Revitalized Intranets Reduce Support Costs

REVITALIZED
INTRANETS
REDUCE
SUPPORT
COSTS
HOW-TO GUIDE
Revitalized Intranets Reduce Support Costs
HOW-TO GUIDE
This how-to guide has been designed to provide practical advice for revitalizing and re-launching
your corporate Intranet.
Read this brief how-to guide to learn:
What is an Intranet?
What are the Business Benefits?
Common Content by Department
Intranet Revitalization Best Practices
Learn how to audit the usage of your Intranet, assess content and assign ownership, and re-launch
your Intranet to save money on support and administrative costs.
What is an Intranet?
An Intranet, or ‘portal,’ is similar to an Internet website except that it is restricted to users within
an organization. Intranets that extend outside the company to partners or customers are called
Extranets. Intranets use web servers to distribute information, and users view content with their
Internet browser or by downloading documents.
Many organizations select Intranets to share information among employees since they can be
built and maintained more cost-effectively than other types of private networks or enterprise
content management and collaboration systems.
2 REVITALIZED INTRANETS REDUCE SUPPORT COSTS HOW-TO GUIDE

What are the Business Benefits?
Although many organizations have implemented an Intranet, most corporate Intranets in mid-sized
companies are not well organized, user-friendly, or contain relevant content that is current and
being maintained by a designated content owner.
These challenges aside, Intranets can provide many business benefits including, but not limited
to, the following five areas:
Reduced Support Costs — providing employees with a ‘self-service’ resource to find answers
to their questions can drastically reduce inter-office support calls, provided that employees
actually use the Intranet and know its contents.
Minimized Administrative Costs — posting standardized business processes, checklists,
templates, and other materials — such as proposals, contracts, or other commonly used
documents — will increase the efficiency of your operation and provide a mechanism for
version control.
Brand Consistency — by maintaining documents at the Intranet level, rather than having staff
save them to their desktop, Marketers have more control over their corporate brand and image,
reducing the risk of out-of-date materials being used in the field. Monitoring download activity
is a sound method to ensure that your employees are in the habit of using the Intranet instead
of a desktop folder.
Improved Remote Access — many employees would do work outside the office if they had
access to the information and tools they need to be productive. As many intranets are inter-
nally hosted, they can be unreliable or slow to load, especially if remote workers do not have a
fast Internet connection. Adopting a hosted solution can be very cost-effective, increase avail-
ability, and provide usage analytics.
Employee Self-Service — not only do successful Intranets reduce helpdesk and support calls,
but they also provide a faster method for employees to get answers to their questions. This
can mitigate process bottlenecks for busy helpdesks, and provide a better experience for an
end-user, provided the Intranet is easy to navigate.
Common Content by Department

All corporate departments have information that needs to be provided to employees. Following is
a list of common Intranet content made available by departments.
This list is not exhaustive, but was generated to stimulate further thinking about what content your
organization would like to provide.

Finance and Accounting
Payroll and Compensation Information
Accounts Receivable/Payable and Budget Reports
Expense Reimbursement Policies and Procedures
Cost/Benefit, Business Case, or ROI templates
Approval Processes for Capital Expenditures
Human Resources
401K and Employee Benefits Information
Corporate Policies, Procedures, and Manuals
Performance Reviews and Development Plans
New Employee Orientation and Handbooks
Training and Corporate Development Materials
Marketing
Corporate Logos and Marketing Collateral
Sales Presentations, Proposals, and Scripts
Tradeshow Checklists and ROI Calculators
Press Releases and Investor Relations Info
Sponsorship Policies and Sustainability Reports
Sales and Customer Service

Service Level Agreements
Standard Contracts and Agreements
Customer Service and Sales Process Diagrams
Funnel Reports and Sales Forecasts
Client Lists, Testimonials, and Sales Tools

Information Technology
Helpdesk Frequently Asked Questions
IT Policies and Procedures
Disaster Recovery Plans
IT Project Request Forms
Strategic Information Technology Plans
Operations
Administration Processes
Support for Creating New Processes
Lean Manufacturing, ISO, or Six Sigma info
Purchasing Policies and Supply Chain Management
Process Management Frameworks and Standards
Intranet Revitalization Best Practices

