Intranets: Online vs. Traditional Communications

Many businesses are reluctant to develop and deploy a corporate intranet due to concerns about security. Moreover, many business owners do not see the need for an intranet, and feel that their current, paper-based, system works perfectly well. For most businesses, however, intranets can provide even greater security than more traditional forms of communication, and intranets are an easy way to save organizations of all sizes both money and time.

Paper files can easily be lost, stolen, or removed from your facility. This can expose your business to legal liability if confidential client information is lost or stolen, and can result in work disruption if the missing file was the only record available. Intranets can be password-protected, allowing only authorized employees access to sensitive information. Securing your network with a firewall and other security features will ensure that hackers and malware cannot steal your data from outside of your organization. Your important files and data will remain safely on your corporate intranet, which means no more worries over recreating lost information.

Paper files, policies, directories, and financial information require frequent updates to ensure that the information remains timely and accurate. Updating this information, and distributing it to all interested parties, takes a considerable amount of time and paper. An intranet would provide a central database, accessible to all members of your organization, which can be easily updated and distributed virtually. The amount of time saved by your human resources department will be substantial, and will free that department to attend to other areas.

Because the information located in your intranet database is so simple to update, the information contained within that database will be more accurate than the information on outdated paper files. Editing paper manuals and instruction books is time consuming and complicated, which means they are much less likely to be updated and corrected as needed.

Deploying a corporate intranet will also save your organization a significant amount of money. Using traditional paper and print to keep track of all of your business information requires costly ink, paper, and personnel resources. Although it may be expensive to initially deploy, an intranet requires much less financial output for maintenance. In addition, unless your organization and database are extremely large and require an employee specifically assigned to perform updates, your database of information is free to maintain, edit, and distribute.

You will never have to worry about getting enough copies of important information to your employees, as every employee will be able to turn on their computer at any time and view the necessary data when needed. Intranets provide a cheaper, easier, more accurate means of communicating with your employees and sharing information. Security risks, when compared to traditional methods of communication, are often lower when using an intranet, and using less paper is better for the environment!