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Cut costs and improve service with intranet / extranet
It is amazing that many small and medium sized organizations still think of the Internet and the WWW as the only way EBusiness affects them.
What many fail to recognize is that Intranets and Extranets using ‘internet protocol’ (IP) technology is perhaps the fastest and most certain way that they are likely to gain benefits from Internet technology.
First let’s just ‘teach Granny’:
Intranet: an organization’s private network of computer networks used internally
Extranet: an organization’s private network of computer networks used externally
Intranets and Extranets can create value for organisations in a number of ways:
Decreased costs
Improved productivity
Improved customer service
Improved staff satisfaction
Better management controls and information
Decreased costs
Information is an important tool in business. Company-wide access to information can determine the success of sales, time-to-market, customer service and more. Intranets and Extranets can improve this information delivery process.
Save time and money as users find better information faster
Reduce operational cost through employee self-service
Reduce print costs: instantly change, edit, update sensitive information
Cost reduction in meeting, travel and telephone tim
Improved productivity
Improving productivity with faster and more efficient processing of transactions and orders comes from a range of features and benefits;
'Just in time', easy to find information
Available 24/365 and so reduce time & distance barriers
Increased accuracy: personalized data for clients / customers / suppliers / partners (CCSP)
Improved knowledge: sales support, inventory / order status, recalls, promotions
Speed up supply chain list buying preferences and tender specifications
Reduced purchasing/inventory costs, streamline processing, decrease space cost
Give CCSP the ability to initiate automatic re-stocking and invoicing
Automated processes decrease bottlenecks
Allows users to view, print and work collaboratively on office documents (word-processed documents, spreadsheets, presentations, etc.).
Improved time to market making proposals etc. available, speeding up approval
Improved customer service
Much customer service will always be dependent on face-to-face contact and technology will never replace it. However, elements of the customer relationship can improve via the use of Intranets and Extranets.
Give CCSP better access to sales / service
Strengthen working relationship with CCSP
Improve customer service forward queries directly to CCSP
Allow CCSP to view/comment work in progress
Offer research and information to specific CCSP
Improve tracking with CCSP
Reduce routine account manager work
Improved staff satisfaction
Staff tend to love Intranets. The 'self-service' concept and automating administrative processes empowers staff to manage holiday, sickness, expenses, timesheets, purchasing, surveys, room bookings, training or travel amongst others. This avoids costly and slow paper work on the administration side of a company.
In addition to this, Intranets and Extranets improve the quality of work-life for staff and deliver very effective computer based training solutions.
Simple to support with minimal training requirements
Puts users in control of their data
Easy to use, just point and click
Improved quality of life at work, reduced EMails and 'EMail fatigue'
Improved productivity from 'just in time', easy to find information
Reduce communication costs and reduce meetings and phone tag
Better knowledge management via relevant sharing
Help build a culture of sharing and collaboration
Improves decision making
Help organizational learning
Shorten cycle times for developments
Reduced cost of training via CBT, available 'on demand
Better management controls and information
Perhaps the greatest soft benefit is that for management by giving involvement and overview of processes, projects and teams even when absent or ‘on the road’.
- Reduces operational costs / risk sharing experience globally
- Improves message accuracy
- Reinforces central control of policy and procedure
- Reduces duplication because there need be only one owner for each piece of information
- Instant access to relevant databases such pricing, personnel
- Better, faster feedback, adaptation, correction via surveys and questionnaires
Costs
Of course there are costs to setting up Intranets and Extranets but they are very small when compared with other expenditures – starting in the low thousands can buy something really quite sophisticated that will generally have a far greater ROI than many capital expenditures.
The costs to consider are:
Start-up capital costs such as new PCs and providing network connections, web servers and server software
Software applications
Design consultancy - creating a structural, navigational and graphical design Promotion: the cost of launching to your target population
Training: the total cost, per user, of providing training
Ongoing capital costs for upgrades
- Ongoing revenue costs
- Administration
- Technical
- Internet access
- Maintenance, modifications and improvements
- Ongoing trainin
SUMMARY
The benefits have already been noted and can be set against those costs in a formal ROI cost benefit analysis if need be, but an Intranet or Extranet is really much more like a telephone system that other expenditures.
It is a major communications improvement for the company and once there, like a telephone system, people wonder how they ever did without it.
Just ask your self, by the way, what the ROI is on you telephone system. Do you know? Does the company or anyone in it? Probably not!
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Case Studies
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