Intranet Services
2000.12.07.11:54
Inside Edge By Bonny L. Georgia, Smart Business December 2000 Give everyone in your office an unfair advantage-all-in-one intranet services make it easy.
Loretta Callahan had a communications crisis. As operations manager of the Florentine Restaurants chain in Northern California, keeping in touch with individual stores was eating up her time. “I would be sitting here calling and faxing everyone, not sure if the managers actually got the faxes or messages I sent,” said Callahan, who spent hours on the phone each day. She needed to get everyone on the same page-and fast. She found a speedy solution by outsourcing a company intranet.
Working as a private Web site, an intranet provides a catchall for company communications with the ease of electronic updating and storage. No more waiting for days while news of staff promotions or revised vacation policies trickles into mailboxes across the company. Post the information to your intranet and send an e-mail reminder to instantly update your workforce. Want to schedule a meeting? Check the availability of key people on the shared calendar rather than waiting for them to return your calls.
Building a company intranet, however, is no small feat. For starters you’ll need an IT guru who can navigate heavy technology purchases, bandwidth requirements, and data security issues. You can expect to shell out thousands of dollars for servers and other equipment, wait weeks or even months for setup, and then hire a Webmaster to maintain it all.
Sound out of reach? There’s hope.
For pennies per user, you can rent a full-fledged intranet complete with online calendars, threaded messaging, shared schedules, department-level project areas, corporate directories, document sharing, and more. That’s what Loretta Callahan did. Now Florentine managers and chefs watch the company intranet, hosted by intranet service Bluetrain.com, for Callahan’s messages. “We use it to store and share recipes; if a store has a special that sells well, we post the recipe for the other locations to try,” she says. “We also use it to announce meetings and keep our managers in touch with each other. It does a great job of bringing everyone together, and I don’t have to spend my time on the telephone anymore.”
Ziff Davis Smart Business Labs audited companies using these Web services that promise to get you up and running in hours instead of months and handle the management headaches so you don’t have to. Then we put five services through the rigors of our usability labs. Here’s what you need to know before you decide to make one of them the backbone of your internal communications strategy. (For more hands-on help setting up an intranet for a small company, see “Build Your Own Intranet.”)
Quick Return By Bonny L. Georgia, Smart Business December 2000
For only a few bucks a month per user, and with infrastructure just waiting for you, you can get an intranet up and running in no time.
Intranets are fast becoming the norm. U.S. companies spent more than $26 billion on intranets in 1999, and total intranet spending is expected to top $83 billion in 2003, according to IDC. What’s the attraction? Intranets improve the timeliness of internal communications, no matter what size the group.
Intranets can also store company forms, product data sheets, sales scripts, corporate phone lists, and other frequently used information. Instead of chasing down printed literature that may be incomplete or out of date, employees can access the internal Web site and find the most recent copy of whatever they need.
BBDO, an international advertising network headquartered in New York City, saved time and slashed its printing and distribution costs by publishing documents live using Planet Intra’s intranet service. The agency’s 65-member Duracell account team needed a faster and more affordable means of communicating across time zones when collaborating on global projects. Using Planet Intra, staffers post marketing plans and brain storming sessions where other team members can get to the information anywhere and anytime it’s convenient.
“Planet Intra provides the team with a central place to post ideas, presentations, and strategic plans, as well as scanned images so that they can be viewed and addressed immediately,” says Wick Smith, IT director at BBDO. “Since much of the work BBDO produces is in color, Planet Intra provides us with an efficient and affordable way to post near-final documents on the intranet for review, allowing team members to view the document as it would appear in a final ad.”
Instead of relying on overworked IT staff to administer your intranet, outsourcing puts company communications in the hands of those who use it most. The best services offer simple administration tools and low maintenance requirements that make it possible for individual departments, administrators, or human resources managers to set up the intranet and manage their own content, calendars, and access privileges.
Perhaps the most immediate benefit, however, is that you can get up and running on an intranet faster and more affordably if you outsource it than if you set up your own system in-house. Most intranet services cost only a few dollars per month per user; a few (including HotOffice Technologies and Intranets.com) even give you a free option if you are willing to put up with advertisements.
LiquiDebt Systems, a small commercial collection agency based in Naperville, Illinois, found that outsourcing services put an otherwise costly intranet within its reach. The company wanted its own intranet to help traveling project managers stay in touch, but balked when it discovered initial setup could take several weeks and costs would run anywhere from $2,200 to $21,000, says Tom McKenna, director of client relations. HotOffice proved to be a more reasonable solution. “[HotOffice] took less than a day-a few hours really-to set up, and we were able to try the system at no cost to our company,” he explains. Nearly a year later, LiquiDebt is still using HotOffice’s free version.
Rent a Net By Bonny L. Georgia, Smart Business December 2000
Ziff Davis Smart Business Labs tested several intranet services and found that each offered its benefits-and problems.
