies.

An intranet provides critical functionality to address this alignment gap:

1. Provide visibility across teams

An intranet is a great way to make information available to an entire company. Since every employee automatically has access, it's easy to share updates from company leadership that apply to everyone.

Many solutions have sections for different teams. This makes it easy to see what others are working on. It also helps to stay aligned with the team's goals.

2. Offer a centralized place for document and content storage and retrieval

An intranet is a central location for employees to store important documents and information. It is searchable for anyone who needs access to them. This system helps employees easily find the information they need.

The intranet is a convenient tool for organizing and sharing important resources within a company. Rather than finding and sharing documents from systems like Microsoft Office or Google Drive, users can upload them to a portal and make them broadly available.

3. Simplify permissioning

When used with SSO or as part of a software suite, administrators can easily manage authorized users. They can add or remove users with just a few clicks.

Uses of an intranet

An intranet is a versatile and powerful tool that can change the way an organization operates. They can help with communication, collaboration, automating tasks, and supporting remote work, providing many benefits for organizations. Here are just some of the ways that companies use an intranet:

• Internal communication: Sharing company news, announcements, and updates

• Employee directory: Providing a searchable database of employee profiles and contact information

• Document management: Storing, organizing, and sharing important documents and files

• Collaboration: Enabling teamwork through shared workspaces, project management tools, and discussion forums

• Knowledge management: Creating a centralized location for company knowledge, best practices, and frequently asked questions

• HR and employee self-service: Managing HR processes, such as employee onboarding, benefits enrollment, and time-off requests

• Training and development: Delivering online training courses and materials for employee skill development

• IT support: Offering a helpdesk and resources for troubleshooting common technical issues

• Policy and procedure distribution: Ensuring easy access to company policies, handbooks, and guidelines

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using intranet software?

The advantages of an intranet

A modern intranet can offer tremendous advantages for most companies. Here are just a few:

• Improved communication: It provides a centralized platform for employees to communicate and collaborate on projects, which leads to increased productivity and efficiency.

• Streamlined information sharing: Intranets help organizations share company policies, procedures, and updates easily, keeping all employees informed and aligned.

• Enhanced data security: They provide a secure platform for sharing sensitive information within an organization, reducing the risk of data breaches and other security threats.

• Increased employee engagement: By providing access to training materials, employee recognition programs, and other resources, an intranet can help to keep employees engaged and motivated.

• Cost savings: They can reduce printing and distribution costs by providing a paperless platform for sharing information, which can result in significant cost savings for organizations.

The disadvantages of an intranet

Traditional intranet offerings often have significant drawbacks compared to modern solutions:

• Context switching required: Employees must navigate to another destination to access information, causing productivity loss and focus disruption; conversely, using social technologies to improve collaboration can raise the productivity of workers by 20 to 25 percent.

• Heavy IT administration: Updates, scaling, and maintenance require specialized IT knowledge, often resulting in outdated UX and security.

• Information overload: Traditional portals add to the noise rather than cutting through it, overwhelming employees with another destination to check.

• Stale content: Information becomes outdated quickly and untrustworthy, leading employees to abandon the system.

• Poor integration: Limited ability to connect with modern collaboration tools where employees actually work, which is a significant problem as employees who use more than 10 apps report communication issues at a much higher rate.

Let's face it, the digital town square of yore doesn't cut it anymore. They're as much a communication space as that sad '90s era mall that closed down in your town last year. Today, internal communication, collaboration, and coordination occur where employees already connect: in their "virtual HQ" located in Slack or Microsoft Teams.

Intranet best practices

Follow these proven intranet software best practices to maximize adoption and ROI:

1. Reach workers where they are

We are all working online now. It is important for everyone to communicate effectively. This is especially crucial in a remote or hybrid work environment. Use your portal to foster employee engagement by posting updates and information regularly.

An intranet, when used right, can be a tool for everyone in the company to collaborate, along with your chat system. Why not see if you can integrate the two? When you connect to Slack or Teams, you can send information and documents to anyone when needed.

2. Reduce time wasted finding important information

The best way to get the most out of your setup is to treat it as a single source of truth for all employees. Don't let your intranet get messy with old information, as it will make it hard for people to find what they need; in fact, poor information management can lead to over a third of employees dealing with missing or lost files.

If your setup has a content management system that makes it clear when a document was last updated—or, even better, if it can flag potential duplicate content—searchers will have a much better time finding what they need.

3. Keep your team productive by preventing time-consuming interruptions for key employees

It happens at every company: a few subject matter experts (SMEs) who hold lots of information are frequently interrupted by colleagues who need answers. A study by the University of California and Humboldt University found that it takes workers up to 23 minutes to regain focus after being interrupted.

Experts can avoid these disruptions, which can cost a company 6.2 hours a day, by adding their knowledge to a single source of truth to make it accessible by anyone who needs it, when they need it. A little more effort upfront can have huge time management implications down the road.

4. Avoid wasteful context switching to keep employees productive in the tools they use every day

Integrating with your chat platform is great, but integrating with all the other tools employees need to do their jobs? Much better. Look into next-generation solutions that can serve information in any web-based tool.

