Moving from a Static Intranet to a Digital Workspace

For most people, the idea of a corporate intranet is a place where you can grab company news, find benefit renewal forms, see the stock ticker, and access the directory. This is all well and good, and if it looks decent and it’s is easy to use, even better! While some might venture to call that type of static intranet a success, today, the digital workspace can be so much more.

What Does the Digital Workspace Look Like?

The best digital workplaces are customized to align with the needs of the specific organization it serves. However, they’re all a combination of an intranet, collaboration program, task manager, and communication platform. An ideal digital workspace is a portal, connecting disparate applications and resources that employees need to do their job, without the burden of multiple logins and multiple open windows. It’s connected, easy to use, and driven by search and discovery. It allows you to store content, keep that content private, share it with your team, or even co-author pieces with 8 of your colleagues.

A digital workplace is about you. It’s geared to show only content that’s relevant to who you are, who you work with, and what you do, while still allowing you to access resources you need as an employee. It should be the first thing you want to check when you turn your computer on in the morning!

What Makes an Effective Intranet Redesign?

If efficiency and productivity are two of your organizational goals, then it’s time to consider building a corporate intranet, or at the very least, redesigning your current one. If you want to achieve optimum success, you need to give your employees the tools to do so. An effective intranet redesign:

  • Provides a flexible collaboration workspace for employees to leverage the knowledge of one another, and discover solutions faster
  • Has corporate information policies running in the background
  • Should not just be an internal website

And remember, digital workspaces aren’t about static content learning — they’re about dynamic content and being able to easily discover what’s new.

Where to Begin?

So you’re convinced you need an intranet redesign, but where do you start? The first step is having a clear picture of your requirements and what productivity looks like in your organization. Take a detailed look at your structure and identify communication, collaboration, and information management opportunities. Be diligent because these opportunities can be hidden in the form of tasks, processes, and functional groups. As an example, take a look at the process for preparing for a board meeting:

  • Who has to contribute content?
  • Who needs to view the content?
  • What timelines and deadlines need to be met?
  • How can productivity tools and collaboration speed up the preparation process?
  • How can information and records management policies help protect and manage artifacts after the meeting has taken place?

By carefully examining processes like these in detail, it’s easy to identify opportunities for improvement, like whether or not the timeline for a task is appropriate, whether resources are being allocated optimally, and whether collaboration spaces are set up effectively. Once areas of improvement are identified, a customized digital workplace can be created.

Ready to talk about your intranet redesign requirements? Schedule a free consultation,or give us a call at240-348-5208.

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