What can a social intranet software do for me and my company? Imagine this. Employees in your company have a work-related question, and no one is around to answer it. They open their phones to look up Google, and instead of resolving the query, end up on social media content that’s not even remotely linked to the question.
If, after reading this, you are like, “Yeah, I’ve seen this happen in my company,” then don’t worry. You and your colleagues are not the only ones who’ve been in a similar situation. Many professionals consider social networking platforms as a distraction that kills their productivity. Scrolling through an endless flurry of dog and cat videos can make it hard for your colleagues to complete their work.
Social media networks, therefore, have a terrible reputation in workplaces. But if you think about it, the bad rep is there because we all know how good social networks are at keeping people engaged and interacting with each other.
So here comes the question. What if you could utilise this power of social networking platforms and use it to help yourself and your teammates engage and interact more seamlessly at work?
Well, say hello to social intranet software.
Defining social intranet software
What is an intranet? An intranet is an internal website that helps employees communicate and get work done. An excellent social intranet software helps all employees contribute. The term “social” means people.
So, a social intranet combines these two concepts to make employees communicate and collaborate better within a workplace. While traditional company networks rely on a few individuals to collate content and keep everyone abreast of all the happenings within the company, social intranets turn every employee into creators, thereby guaranteeing that the information is up-to-date.
Social intranets in the workplace
A social intranet can change your company’s antiquated employee network into an online space where employees and team members can interact, learn, communicate, and help each other with their problems.
Social intranets are gaining popularity worldwide, and businesses are starting to realise they need such platforms to complement the cultural and intellectual exchange. As a digital epicentre for workplaces, the social intranet delivers a modern response to the old-school intranet, which doesn’t have social elements like user profiles, comments, and the ability to share content.
A tool like this incorporates the power of social media, powerful search, content sharing capabilities etc. and creates a hub for collaboration and communication. All of which translates into more productivity, morale, and improved revenues. Social intranets can serve as hubs of interactivity and collaboration.
SharePoint as a social intranet platform
The benefits of maintaining an intranet in an organisation are numerous. Still, often, the intranets are not well integrated into the culture or workflows of the organisation – and they soon forget about it. Maybe the employees are not aware that a social intranet exists, don’t have good reasons to use it, or don’t know how to use it? Hence choosing the right platform is crucial.
SharePoint is a communication and collaboration platform provided by Microsoft. Businesses around the world use SharePoint to build their intranet systems.
SharePoint comes bundled with your company’s Microsoft Office 365 subscription. It is also available as a standalone subscription-based service. Office 365 SharePoint is fully integrated with other apps and provides a robust, flexible and scalable platform that can help share, edit and store files with people across the company.
Why you should use SharePoint as your company’s social intranet software
One of the most noteworthy things about Microsoft SharePoint is collaboration and seamless communication at its core. On the other hand, it is a powerful tool that significantly improves employee productivity and your business’s bottom line.
As a social intranet platform, SharePoint provides proper work-related functionality such as project management, workflows, document management, collaboration tools, etc. and social media components like profiles, chats, and news feeds.
Here are some in-depth reasons why SharePoint should be the foundation upon which you should build your company’s social intranet platform.
1. Most used intranet platform in the world
Yes, SharePoint is the most widely used social intranet software globally. Several digital workplace and intranet surveys prove this. While this isn’t a compelling argument to use SharePoint, it does provide some confidence that businesses worldwide are successfully adopting SharePoint and SharePoint Online to create intranets aligned to their business objectives.
SharePoint intranets frequently win intranet industry awards, such as Nielsen Norman Group’s Annual Top Ten Intranets and the Step Two Intranet & Digital Workplace Awards.
2. Microsoft Office 365 and Microsoft tools integration
SharePoint’s ability to interact with other Microsoft applications, often without the assistance of developers, is a big plus. Integrating Yammer feeds, Teams lists, and OneDrive documents is so straightforward that content editors can typically do it without any assistance from developers.
