Intranet Benefits: A "Complete" Checklist

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A "complete" checklist of the benefits obtained with intranet-based communications

Objective: Organizations considering the business case for these tools may use this list as a starting point to help identify the key benefits as they pertain to specific situations. This is a work in progress, and comments and suggestions are welcome.

A Working Paper by Richard R. Reisman, Teleshuttle / The Media Foundry™

(revised 11/4/96)

Motivation: Quantum improvements in the power, ease-of-use, and economy of intranet-based communications are expected to quickly fulfill the long-elusive promise to radically and thoroughly transform the nature of enterprise. Most companies are starting with high-potential / low cost pilot projects to prepare for broad deployment over the next 1-2 years. The impact of this transformation is primarily social and organizational, not technical.

General communications benefits

Internal communication and coordination
- A F50 company projects savings in information exchange amounting to 10% (4 hrs/wk) for all managers/professionals.
- GIGA Group cites potential for up to 80% impact on productivity:
  - 40% of worker time spent in processing documents
  - 40% of worker time spent communicating
Extended enterprise partnerships
- Improved channel (franchisee) communications and coordination
- Improved supplier communication and coordination
- Increased effectiveness of virtual enterprise partnerships
External marketing and service
- One-to-one marketing, increased share-of-customer
- Customization of product, collaborative product development
- Collaborative, semi-automated service and support
Strategic flexibility: Project ROI plus "Option-based risk assessment" benefits
- Identifiable project NPV / ROI benefits are just the beginning
- Opportunities for new projects, extensions, synergies; ad-hoc adaptation and evolution
Purpose-driven, adaptive organization
- Better central communication of objectives and guidelines/best practices - outward/ downward
- Better decentralized, ad-hoc, collaborative execution, opportunism, and learning - within and among teams, and inward/upward
- Enhanced decision quality, understanding, acceptance, and execution
- Empowerment for dialog, information access, and knowledge sharing at all levels

Productivity (process efficiency)

Faster, easier, more flexible, and open communication
- A suite of standard, easy to use, powerful, and rich facilities
- Rapid transmission and feedback
- One-to-one and many-to-many dialog
Just-in-time information pull
- Pushed information overload results from just-in-case excess and out-of-phase irrelevance, resulting in too little useful information.
- Pulled information facilities empowers the individual to control his own information flow, finding what he needs, when he needs it.
More productive collaboration
- Ability to collaborate in multiple media, without time or geographic constraints
- Dynamically structured topics or threads to permit responsive, ad-hoc, on-topic focus
Better learning and knowledge management
- Increased development, distribution, application, and quality/currency of intellectual capital
- Better collection and sharing of market intelligence
- Enhanced training resources, available to all on demand, JIT

Effectiveness (business results)

Faster time to market
- Rapid project development and roll-out
- Better communication to and with affected parties
- Improved coordination and congruence
Better, faster feedback, adaptation, correction
- Empowerment of feedback
- Faster gathering and response to feedback
- Increased collaboration participation and effectiveness

Cost reduction

Meeting, travel, and telephone time reduction
- Powerful new collaboration vehicles
- Reduced and better focused use of traditional meetings and telephone
Training, corporate, administrative, and operational communications cost savings
- Reduced cost of printing and distribution
- More timely and rapid access to information
- Powerful information discovery by anyone in need - JIT, on-demand

Low cost development and delivery (communications and basic applications functions)

Use of existing, standard, flexible infrastructure
- immediate
- easy to use
- versatile
- rich formats
- low entry cost
- low incremental costs
- no vendor lock-in
- rich enhancement stream
- ubiquitous
Reduced need for training
- standard user interface
- standard tools and software
Reduced cost of development
- short cycles using standard tools and components
- shift to business content focused self-development

Contact Information

Richard R. Reisman, President, Teleshuttle Corporation
799 Broadway, New York, NY 10003
(212)-673-0225 fax: (212)-673-0226
e-mail: info@teleshuttle.com

© 1996, Teleshuttle Corporation. <www.teleshuttle.com> All rights reserved. Permission is granted for reproduction, in whole or part, if not for profit, and provided that credit is given to Teleshuttle / The Media Foundry and this copyright notice is displayed in its entirety.

Teleshuttle home FairPay FairPayZone Blog UserCenteredMedia Blog CoTV Reisman Patents Reisman Bio About Teleshuttle

Past Resources Past Writings Teleshuttle Past

The ghost of Teleshuttle past: Pages retained for historical interest -- Not current, may have broken links