Employees are disengaged at work, and organizations have been exploring how social and digital technologies can address this problem. The key to success in business is to have a connected, integrated and involved employee base. All over the world, enterprise-grade intranet portals are currently used in the digital workplace to improve synchronization, store corporate documents, policies and executive directives, and thus, bolster productivity.
The Basics of Intranet
The concept of an intranet is very similar to that of the internet, with one major difference - It is a closed and secure network within the scope of a company or a business which cannot be accessed from outside. The article looks at what is the actual enterprise situation when it comes to enterprise intranet solutions and how the gap can be closed with social intranet solutions. The way information and knowledge is stored, shared, accessed or retrieved, needs to be made simpler so that users can build his/her own connects within the company.An intranet portal in place addresses a multitude of problems. Some of them are:
Communication: It opens up smooth communication lines
Synchronization: It ensures that employees and departments are synchronized
Accessibility: Important data can be kept at an accessible place in an organized manner,
Business Processes: Important business procedures like CRM, project management, and productivity tools can be integrated into an intranet seamlessly.
According to the 2015 Quantum Workplace Employee Engagement Trends Report, Employee engagement declined to an 8 year low in 2014 across organizations of all sizes in the US. Further, a recent Gallup Survey has shown that Baby Boomers and Gen Xers have the lowest level of engagement within the enterprise and they constitute 88% of the workforce in the US. With around 2 Billion social accounts in UK & 2h 13min of an average daily time spent on social media signifies that Facebook-grade intranet experience would increase the consumption of corporate services through intranet and collaborate employees for innovation. These statistics emphasize the urgent need for organizations to address digital dis-engagement and move to intuitive, self-learning, predictive engagement platforms.
While an enterprise-grade social intranet software can be made to cover a lot of ground in terms of features and functionality, its ultimate success and justification lies in its ability to accomplish some core needs as shown below.
Org-wide Communications: Communication from the management to the employees can come in the form of information, reports, memos and news snippets. Your company intranet should be able to communicate these properly and on time to every single authorized employee.
Socially Engaging Intranets: The intranet should also present a layer of social collaboration by incorporating features like blogs, wikis, social community forums, micro blogs, social profiles, powerful search, and collaborative idea management
Knowledge Management: The intranet should be able to house organization-wide knowledge base and resources to help your employees do their jobs well. These can include details of experts, checklists, process documents, ideas, industry trends and best practices.
Business Process Integration: All your important business procedures like project management, customer management and process management should be rigorously integrated into your enterprise intranet.
Empowering employees to voice their opinion can be easier said than done, especially in larger organizations where one might feel as if they're a number. Engaged employers are productive, more profitable, more customer-focused, and more likely to stay and highly engaged workplaces grow faster, adapt quicker, and innovate more.
Open Source Based Intranets
One of the main difficulties faced by businesses is to choose whether to work with proprietary intranet solutions, or to go the Open Source route. Here are some compelling points for you to consider when you choose Open Source social intranet software –
Flexibility: Open Source solutions give you a significant amount of freedom, which is usually missing in proprietary, commercial software.
Support: Open Source software is ably supported, although informally. The community-based tech support providers are knowledgeable and active, and can supply effective solutions for your problems.
Technology Continuity: What happens if your commercial software vendor decides that their intranet solution is no longer viable and pulls it from the shelves? You can avoid that sticky situation with Open Source solutions, which use industry standard language and database platforms and can live as long as you want.
Cost: Open Source solutions cost nothing to own, and you only pay for specific custom development.
Keeping all these points in mind, the Digital Employee Engagement Platform (DEEP)™ by CIGNEX Datamatics based on Open Source technologies is a viable solution for your modern CMS intranet since it easily integrates with your existing enterprise IT applications. It is an evolved system which can keep up with your business needs, with 250+ customizable features and ready to be deployed within 60 days. Organizations adopting DEEP™ can bring about 50-80% reduction in cost. With focus on collaboration, productivity and access to resources anytime, anywhere; DEEP™ can act as a next generation, agile intranet solution that can meet the dynamic needs of your organization.