Looking at cloud-based intranet systems, there’s a whole lot to love about them. They’re cheaper than a great many traditional solutions, they’re incredibly convenient… and by their very nature, there’s a whole lot less hardware to worry about maintaining.
The problem is, of course, that your enthusiasm only goes so far. If you’re not already in a position of big-picture decision-making in your company, you’re going to have to persuade your CEO or other directorial staff as to why this is the way forward. So to simplify things, we’ve come up with five compelling reasons you can take along with you when discussing this matter.
Speedy Deployment With A Cloud-Based Intranet
Businesses – as a general rule – like to move quickly. Once a decision is made, implementing that decision needs to follow as swiftly as possible. The same holds true for intranet enablement.
And cloud-based intranet does make things move quickly. A more traditional physical system requires a fair amount of rigmarole – there are programmes to be designed, equipment that needs to be acquired and set-up, not to mention a whole variety of different potential delays that can crop up.
On the flipside, when working in the cloud, the process is much less full of obstacles. Generally speaking, you can pick a pre-existing system to work with and efficiently tweak it to fit your specific needs. The result? A system that comes together remarkably seamlessly that your employees can start figuring out as soon as possible.
The speed-related efficiency isn’t just in the set-up phase, mind you. Nothing is perfect when you first set it up – with time, you’ll inevitably discover some features that rarely get used or something you considered adding but then decided against would actually be really convenient. And even if things do perfectly align to your initial needs, those needs will change with time.
The ability to alter and adjust and expand things is much more straightforward when working on a cloud-based system. It’s equally easy to cut back on extra features if your business doesn’t use them. The key thing is that no matter what you need your intranet to do, keeping things cloud-based makes you more flexible and capable of rapid response changes.
Staying Secure
When you keep your business data within an intranet, rather than on a publicly accessible platform, you’re setting yourself up for a more secure system. When you have control over your information security, you can prevent copyright infringement and protect valuable client information. Your team can work confidently and securely – and parameters can be set to adjust an individual user’s access based on their role. It’s all about tailoring things to what you need.
By using a cloud intranet solution, all security aspects such and network rules, encryption, user roles and permissions are prebuilt into the solution. This will save you lots of time and money. Any executive team will be thrilled to bits to have this much security at their fingertips without the need to engage the services of systems administration resource locally.
Ease Of Management
One of the big struggles that companies can face when making traction with new IT additions is the fact that traditionally, these kinds of big changes require ongoing involvement from IT specialists. Cloud-based intranet eliminates that obstacle. Management of the platform can be undertaken by the people who do the actual managing – not someone in a separate office who doesn’t have as in-depth an understanding of a role’s dynamics as a team leader will.
New employee? HR can add it themselves. Internal comms need a boost? It can be incorporated into the intranet itself. Marketing needs a new kind of access to ensure access to a new functionality? Done, done and done.
Once the initial learning process is undertaken, the power is in your hands. Dealing with the vast majority of requirements can take place in-house – so you won’t need to bring on a whole new person just to look after your intranet. It’s all incredibly self-sustaining – and provides a chance for all members of the team to get a little better acquainted with the leaps and bounds that today’s technology is capable of making. A little upfront learning can make for a whole lot of efficiency as time goes by.
Bring Downtime Down
Technology can be delicate – and sometimes it seems that just the slightest wrong move somewhere can bring the whole system crashing down. And the chances of that are all the higher if you’re using a physical intranet system.
You can present the cloud benefits this way – what does an hour of downtime cost the company? How much work will go unfinished, how many hours of project time will be collectively lost across the whole company? Sure, some people can keep working through their most important tasks without that connectivity, but others will be rendered incapable of getting what needs to be sorted out done.
Cloud-based services are much more capable of staying up and running. And because your platform isn’t location-dependent, even if you face a power outage or another problem making your workplace inaccessible, your intranet and all the vital information within it will be there for you, ready to keep ticking along.
The Price Is Right
Finally, if there’s one thing that can hook your CEO or other decision-makers, it’s the proposition of price. A cloud-based intranet comes with substantial savings compared to traditional methods.
There’s the lessened up-front cost – no hefty equipment and installations – but there’s more to it than that. Over time, you’ll find it a lot more efficient in terms of energy usage – you won’t have to keep a server room perpetually running, nor keep the room cooled down to make sure nothing overheats. There’s also no expensive parts to replace or costs associated with moving all that equipment should your whole office relocate.
So as time goes by, the savings made by electing to use a cloud-based system will become more and more apparent. When it’s time to make changes or to move to somewhere new, all it takes is a little playing with settings and occasionally bringing in professional help for more significant changes – but that’s a minimal cost compared with the overarching spend associated with a physical server.
With so many technology functions moving from a physical platform to the cloud, more and more companies are appreciating that in order for them to keep up with the trends, they need to do the same thing. If you want to ensure that your company’s intranet system is futureproofed and ready to enable you to expand and grow in a way that matches up to all strategic priorities, making the jump into the cloud is the way to do it. With the right logic backing up your proposal – like the pointers outlined in this article – winning over your CEO and boardroom bosses should be a cinch.
And if you need further information, or even a demo to prove just how capable cloud-based intranet systems can be, talk to MyHub – we’ll back you up with the proof you need to seal the deal.
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