Intranets are built entirely using Internet technologies, such as HTML documents, protocols such as HTTP, FTP, SMTP, and applications such as chat clients, secure sites, and so on. You can see why then Intranets are generally regarded as an Internet within a company. For a company like Akzo Nobel, using an Intranet means, having a shareable source of information throughout the company. The advantage of using an Intranet to share your information is that it’s secure, you can use readily available technologies, and unlike the World Wide Web, an Internet can be developed using company standards. For a developer this is heaven sent! It means you can develop for one browser, one operating system and one screen resolution. Intranets can be as big or as small as you want them to be. A web server with a single client PC can be classed as an Intranet, as can ten web servers with hundreds of client PC’s. The classification of Intranets is really down to the technology used in communicating and sharing information.
Sharing knowledge and information is the single most important aspect of an Intranet. The main goal of the Akzo Nobel Intranet is to share knowledge, thus reducing duplication effort, and to save time by providing that knowledge in an easily accessible pool.
The Intranet at Akzo Nobel achieves both goals with the help of staff buying into the Intranet concept and by the use of a good Content Management System. It is important for staff to get involved with the Intranet, thus keeping it fresh, but more importantly because without the support of your staff you will not have the content.
The success of the Intranet depends on staff participation and to this end it is imperative that publishing content is just as easy as filing a document in the filing cabinet. Likewise, finding information has to be as easy as picking up the phone. As humans, we always go for the least line of resistance