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"INTRANET ARE USELESS!"

Bernard Baron
Bernard Baron

20 July 2023

Often criticized, sometimes undervalued for its uses, the intranet is regularly the subject of criticism. And yet, while there is often room for improvement, it seems impossible to do without one.

The intranet no longer serves any purpose...says the communications director of a major group, after a Comex meeting where he was criticized for the budgets requested to upgrade his intranet.

Fortunately, he remembered the period of successive confinements when the intranet was an essential vector for internal links within the company.

 

Useful in times of crisis? But not only!

 

Consultation statistics have shown, year after year, that the main uses of the intranet are accessing the company directory, using the search engine to access the document repository, and reading the news (primarily local news, before group news).

The intranet is an essential tool

These results are confirmed by the findings of observatory of intranet and digital communication organized by Arctus. The 2023 results clearly show that the intranet is essential [63% permanent or regular use) and these figures have been rising steadily since 2019 (+20pt).

 

So what is this intranet for? The observatory tells us main added values :

  • More fluid internal communication (69% of respondents)
  • Increasedoperational efficiency of organizations (59%)
  • Improving capitalization and transmission of knowledge (59%)
intranet quotidien opérationnel

We've been seeing this top trio for at least 5 years, sometimes in a different order, but the conclusion remains the same: the intranet is a key communication element for creating strategic alignment and commitmentit's also a key to individual and collective operational efficiency..

Ensuring continuity of operations in the event of a crisis was a top priority in the 2021 survey, due to the health crisis. Today, respondents consider that continuity is a given and no longer represents a major challenge.

Intranets make money!

Is this enough to defend the budgets of our Director of Internal Communications? Yes and no!

No, because without being able to evaluate the associated return on investment (ROI), the intranet runs the risk of being considered by Comexes as "Communication's toy".

 

Yes, because the benefits of the intranet have been proven, and ROI avenues are beginning to be documented and usable.

And three times yes, when it comes to connect intranet uses with the company's strategic planThe intranet then becomes the communication lever for implementing the strategic plan, and the vector for transforming working practices.

 

General management knows this!

The intranet observatory shows us that general management is not mistaken.

  • They are most committed to digital transformation (86%) far ahead of connected employees (77%)
  • 40% of these actively participate in the strategic management of intranets

But if you want to be convinced that your intranet is serving a purpose: turn it off and see what happens :).

To go further

Find out more about the latest trends in intranet & digital communication by downloading the results from our observatory..

The study was carried out among 401 respondents from 377 French companies of all sizes in the service, industry, administration and parapublic sectors, representing over 4.2 million employees, via an online questionnaire open from January 4 to April 7, 2023.  

 

Would you also like to find out more about approaches for assessing the associated return on investment (ROI) of an intranet? Let's talk about it, we can help you with your project!

Bernard Baron
Bernard Baron



Co-founder of Arctus, Bernard brings the technological and IS urbanization dimension to digital transformation projects. He is the point of contact for COMEXs, and helps business and IT departments to collaborate effectively by putting technology at the service of usage.

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