There are also exciting possibilities for incorporating process improvement (e.g., Power Automate) and reporting (e.g. Power BI) into your company’s intranet. It also works the other way around, allowing you to integrate the intranet experience into Teams.
Moreover, Microsoft Power Apps allow you to quickly create bespoke solutions that can seamlessly interact with your company’s intranet, making SharePoint an excellent choice for automation, enhanced workflow, connecting to other enterprise applications, etc.
3. Highly cost-effective
If you use Microsoft 365, you can begin utilising SharePoint as your company’s social intranet software without paying a single extra penny. Moreover, administrative tasks, such as approving an employee’s leave application, are redundant. You won’t have to waste time on these tasks because SharePoint will take care of them. You can automate basic administrative activities to save money, and the person who does them will be able to contribute more meaningfully to the organisation.
4. Flexible, customisable, and scalable
SharePoint’s versatility and scalability are two of its most impressive features. It is useful for companies with 100 to even 100,000 employees and offers various features such as internal communication, content services, collaboration, search & findability, and more.
As businesses restructure and their strategic priorities shift, flexibility and scalability become more critical. As per numerous digital workplace and intranet surveys, SharePoint can adapt to your changing business needs and objectives so that you don’t have to spend extra time, effort and budget to revamp your company’s intranet software.
5. Boosts employee engagement and collaboration
SharePoint can send notifications, communications, and HR surveys as a social intranet software.
It allows company leaders to communicate with employees and encourage peer-to-peer discussion.
It helps you look for people within the firm, enhance audience understanding, and improve communication channels. SharePoint offers tools like Yammer and Microsoft Teams to encourage collaboration.
6. Powerful document management capabilities
The acquisition, storage, and distribution of documents are critical to the success of any firm. SharePoint’s full document and library capabilities are just a few essential features that help businesses manage and share documents.
The capabilities go way beyond the lifecycle of a document. Be it monitoring the version history, tracking changes or syncing with Microsoft Office, and you can find all necessary information in a single place. You can also co-author your documents without dealing with endless email trails.
7. Can handle your content publishing requirements
Content is the foundation of a social intranet platform, and SharePoint allows you to publish and manage them effortlessly. SharePoint also allows advanced management and presentation of content for business branding, themes, navigation etc.
8.Several intranet-in-a-box choices are available
One of the many benefits of using SharePoint (especially SharePoint Online) for your company’s social intranet is the vast array of options available.
SharePoint intranet-in-a-box products work alongside SharePoint to give additional site templates, page layouts, pre-built web modules, enhanced governance, and other capabilities, allowing you to develop a social intranet solution in weeks.
These turnkey intranet packages are highly effective, cost-efficient, and fully harness SharePoint’s power to deliver the type of modern intranet that large companies require.
9. Improved security measures
Microsoft has implemented stringent security and compliance controls. Regardless of their level of accessibility, you may manage the document’s access and security.
Additionally, using a single, integrated platform reduces vulnerabilities that leak into different systems.
SharePoint also helps you protect the company’s culture by monitoring employee behaviour and ensuring that they follow internal policies.
10.Microsoft continues to invest in SharePoint
Microsoft has been investing heavily in SharePoint and SharePoint Online in recent years and will continue to do so in the future. Regular announcements and feature updates do make SharePoint’s future look promising. You can rest assured that investment in SharePoint will result in a social intranet that is truly future-proof, capable of evolving and improving with new features and capabilities.
To Conclude
As a social intranet software, SharePoint offers you one of the easiest and quickest ways to set up a platform where employees can seamlessly interact and collaborate. SharePoint’s flexibility allows you to design solutions specific to your business needs.
While several social intranet software providers are out there, they may require more effort and money than you can imagine. Also, it’s worth remembering that you already have SharePoint access if you have Microsoft 365! All you have to do now is launch your personalised social intranet!
Here at Neologix, we love helping businesses connect their teams and improve their bottom line. If you’re keen to find out more about getting a social intranet up and running, just get in touch.
Our experts will assess your existing infrastructure and build your organisation a SharePoint intranet to help you achieve your business goals.
