I was chatting with a client of our intranet software, Bill Diekmann, Director of IT at Cupertino Electric Inc. (www.cei.com) and he had some great insights as to how the implementation of an intranet site can greatly benefit a company. Cupertino purchased Intranet Connections in August 2008, so they are relatively new to the software. Bill shared information on how a solid, quick to deploy intranet platform has improved productivity and lowered operating costs for Cupertino.

An intranet is more than a central place to store your documents and corporate information. Our chat with Bill Diekmann really brought to light how important it is to think about how the various pieces of intranet functionality can improve workflow, save valuable time, and maybe most importantly save money. The cost vs. benefit of implementing an intranet is overwhelming when all the factors are taken into account.

First on the list is a well designed, easily searchable Employee Directory can be an invaluable asset on your intranet. Enabling employees to have information about everyone in the company, along with their skills and unique talents, can’t be undervalued.

Bill Diekmann: “We can go to our Employee Directory and see our entire employee list. All of our employee information is there and we can search employees by job site, which was really big for us.”

Another big item on the list is a robust Document Management and Electronic Form Builder feature. With ROI increasingly important in the current economic climate, the cost savings that can be achieved in printing costs alone can be monumental.

“We have about 1100 employees, only 300 of which are in the office”, says Bill Diekmann. “We used to publish our forms into binders and send them out to job sites on a regular basis. Whenever these forms would change, we would have 60-odd job sites that need their binders updated. Now with the intranet, the binders are gone and everything is updated through the site. The cost savings alone from printing my ISO forms gave us ROI on our intranet in less than a year.”

Having all your documents centrally located and easily searchable is an important asset that an intranet application can provide for your company. Employees can have corporate documents and information they might need all in one place and searchable. Not to mention that they can obtain this content in a matter of a few clicks.

“Anybody in the company, whether inside or outside the office, can very easily search documents and e-forms and find the exact item that they are looking for.”

Intranet Connections Document Management Features

At Cupertino Electric, they have 300 employees in the office and approximately 800 in the field. The time saved from having to re-print new documents and procedures, and then distribute and update them as necessary to these employee was a massive benefit. Less administration time used updating documents means more resources available to use elsewhere.

Another benefit of packaged intranet software is the cut down in administration time. When you can have your documents, employee directory, department pages, support desk, and employee networking all in one neat and tidy location, the administration time can be minimized. Training employees on multiple tools is cumbersome and time consuming. The Intranet Connections software was built with little-to-no maintenance required from a dedicated company resource. The entire intranet can set up in minutes and can be managed with very little time committed on a regular basis. This was a big selling feature for Cupertino, who first went down the SharePoint route. Rapid deployment, simple setup, easy data backups and minimum on-going maintenance were factors in Cupertino deciding to drop the SharePoint project and go with Intranet Connections. Now Cupertino invests about three man hours a week of intranet administration and answering employee questions.

There are also many ‘outside the box’ uses of an intranet. An interesting piece of functionality that Bill had created which had been an invaluable resource to them was to create a Competitive Information sub-site through the intranet software. All real-time information about their competitors is shared through this hub, allowing employees to obtain current competitor data from one place easily, removing the need for them to search the internet independently.

Bill’s experience with Intranet Connections is an excellent example of how an enterprise intranet tool can streamline your company’s productivity. When looking into intranet software, try not to think of all the functionality it provides at face value. It is important to look deeper at how you can leverage the features and turn your intranet into a cost savings tool.

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Tags: Client Stories, intranet ROI, Intranet Success, Intranet tips