The Future Of Intranets: Trends And Modern Features
A highly adopted modern intranet acts as the gateway for a modern workplace. From employee collaboration to communications to knowledge management, intranets serve various business purposes. Just like any other technology, intranets need to be upgraded with modern features to retain employee usage and engagement.
As someone who helped deploy modern intranets and intranet chatbots for numerous Fortune 500 companies, SMBs and start-ups, we created this infographic to educate you on the key developments in the intranet space.
The Future of Intranets
Traditional intranets with outdated features and functionalities are fast becoming obsolete. Today’s modern workplace demands a modern intranet equipped with modern features to drive better employee experience, collaboration, knowledge management and ROI.
Key Trends
1. Artificial Intelligence
“Artificial intelligence assistants and conversational interfaces have a great deal of potential to help (SharePoint intranet) users complete quick tasks and are becoming easier to deploy” – ClearBox Consulting
2. Faster Development
“Intranet development timelines are getting shorter…Faster development strategies, such as Agile, contribute to shorter times, as do continually improving website development tools” – Nielsen Norman Group
3. Personalized Experiences
Intranet personalization enhances the way employees interact with the intranet. A robust personalization strategy will be vital to improving user experience and adoption rates.
4. Simplified Design
Design focus will be less on leveraging latest fads and more on getting the fundamentals right. Foundational design elements like page structure, information architecture, a streamlined look etc. will be a major focus.
As the number of tools and applications increase within an enterprise, intranets will be used as a gateway for employees to access all these systems at one place.
5. Systems Integration
As the number of tools and applications increase within an enterprise, intranets will be used as a gateway for employees to access all these systems at one place.
6. Mobile-Friendliness
This is the next key step for intranets. As your workforce becomes more mobile, your intranet features should be optimized for a range of mobile and desktop devices.
Modern Intranet Features to Look For
AI Chatbots
The conversational UI of a chatbot helps employees swiftly access Intranet information within the actively used messaging app and complete tasks quickly. Content updating can also be automated.
Intranet Analytics
Analytics tools can be leveraged to measure and analyze your intranet engagement, adoption, content, and the overall performance.
Enterprise Search
Enabling enterprise search within your intranet increases the employee productivity by eliminating the hassle of switching between different apps to get the information they require.
Social Features
Social features and tools continue to evolve and promise a much better collaboration. New options to look for include in-depth employee profiles, personalized quick links, employee updates etc.
Hub Sites
Hub sites are the latest building block of SharePoint intranets that bring together a group of related sites, give a persistent menu navigation and improve search.
Check out Acuvate’s Sharepoint Intranet Solution – Mesh!
Mesh is an AI-Powered modern intranet solution deployable both on on-premise and cloud environments. It is a ready to deploy solution which can go live in 4-6 weeks. Get in touch with to get a quick demo of Mesh!
Sareen Madupu is a Product Manager for Mesh at Acuvate. He has around 9 years of experience in Usability and User Experience of Digital Interfaces. He has been with Acuvate for 7 years and worked on concepting UX of 30+ intranets.
Sareen Babu