Company intranets are a very popular idea for many of your clients.  The ability to setup a company intranet is an excellent value-added service for you to provide.  Before proposing that a client have a company intranet setup though, there are some things you should consider.   

Company Intranet Opportunities Per Industry

  • Accounting firms. Keeping tabs of new tax pronouncements.
  • Realtors. Tracking hot listings, exclusive listings, open houses, and company-wide contests.
  • Restaurants. Informing employees of upcoming advertised promotions and coupons, specials, seasonal information, and menu changes.
  • Retailers. Disseminating information on store signage requirements, end caps, in-store demonstrations, bulletins from the buyers, product recalls, inventory schedules, and advertised sales.
  • Travel agencies. Posting information on cruise and vacation group packages, international travel requirements and advisories, and customer feedback on specific trips.

As well as common industry issues that company intranets can address, there are also common “points of pain” that can be alleviated by a company intranet.  These problems are not industry specific and you should watch out for them in your client organizations.

Deciding Questions Regarding Company Intranets

One-to-many distribution of volumes of paper

  • Do your clients have binders of information regularly printed up that are sent out to dozens of account managers and customer service reps?
  • Is there an employee handbook that everyone needs? Are copies of press releases photocopied and passed around?
  • Is this information basically out of date before the information even makes its way through interoffice mail?

Multiple desktop operating systems, including non 32-bit and non-Windows

  • Are your clients frustrated about not being able to have every employee in the same company run their newest custom-developed 32-bit applications?
  • Besides their fleet of Microsoft Windows desktops, do they also have Mac or UNIX workstations users who could benefit from platform-neutral browser-based applications?

Multiple geographic locations, telecommuters, and “road warriors” spread across multiple time zones

  • Do binders of spec sheets, standard operating procedures, employee handbook, internal training manuals, and similar documents need to be sent out to off-site locations and updated with insert frequently?
  • Is the company incurring five- and six-digit monthly or annual overnight freight bills just for distributing all this paper?
  • Do employees need bigger bookshelves and filing cabinets in their offices or cubicles just to hold the “mountains” of internally distributed paper?

Bottom Line on Company Intranets
Company intranets make sense in many organizations.  As a computer consultant you can provide excellent service and value to your clients by understanding when and why a business should setup a company intranet.

In this article, you’ve been introduced to Company Intranets. To learn more about how you can improve your knowledge about Company Intranets, just click here now to get access to a free one-hour audio training program on 5 Easy Ways to Grow Your Computer Consulting Business.