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 perhapsthefastest 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 time
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 training
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!
Richard D S Hill
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/intranets-and-extranets-109791.html
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intranets, extranets, internets
In the business context computer networks can be a real asset. This includes storage and retrieval of information, reducing the need for paper traffic and record keeping in paper format, as well as rationalising the time that staff spends producing correspondence and accounts.
The big danger is that the real purpose of a computer network is not fully assessed resulting in an installation and maintenance plan that is not adequate for its use.
In addition, if the installation of a new computer network is not fully supported by the staff, then the network itself is may not be taken full advantage of, and record keeping becomes a mixture between digital and paper based records.
In a business context the following uses are typical. They are listed in ascending order of complexity:
Share resources such as printer.
Share data on a central server, where all data is collected.
Communicate via e-mail.
Exchange information via an internal network.
Allow all staff access to the Internet.
Use the network and the Internet to allow staff access to business data from anywhere in the world
Integrate the whole business operation into a networked operation, including sales activity, stock holding, quotations, ordering raw materials, control the production process, process invoices, process all the accounts, analyse business performance, quality control.
Each stage introduces an extra layer of complexity to the operation and an extra level of staff expertise and acceptance. In addition to the sheer network installation each level of functionality is combined with a suite of software that needs to be configured once and kept running subsequently.
One example of how complicated things become on the simplest level is access and sharing of data. A detailed plan and assessment of who should have access to what kind of data, and who can change and delete data needs to be drawn up and implemented. From a technical point of view this is very simple, from an organisational point of view this may be a serious difficulty.
With the adoption of a new procedure within the business and the learning of the new processes by the staff, the network becomes ever more mission critical. This means, that if a problem occurs, the operation of the business could be seriously disrupted. To avoid major losses, for example, consider the introduction and purchase of adequate data backup procedures.
And this also means that careful planning is required to make sure that the necessary maintenance of the system is always kept up. Usually the cost of the system and ongoing maintenance is offset by the productivity gains of the improved operation of the business.
It is strongly advisable to make a full assessment of the cost and benefits that the introduction of the new procedure entails and to argue the introduction of a new process in terms of a strict business case.
Very often such undertakings fail because of a communication gap between the technical personnel and engineers who carry out the installation, and the management and staff of the company that takes such a new system on.
Overall, especially in Small to Medium Sized Businesses, the strict assessment of cost and benefit is not carried leading to serious problems.
There is also the tendency to overcomplicate the procedure in software terms. Software can in theory do anything you like (as long as it is an algorithmic process), but different off-the-shelf packages may not interact with each other very well. It is impossible to foresee problems of this kind without the detailed input by experienced engineers.
NOTE : Software and Computer Networks can NEVER be a SOLUTION, they can be instrumental in assisting in the improvement of the overall business operation. Software and Networks need people to work and produce results. And everybody involved will need to know and understand the aim behind the introduction of the new process.
References :
http://www.itwales.com/999315.htm