What's an intranet and do you still need one in 2024?

Are you still using SharePoint (or Google Drive, or OneDrive) to manage your important workplace documentation, information, processes and policies? If so, firstly: ouch, sorry to hear it! And secondly: what if we told you there’s a much, much easier way?

If managing and finding your content, whether that’s your employee handbook, your compliance checklists, your elearning courses or anything else, is causing you headache after headache, it might be time to consider an intranet. The best intranet platforms will help your admins and managers structure content with ease, and help your people find exactly what they need, when they need it, no matter where they are. Sounds good, right?

What is an intranet?

An intranet is a private, internal platform used by a business to share information and resources and keep employees in the loop about important updates. Intranets are restricted to authorised users (i.e. your employees) only, so everything is completely secure and ‘locked away’ from the rest of the world.

Broadly speaking, there are three key characteristics that define an intranet:

1. Restricted access – an intranet is a secure, private environment for your employees only
2. Internal content and resources – an intranet’s content will be tailored to the needs of your company’s goals and people
3. Communication and collaboration – an intranet serves as a platform for company news, announcements and resource sharing

An intranet will typically comprise features such as document management, collaboration functionality and communication tools, and will house important resources such as employee handbooks, processes, policies, learning content and company news, all in a secure environment, helping you speed up knowledge transfer and boost operational efficiency.

What's the difference between the internet and an intranet?

While the internet is open to everyone, an intranet is private, and can only be accessed by the people you choose (usually employees, and sometimes freelancers or contractors). This means you can share confidential information and updates, or in-house content which only applies to your internal audience, without risking having it available on a public website.

While the internet is home to billions of webpages and resources (and that number is growing by the second), an intranet is a much smaller, controlled environment, where you decide exactly what is featured. In fact, you can decide exactly who sees what within the intranet environment, meaning your employees aren’t bombarded with irrelevant information.

What are the benefits of a business intranet?

Unsurprisingly, a business intranet brings with it a whole host of benefits – especially if you’re looking to replace a traditional document management system! Some of the benefits of having an intranet include:

• A single source source of truth – employees only have to go to a single platform to find all of your resources, learning content, policies, compliance information and process documentation
• Secure knowledge sharing – your sensitive company data is shared securely within the business, and specific content can be shared directly with the groups who need to see it (such as the leadership team or HR team)
• Cost saving – helps you save on costs associated with paper-based processes or expensive, inefficient document management tools
• Improved employee engagement – instead of relying on emails or Microsoft Teams messages, your intranet acts as a permanent home for your internal comms and updates, with the ability to see who has viewed what and remind people to check out the latest resources and news
• All-in-one platform – your intranet can play multiple roles from a single platform, including knowledge sharing, collaboration, learning management, company updates and communication

Is an intranet a SharePoint alternative?

If you’re looking for a SharePoint alternative, an intranet is a great option. While SharePoint is solely focused on sharing resources, opting for intranet software (like 5app!) means you can keep all of your business policies, processes, resources and learning content in one place – and yes, you can still organise it however you like.

Trust us, your employees will thank you for switching from SharePoint!

For instance, with a platform like 5app, you can structure content using features such as:

• Playlists – to organise themed lists of content (which can also be ordered to ensure employees access resources in a set order)
• Topics – to group playlists by category to help users navigate to the most relevant content (with sub-topics for even more granular organisation)
• Academies – to create a dedicated space for a specific role, group, department, location or use case (such as an onboarding academy, marketing academy, leadership academy or European academy)

In SharePoint, an employee will often navigate to a folder and be faced with a jumble of sub-folders and files, whereas with an intranet solution, you can organise content in a way that makes sense to employees, making it much quicker and easier for everyone to find what they need (and not get overwhelmed by things they don’t need).

What can I do with an intranet?

The question, really, should be “What CAN’T I do with an intranet?”! It’s essentially the modern, digital equivalent of a watercooler – a place for your employees to congregate, find information, share knowledge and celebrate successes.

Choosing a flexible platform to house your intranet allows you to grow and adapt your solution alongside your business needs, meaning you can host things like:

• Centralised document management – make all contracts, policies and procedures available in one easily accessible location
• Internal communications hub – a space for company-wide announcements, updates and news
• Employee directory – maintain up-to-date contact and role information for all employees
• Training materials – host your compliance, onboarding, skills development, industry training, product knowledge and more
• Knowledge base – a repository of FAQs, best practices and how-to guides for quick and easy on-demand access
• Employee recognition – a way to publicly celebrate achievements, such as successful projects, promotions and personal milestones
• Surveys and feedback – conduct employee engagement surveys to find out how everyone is feeling about your company
• Internal job postings – encourage internal mobility by listing your current vacancies
• Resource library – provide access to company resources such as templates, forms, brand guidelines, boilerplate copy and logos
• Company policies – upload your important policies and employee agreements (and know who’s seen and engaged with them)

A flexible business intranet will allow you to do a lot, but where it really comes into its own is when you integrate it with your other systems. Syncing your intranet up with your HRIS or third-party learning content libraries will help you maximise its impact and boost operational efficiency – it’s a win-win!

Is 5app an intranet?

If we take a look at the three main characteristics of a business intranet (a private platform, internal content and the ability to communicate and collaborate), we can safely say that yes, 5app can be an intranet!

However, we’re so much more than ‘just’ an intranet. Our roots in learning and development mean we’re perfectly set up to manage, deliver and track all of your training materials, whether that’s elearning courses, performance support assets, videos, documents, microlearning and more.

In fact, we ourselves use 5app as an intranet! The HomeHub is 5app’s intranet, where our employees can find all of our onboarding, handbooks, HR policies, PTO booking system and branding materials. It’s regularly updated, and it’s where all of our resources live, meaning we don’t need to trawl five different systems every time we need to check a policy or find a template.

Case study: Hemsley Fraser’s 1HF intranet

Award-winning learning provider Hemsley Fraser uses 5app as a way to keep all employees in the loop about the latest company updates and announcements, alongside their key learning activity. Their 5app-based 1HF Hub is home to everything from the CEO’s video updates to reminders about social events to important training materials, and the communication functionality means they can target the right employees with the right message at the precise moment they need to see it.