Intranet Blog
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03 May 2010
Reflection on Intranet Trends for 2010
Marlon McMartin, MBA
While these factors are just a portion of what an Intranet provides for an enterprise, it is nonetheless a good indicator of those areas that will become increasingly important into this next decade.
Intranet Innovation
Innovation for an Intranet can mean a variety of things. For example, the merging of Web 2.0 Internet technologies into the enterprise environment is a good example of companies recognizing the changing tides of communications and adapting their strategies to the shifting global culture.
The use of video sharing within an organization will continue to increase as these technologies become much more widely available and businesses recognize the value of video for training, recording events, and as a communication tool.
Another example is that there is growing pressure to have strong search capabilities. The high-bar is continually being raised and employees have a difficult time suffering the inability to search and easily access information that is buried deep in the Intranet databases.
Intranet Openness
Openness will be affected from several fronts. One example is that the days of closed local Intranets will give way to global networks accessed from the World Wide Web. The ability to communicate globally has never been greater and closed networks operating on Internet servers provide solutions to access Intranets from anywhere in the world, at anytime. With this shift to the WWW, the semantics of differentiating between a company Intranet & Extranet will also fade into the past and online Intranets will become more the norm.
One of the most significant advantages of openness is that there will be a shift in cultures that will give all employees a voice and an opportunity to publish their ideas on the Intranet.
An example of this is also a segue into the next topic. We will see existing employee ‘directories’ go the way of the dodo and be replaced with much more meaningful individual profiles. These profiles will be highly personalizable and will also provide the mechanism for social networking among all members.
Intranet Social Media
Social networking will mean providing social media tools to encourage communication, empower employees, and give more strength to groups. This will take the form of any number of social media platforms.
Companies that bank on winners will choose to adopt Facebook / MySpace type platforms, used within the Intranet network as a selectively closed collaboration system. The use of forums and blogs will also become increasingly important as networking tools as companies discover new ways to communicate, drawing from wildly successful Internet technologies.
Overall, the winds of change are blowing towards greater organizational effectiveness and much enhanced communication ability. The quicker that companies recognize the value of taking full advantage of the Intranet, the sooner they will reap the rewards and real business and competitive advantages. Innovation, openness, and social networking will all be key indicators that will define the success of tomorrow’s Intranets.
Marlon McMartin is founder and Managing Director of Office Ability Intranet software. This article is copyright protected and may only be republished provided there is reference given to the author and a back-link provided to www.OfficeAbility.com (anchor text – Intranet Software, Business Intranet, Hosted Intranet).
