According to a report featured by the TechRepublic, an average employee switches between 35 job-critical applications more than 1,100 times every day. And an IDC report says that knowledge workers spend an average of 2.5 hours every week finding the information they need within their enterprises. This means employees are spending hundreds of unproductive hours annually performing non trivial tasks like navigating through apps and searching for information that barely add any business value.
For a large enterprise, this translates into millions of dollars in lost revenue.
Can your organization afford this heightened unproductivity and lost revenue at a time when remote working and hybrid workplace models are becoming the new normal?
Now consider this – what if you have a centralized digital workplace platform which can bring all your day-to-day apps under one common umbrella?
What if you have a single interface in which you can access information and perform all your work-related activities without the hassle of switching and logging into multiple apps?
Modern intranets like Mesh 3.0 are enabling just that. They’re acting as a central information hub for enterprises.
Multiple Apps, Data Silos And Integration Challenges Are Reducing Your Business Productivity
Before delving into how an intranet can act as a central information hub, let’s understand why you need a centralized hub in the first place. Enterprises today deploy numerous on-premise and cloud apps for a variety of purposes. In fact according to a report by Symantec, enterprises on average use up to 1000 cloud apps but their CIOs think its just 30 or 40 apps.
Business apps can broadly divided into the following categories:
- ESS: Employee self-service apps for HR and IT service management. Ex: ServiceNow, Workday.
- Productivity: Document and record management systems, communication and collaboration tools, project and idea management tools Ex: Office 365, Teams, Yammer, Slack, SharePoint.
- LoB: CRM, production, sales and other functional apps.
- Business Intelligence (BI) apps: Power BI, Oracle BI, Tableau,Qlikview etc.
- ERP: The backbone of all the applications. Ex: SAP, Oracle
In many cases, these apps don’t integrate with one another and have unique interfaces of their own. Poor integration costs businesses half a million dollars every year, according to a 2019 market report. This results in a fragmented IT ecosystem, increased data silos, reduced findability of information and decreased productivity.
Modern Intranets Can Be Leveraged As a Central Information Hub
Gone are the days when intranets were seen as glorified shared folders. Today, intranets are acting as a one-stop-shop to communicate, collaborate, and search and share information.
Modern intranets like Mesh 3.0 provide flexible integrations with multiple third-party apps, digital workplace tools and custom back-end systems used by an organization. They seamlessly unite all your business apps and bring them under one common digital platform.
This means you don’t have to switch different apps to get your work done. Just open your intranet homepage and you can see your most used and favorite apps available as widgets or quick links within it. You no longer have to open individual apps to perform activities and access information stored in them. You can do it at the convenience of your intranet.
Learn More: Application Integration With Intranets
How Using An Intranet As A Central Information Hub Will Help
1. Access information stored in different systems
- A cognitive enterprise search engine in an intranet lets you find reports, documents, and other files and folders stored in different apps.
- Personalize your intranet feed with the relevant dashboards and widgets which contain information related to your line of business, KPIs, projects, service requests etc.
Examples: A PowerBI/Tableau dashboard in your intranet helps you to monitor KPIs and access reports in a single click. A HRSM or ITSM widget displays the status of your requests or tickets. A SharePoint widget recommends the right documents based on your interests and role.
2. Perform tasks without switching apps
Throughout their day, employees need to perform a variety of minor tasks related to HR, project management, admin, line of business etc.
Examples: Raising an IT ticket, doing transactions with LoB systems, applying for PTO, adding or moving project files in SharePoint, changing user information or updating customer records in CRM.
But even the smallest of these tasks will take time if employees are expected to login to multiple applications to complete them. An intranet can act as a single interface to get all these tasks done without switching apps.
3. Get important notifications
Employees need to constantly keep a track of and stay informed on different things. They need to be updated on their business KPIs, changes in HR or company policies, status of their leave requests, IT tickets, project tasks etc. And they can’t be expected to login to multiple apps to track the status of each thing. Modern intranets can proactively send notifications from different apps and ensure employees stay updated.
For example, by integrating your intranet with your BI app, you can set and get personalized alerts on changes in business KPIs.
Get Started
The importance of enabling an intranet as a central destination for information, collaboration and communication can’t be overstated. As the number of data silos increase due to the influx of SaaS apps, employees need one place to manage their work. Let your employees focus on their core business activities by making it easy for them to access information and perform their day-to-day tasks. Remember, organizational productivity is key to staying competitive in the marketplace.
Explore Acuvate’s Intranet Solution Mesh 3.0
Acuvate’s autonomous SharePoint intranet – Mesh 3.0 can integrate and connect with third-party apps like Office 365, SAP, Service Now, Salesforce, Workday, PeopleSoft, Kronos and many more including custom back-end systems to provide limitless scalability.
Its in-built capability to connect with any business applications eases out the barriers of long duration integration efforts to get started, unlike the traditional intranets. Thereby it creates a seamless yet effective global network – providing a central hub for breaking down silos.