How do you create a company intranet that improves productivity and drives employee engagement?

If your current intranet is suffering from low adoption, don't panic! Check out this specific action cycle designed to help you build buy-in, identify a replacement (if you need one), roll out the new approach, and create a sustainable solution. Learn more about creating urgency in change management.

1. Make a plan for adoption

First, figure out what you think went wrong the first (or 47th) time. What were the major factors preventing long-term, widespread adoption, and what are some specific ways to resolve them?

2. Set goals

Some examples of goals to set are:

• Timelines

• "Employee feedback gathered by June 1st"

• "Decide whether to keep or replace our intranet by July 31st"

• "Rollout new guidance/tool by October 1st"

• Measures for success

• Include regular and stretch goals

• Regular goal: People use the intranet at least 1x/week for 6 months on average

• Stretch goal: People use the intranet at least 1x/day for 6 months).

3. Seek employee input

Ask people how they feel about the solution they're using. Do they like it in theory, but find it too cumbersome to use? Have they used different solutions or approaches at other companies? Do they wish they could use what friends at other companies are using? Learn how to create an efficient tech stack.

4. Select an intranet platform

If your current platform's issues are unresolvable, do your due diligence and find a new intranet provider. Look into employee recommendations, and search on review sites like G2 and TrustRadius.

5. Assign tool ownership

Determine who will be responsible for the overall success and rollout of your new intranet (or approach). Learn why you might want to use a knowledge manager.

6. Configure your selected tool

Time to get your team settings, spaces, and permissions figured out!

7. Develop the content

This might involve importing documentation from elsewhere, creating entirely new resources, or completely rewriting existing content. Learn why bite-size information is best.

8. Employee initiatives to improve adoption

Avoid long, tedious trainings. If you need training, consider using self-service modules instead of traditional all-day sessions. For more exciting options, offer swag or host a party!‍

9. Measure success

Don't forget to check in on your goals.

Important features of intranet software

Modern intranet software goes beyond traditional portals to deliver superior user experiences. Look for these essential features:

• Intuitive user experience: Modern, clean interface that employees actually want to use, designed for trusted answers anywhere employees work.

• Advanced search capabilities: Enterprise AI search that finds information without knowing exact details, working within any app or tool.

• Seamless integrations: Native connections with Slack, Microsoft Teams, and browser extensions that eliminate context-switching.

• Universal accessibility: Context-specific knowledge delivery through Knowledge Triggers and mobile apps for information access anywhere.

• Comprehensive analytics: Deep insights into knowledge gaps, content engagement, and usage patterns to continuously improve your system.

• Compliance tracking: Announcement delivery and acknowledgment tracking to ensure critical updates don't get lost.

A great intranet solution should make employees want to use it. After rolling out Guru, not only has "Did you Guru it?" become a standard response, but companies see a long-term return on investment thanks to high adoption.

What is an extranet?

An extranet is a subsection of a company's intranet. A private network like an intranet where vendors, partners, and authorized customers can access information from a company's network.

The term "extranet" gained popularity in the early 2000s. It was used by organizations to refer to a central location for sharing data. This data could only be accessed by specific workgroups.

Since the extranet is structured like an intranet, it relies on IP and TCP for data exchange. Extranets also have security features such as firewalls and password-protected login details to prevent unauthorized access.

Examples of extranets

• A distribution network to maintain communication between suppliers and distributors

• A central collaboration tool for a franchise to communicate across numerous locations.

• Cross collaboration across government agencies

• Ecommerce site integration to exchange inventory data via a secure network

• A project management tool where a project manager can share documents and contracts with subcontractors and other stakeholders

• A board portal where members of an association can access meeting minutes and board documents

• Onboarding documents for subcontractors or freelance hires who do not have access to your employee intranet

Intranet vs. extranet: what's the difference?

An intranet and an extranet are both private networks that use internet technologies, but they differ in terms of access and purpose.

Intranet:

• An intranet is a private network accessible only to an organization's employees.

• It is used to share company information, resources, and tools internally.

• Access to an intranet is restricted to authorized users within the organization and typically requires a login.

Extranet:

• An extranet is an extension of an intranet that allows controlled access to authorized external users, such as customers, suppliers, or business partners.

• It enables an organization to securely share information and collaborate with specific external parties.

• Access to an extranet is granted to specific external users through authentication methods like usernames and passwords.

Basically, an intranet is limited to internal use within an organization, while an extranet can be accessed by external parties. Both types of networks aim to facilitate secure communication, collaboration, and information sharing using internet technologies.
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Get started with your AI-powered intranet

Whether you’re modernizing an outdated intranet or building one from scratch, the right platform should do more than share announcements—it should make your company’s knowledge accurate, accessible, and trusted everywhere work happens.

With Guru, your AI Source of Truth, you can turn your intranet into a living, intelligent knowledge layer that connects all your tools, delivers cited answers in Slack, Teams, or the browser, and keeps information up to date automatically.

Watch our demo to see how Guru helps you build an intranet experience that actually works—powered by trusted knowledge, not static pages.