Why Choose SharePoint As Your Intranet Solution?
Organisations looking to implement or upgrade an intranet must first consider which intranet solution can meet all their specific requirements. A popular choice for many businesses, Microsoft SharePoint, offers many benefits as an intranet solution, some of which we discuss below.
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An intranet is a local communication portal within a company’s private internet network that acts as a digital company portal connecting employees to work-related information. An effective intranet solution should be designed to be user-friendly, ensure employee engagement and be highly customised to an organisation's brand displaying what is important to them. Companies looking to implement or upgrade an Intranet must first decide which software or vendor will be most suited to them and their business needs.
Microsoft SharePoint is a popular choice for many leading businesses with benefits including;
Seamless Integration
Using SharePoint independently of other apps would be limiting the advantages it can offer a business. When integrated, SharePoint serves as an enterprise-wide solution. Offering native integration with the Microsoft technology stack, SharePoint allows employees to work more efficiently, limiting the need to toggle between apps.
Popular apps to use with SharePoint are the Microsoft Office 365 Suite, Microsoft Teams, Power BI and Power Apps. However, you are not limited to just Microsoft applications; SharePoint can integrate with several third-party apps.
Secured Information
Acting as a central store for company information, news and documents, data and information security is a key consideration when setting up a company-wide intranet. With SharePoint, a company's IT administrator can easily define the security of individual data sets. SharePoint allows one to set certain permissions for any document, folder, library or site. This allows only authorised users to access particular documents and gives the business full control over the accessibility of certain aspects of the intranet.
Custom Design
Opting for SharePoint as an intranet solution is not restrictive in any way, SharePoint provides a flexible framework that is scalable and fully customisable, allowing it to match the infrastructure needs of any organisation. The intranet can be tailored to have the information management, and collaboration features a business requires and ensure the design matches branding criteria without any added complexity to the process.
Document Management
Microsoft SharePoint is a leader in the document management space which is also reflected in their intranet solutions. Having an intranet backed by these abilities in its framework accelerates it as a digital hub for any company. With easy set up of relevant menus and libraries, sourcing relevant documents by departments or teams becomes easier saving time. SharePoint also allows users to set up workflows to help automate and streamline tasks around document management.
External Sharing
External sharing of content can often be a security concern for many organisations, particularly when they don’t have the correct solution in place to facilitate this correctly. The sharing of content externally is becoming more common as organisations want to collaborate more efficiently. SharePoint intranet allows easy external sharing through SharePoint Online.
Employee Engagement
A less technical benefit but one of the main impacts of a SharePoint intranet is its ability to boost employee engagement. The intranet allows employees to view all aspects of organisational processes offering transparency which establishes trust between employer and employee. The intranet keeps employees updated on all company news and events making employees feel involved. This, in turn, will encourage them to engage more, offering feedback and suggestions on content where they can. Further, this can create a more community feel to a working environment making employees happier and boosting performance.
Overall, SharePoint is a leader in the intranet solutions space for many reasons, some of which are highlighted above. SharePoint can suit almost any organisation and its requirements with its flexible and customisable abilities. SharePoint allows businesses to create an intranet to improve team collaboration, file sharing and productivity. Looking to explore the possibilities of a SharePoint intranet for your business? Storm’s SharePoint experts are on-hand to help you develop a solution to suit all your needs. For more information, contact us today! You can also check out our case study with LIA, who adopted a company intranet to improve communications and boost employee engagement.
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