Conduct an Intranet Usage Survey — use our Intranet Usage Survey Template to identify
which employees are actually using the Intranet, how they are using it, and document areas for
it to be improved by department. This survey can be used to benchmark your current situation,
and used again later to demonstrate a measurable improvement and return on investment for
your revitalization project.
Develop a Project Plan — use our Project Charter to document goals, objectives, timelines,
and other pertinent Intranet Revitalization Project information for senior management to assess
at a high level. Build a Business Case if required to justify any expenditures.
Evaluate Vendor Solutions — if you are not already committed to an Intranet platform, assess 3–5
vendors to learn more about your options. Intranet vendors generally fall into three categories:
Wiki providers (open-source and free), hosted portal solutions such as iCentera (starting at about
$500/month), or Enterprise Content Management and Collaboration solutions such as Microsoft
Sharepoint (up to $500,000 or more).
Engage the IT Department — discuss requirements with your IT Director and determine if your
current solution will meet your needs. If you require a new system, schedule the selection process
and customization project according to your project timelines and availability of IT resources.

Audit Content Ownership — analyze your current intranet content to determine who the content
owners are, or if there is a lack of ownership for any materials. Determine who should own each
type of content, and create a content publishing and approval process. Many portal systems
have inherent content publishing functionality built-in to control workflows and approvals, so
ensure this requirement is on your list.
Identify User Needs — interview each department leader to understand their Top 5 most
common support call questions. Use our Intranet FAQ Worksheet to document these ques-
tions, and determine the overall Top 10 most frequently asked questions (FAQ). List the Top 10
FAQs on the Intranet homepage to direct users quickly to their area of interest, and list the Top
5 FAQs on the main page for each department to facilitate navigation.
Assess Intranet Content — determine if your content is up-to-date, accurate, relevant, or

missing. Document what needs to be updated, created, refined, or removed from the Intranet,
and assign these tasks to the content owner.
Organize Intranet Content — create a hierarchy, which is a table of contents or site map, to
organize your Intranet content. Speak to your web developer about site maps, as they have most
likely built one for your corporate website and can provide guidance with this task. Make this hier-
archy available on the homepage for quick and easy navigation to the pages that users require.
Task each content owner with updating their section of the Intranet to prepare for the re-launch.
Design the Homepage — be sure to include a ‘Search’ function, Top FAQs, site map, and links to
each department’s section of the Intranet. You may wish to include a section containing company
news, highlight project status reports, or provide other content that will keep users coming back
to the Intranet. Be sure to change elements of your homepage to keep it fresh and interesting.
Re-Launch the Intranet — send out an email communication regarding the re-launch of your
Intranet to all employees. Attach a Project Request Form and indicate who the content owners
are for each department to ensure your employees know where to turn when they need a new
resource developed.
Conduct User Training — once your content is uploaded and you are ready to re-launch your
Intranet, schedule a meeting with each department to provide user training. To ensure adop-
tion, it is critical that your users are fully aware of the contents on the Intranet and that they are
comfortable using the system.
Send Monthly Reminders — deliver a monthly email to all employees highlighting new content,
common uses, or tips and tricks to reinforce adoption rates and increase ROI. You need to main-
tain mindshare for at least the first 3 months to ensure project success. If you have analytics,
monitor download activity and target users who have never logged in, or login very rarely.

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REVITALIZED

Read this brief how-to guide to learn:

2 REVITALIZED INTRANETS REDUCE SUPPORT COSTS HOW-TO GUIDE

Common Content by Department

3 REVITALIZED INTRANETS REDUCE SUPPORT COSTS HOW-TO GUIDE

Sales and Customer Service

4 REVITALIZED INTRANETS REDUCE SUPPORT COSTS HOW-TO GUIDE

Intranet Revitalization Best Practices

5 REVITALIZED INTRANETS REDUCE SUPPORT COSTS HOW-TO GUIDE

Assess Intranet Content — determine if your content is up-to-date, accurate, relevant, or

6 REVITALIZED INTRANETS REDUCE SUPPORT COSTS HOW-TO GUIDE

Sign up for a free trial at: www.demandmetric.com

© Demand Metric Research Corporation.

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