Even though traditional intranets have been focused on improving collaboration and communication, especially in light of remote working, intranets can play a key role in increasing employee productivity. These are 6 ways intranets help to streamline business processes, making it easier for employees to do what they need to do, while saving money and time.

1. Centralising Digital Workplace Tools

According to an analysis by Okta, nearly 10% of businesses have more than 200 apps in their enterprise IT systems. While employees are making use of these digital tools to get their work done faster, much of that efficiency is lost when they spend time jumping between systems or searching for information across numerous sources.

Modern intranets bring these tools under one umbrella which can be customised for your brand. With a fully integrated CMS and secure access to corporate intellectual property, companies can quickly create content and ensure that it’s always up to date.

With digital tools linked on intranets, employees can rely on the intranet as a launching point for digital workplace tools. This helps to reduce the cognitive burden and eliminates the need to bookmark or keep track of the range of required tools.

2. Making Business Processes Simpler 

Modern intranets can be a powerful tool for any organisation, helping to digitise manual and paper-based processes to free employees to work on higher value projects but also to work remotely. This can include sending a document to be reviewed, completing the most recent health and safety forms, or aiding with something more particular.

How this is done is dependent on the precise nature of the task you are looking to accomplish, but the easiest methods are via approval processes and workflows that are in-built into the software. These workflows are simple to achieve and can be designed using a drag-and-drop designer.

One of the simplest examples of this is the streamlining of the approval process for content such as a new blog. The writer can have their content completed within the portal and have it sent for approval which would then create a notification for their manager. When the piece has been approved or published, the writer will then receive their own notification.

3. Reducing Search Time

Modern intranets can cater to people who are searchers or navigators and common intranet search challenges can be conquered with Liferay DXP. Navigation should be well organised at the heart of any intranet, featuring drop downs that lead to other organised sites. Content that is hidden within pages and then within links means that workers spend far too much time just trying to find the information they require.

A smart global search is also needed to support solid navigation in order to return a wide array of content based on particular keywords. This is how most modern search engines and apps work and employees will most likely already be familiar with the concept.

In addition, dynamic tagging and role-based content delivery ensures that relevant content is displayed for each employee. Modern intranet users will feel confident that they’re accessing up to date information and can spend their time more productively.

4. Streamlining Task Management

In order to increase productivity, an intelligent intranet solution is able to integrate with tools that workers already make use of for the purpose of task management. It is a good idea to examine how these systems can be integrated further into your intranet, allowing people to perform tasks without having to switch between different systems.

Users would then be able to review all of their tasks across all of the digital workplace systems that need to be completed, enabling them to take direct action within the intranet. The use of a pluggable connector framework can often set up these integrations in a lightweight method with product specific APIs, ensuring the setup is safe-proofed in the event of updates to either the external application or your intranet solution.

5. Using Online Spaces to Get People Together

Teams can work across different departments and in some cases even different time zones, making it vital for them to have an adequate venue for online collaboration. Modern intranets can allow for the speedy creation of online pages that bring together people as well as knowledge management, social conversations and task management.

6. The Simplifying of Knowledge Management

Knowledge management can be very complicated in a global organisation, with numerous options for the storage and sharing of content. The consolidation and integration of such disparate tools in intranets can result in an increase in productivity.

Knowledge management can also be further improved by having relevant knowledge surfaced around the intranet, such as having HR policies clearly featured on the HR site, either rolled up by Folder or by Tag. The quick and easy rolling up of documents on the intranet make it simpler than ever for them to be found by users, again resulting in an improvement in productivity.

The Future of Your Digital Workplace

When you consider the future of your digital workplace, communications should not take over the gathering of requirements. Modern intranet software can do a wide variety of different things to help with the streamlining of employee workflows and help to make them more productive.

Read about these companies that have successfully built intranets that boost productivity and learn a few guidelines for how to design your own.