There are dozens of intranet software options available on the market today and choosing the best fit for your business can be a challenge, especially if this is your first time using this type of solution. The selection process, therefore, should start with trying to understand exactly what the needs of your employees are.Tired of having to log in to three or more different portals to manage your tasks? It is extremely important that you spend time finding out what the main pain points are so that you can create a list of priorities to guide your final decision.

After knowing the main requirements of your intranet, you will have to choose between the variety of software that you will find. Most will fall into one of the three categories that currently exist, and narrowing down the options to one of these categories will simplify your decision process.

1. The tool set

If you don't already have an intranet in your company, your team will probably be using some set of tools and applications found online to facilitate their work. This suite can include, for example, storing notes in Evernote , scheduling meetings with Doodle , sending larger files via WeTransfer , or other productivity apps.

For companies that do not need an intranet immediately, promoting the use of this type of standardized tools is a good alternative. In this strategy, what is necessary is that you choose the tools that best adapt to the needs of the employees and the company and that you make sure that everyone has access to them.

Today, many of these online work tools offer the possibility of integrating one another. Sometimes a suite can seem more attractive and easier to manage than an intranet - especially if your team doesn't need more than a dozen tools and there are no conflicting requirements. But what if this is not the case in your company and the activities are more complex?

2. The standard out-of-the-box solution

An “out-of-the-box” intranet software is ideal for those companies that have certain basic needs that cannot be solved with a set of tools alone, but that are not so complex as to require more custom development. In this scenario, intranet software with standard features would be the perfect solution.

Some of the more typical features found in standard intranet solutions are:

• Personalized homepage and news feed
• Ability to add videos
• document library
• Activity Flow
• Group pages
• Employee profiles and blogs
• Have mobile version enabled

This is the ideal solution for companies that do not have the time, money or many resources available to develop a custom intranet. Building an intranet is one thing, but maintaining it is something else entirely. Out-of-the-box intranets require fewer resources to keep up to date, however there is also the risk of being more dependent on the vendor and any decisions you as a vendor make regarding software functionality.

In addition, these standard solutions usually require you to adopt the functionalities as they are, without offering the possibility of adapting them to the reality of your company. This can be a good thing if user experience design is new to your company. The use of standard standard tools in this type of intranet ensures that you can control a website without having to have a very high level of user experience knowledge or make a large investment. On the other hand, if these benefits are not enough, you can always look for something that better suits your needs.

3. The personalized platform

The last category of intranet software is customizable platforms. This type of solution is ideal for large companies with more complex needs. Normally they are also companies that belong to a specific segment of the market, such as a bank, which will need some typical functionalities used by employees in the financial sector. These platforms require more commitment, but it can also be said that they are more complete and efficient than a standard intranet.

For example, intranets built on customizable platforms are better equipped to carry out more complex business processes. A Diagnostic Laboratory has built a customer portal and an intranet with the aim of improving the cumbersome process of ordering and tracking medical tests. To enable its employees to track results, its intranet needed to integrate features it had never had before, such as synchronizing postal service databases, tagging patient data through the diagnostic lab, and making it easy for clinicians to log in and access the results. As this laboratory has been one of the few (perhaps the only one) to create a digital solution for all the processes involved in patient testing, there was no alternative intranet that could meet these needs, so it was necessary to build a custom one.

Ideally, your company's intranet should be the extension of its culture, and customizable platforms allow you to align these two elements so that they are present from the main page. Let's say your HR team wants to launch a fitness challenge where employees must set a goal for the number of steps they take per day. For this, it would be necessary, for example, to create a discussion forum where to publish phrases and content that would encourage said challenge, as well as an agenda - for those who wish to meet and walk together -, a mobile application, a classification panel, among other ideas. that could arise.

Increased flexibility is also critical in organizations whose requirements are constantly changing and need to adapt quickly. QAD , an ERP software provider, has to include some business requirements in all the projects they upload on their intranet. As the IT team decided to invest in a customizable intranet, it is possible to quickly create these new requirements as they arise, through a single tool used by your employees.

Finally, if your company wants to incorporate new technologies in the future, such as Artificial Intelligence or the Internet of Things, in its intranet, a customizable platform will allow you to plan how you are going to implement them in your infrastructure. In the case of off-the-shelf solutions, for example, this depends on the provider, and not you, deciding that these technologies are worth including. 

 Also Read:employee communication app

START WITH WHAT YOU NEED

Whether you're building an intranet for the first time or upgrading one you've been using for a while, it's best to start with what you know you need. Often the real challenge with intranets is convincing your employees to use them. When you focus the strategy on the applications and tools that you know they use in their day-to-day, you will be able to choose the software that will address the main pain points of your company, also ensuring greater commitment to use by employees.