Intranets

Advanced solutions

Companies with many employees, widely distributed offices or complex internal systems, may decide that they wish to migrate the lion's share of their business processes to their intranet. Such a solution has a lot in common with creating a bespoke corporate network - software can be removed from individual machines, and everything run remotely from a powerful central server.

This can allow sophisticated activities such as online project management and collaborative working. It could also mean an end to paper-based administration with document management, discussion boards and form submission. Effectively every action and business process - from finding telephone numbers to how your internal purchasing process works - would run through one co-ordinated system.

For many companies, such an intranet becomes a tool for re-engineering the business.

An advanced intranet solution can be purchased, leased or outsourced through a software provider or a specialist agency. Because a one-size-fits-all approach doesn't work for projects of this importance, every advanced intranet package has a degree of tailoring. Many large software suppliers have suites of software which they configure to your needs. Agencies, meanwhile, may write software themselves to create a bespoke solution.

Costs

Due to the potential variation in size, functionality and technical complexity, solutions providers like IBM, Plumtree, Novell or Logica don't give indicative prices - they prefer to discuss your needs first. However, even at the lower end, costs are likely to be a matter of tens of thousands of pounds.

Requirements

You may have to upgrade your infrastructure.
This could include:

• a faster web server
  
• greater storage capacity
  
• more bandwidth
  
• additional support staff.

Considerations

A full feasibility and return on investment (ROI) study will be needed if you go down this route. You will also have to budget for the time and cost of issuing tenders and scoping the project with your chosen provider.

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