What’s it really like to set up an outsourced intranet? Real business professionals put five intranet services to the test in the Ziff Davis Smart Business Labs. Our testers were experienced Internet users, and each had a need for a company intranet. Just as actual users would experience, the only help available to the testers was online help files.
All testers felt that most importantly, an intranet must be quick and easy to set up. For that reason, HotOffice came out on top. Thanks to the simple tools and a straight forward interface, testers had no trouble setting up their intranet and posting files. Plus, it’s hard to go wrong with its free ad-based version, which comes with 40MB of storage per company. Nix the ads with the paid version, which starts at $9.95 per user per month and includes 20MB per user-extra space is $2.50 per 20MB block.
Coming in a close second was Intranets.com. It’s also free and ad-supported. Like all the services we tested, it offers the basic Web-based e-mail, group scheduling, shared address book, and file management, but Intranets.com boasts a few more bells and whistles. Testers were impressed with the shared calendar, members directory, and instant-messaging tool that lets you contact others when they’re online. Testers found it easy to post alerts to the company home page; and where HotOffice offered little in the way of customization, Intranets.com testers found they could weave personalized news and financial feeds to their desktop. So what’s not to like? The cumbersome process of inviting users to join the intranet by e-mail and setting up access restrictions was a turn-off. Another drawback: You receive only 25MB of storage for your intranet, although additional 25MB blocks cost a mere $29 per year each.
Despite a host of unique features, users found that Planet Intra and WebPerfect Solutions were, well, not quite perfect. Both allow connection to your intranet with a Wireless Application Protocol device such as a WAP cell phone, and WebPerfect offers detailed project management and electronic forms for collecting company data. Testers were excited about WebPerfect’s multiple customization options, but were held up by database errors and problems with the help feature. Planet Intra is the only service to offer foreign language versions, but usability took a back seat. Testers got off to a good start with a helpful wizard tool, but uploading files with the Intra Editor feature proved difficult.
Bluetrain.com bills its Passport service as an enterprise solution, and it is by far the most sophisticated offering in the roundup. Passport offers an audioconferencing utility, and several interesting add-ons are under way, including HR and benefits tracking, expense reporting, purchasing, and sales automation. Like Planet Intra, Bluetrain’s service got favorable feedback from customers, but our testers ran into some snags. They were puzzled by navigation tabs and experienced trouble with the Help button, indicating that there may be a high learning curve for mastering this system.
What to Watch For By Bonny L. Georgia, Smart Business December 2000
Security, accessibility, and performance are all points to ponder when outsourcing your intranet.
Intranet services work best for companies that are willing to forgo heavy customization for a set of affordable, one-size-fits-all communication and collaboration tools.
Security is a concern, especially if you’ll be letting partners or customers access certain areas of your intranet. All the services we tested offer password protection for authorizing access and SSL or other server-side security for stored files. Some services, such as HotOffice and Intranets.com, store servers offsite where they are guarded full-time and monitored for hacker attempts. The best solutions also offer access controls that let you selectively block users from specific areas or deny access to certain files.
Keep in mind that your hosted intranet will boost productivity and efficiency only if you can access its contents easily (and quickly) from anywhere. Most services are available for a free trial, so test them over a variety of Internet connections and at different speeds to make sure you’re satisfied with the performance. There’s little point in posting the company directory on the intranet if it takes longer to find a phone number online than it would to grab a book off the shelf. And when storing files for remote access remember that what’s easy to download over the company T1 line may take forever from a hotel room dial-up connection.
Most intranet services give only a small amount of storage per account for free, though you may purchase more for an additional fee. Read the fine print to see if you will be charged extra for heavy data transfer traffic. For example, with some services, data transfer in excess of 10GB per month costs another 5 cents per megabyte.
Though your intranet service will back up your files and e-mail regularly, it’s smart to keep copies of all essential documents locally. There’s always the possibility that your service will experience an outage just when you need that must-have client file. Or your own Internet connection could go down, and you may eventually want to switch intranet services.
Top 5 Reasons to Outsource an Intranet By Bonny L. Georgia, Smart Business December 2000
The round up of why outsourcing the intranet might be right for your business.
Top 5 Reasons to Outsource an Intranet
1 No heavy technology investment. Setting up your own intranet costs thousands in hardware, software, and ongoing maintenance; outsourcing costs a few dollars per user per month (and may even be free).
2 Secure access from anywhere. Collaborate and share documents with staffers, clients, and partners wherever you have a Web connection.
3 Get started overnight. Begin communicating smarter today instead of spending weeks to create your own setup.
4 Keep everyone on the same page. No more missed memos, deleted voice mails, or faxes gone AWOL. Post important announcements to the intranet so you can see who’s read them (and who hasn’t).
5 Scale up (or down) on the fly. Adding new users or extra storage space as you grow doesn’t require a major system overhaul or additional technical staff.
Build Your Own Intranet By Jason Compton, Smart Business December 2000
Wouldn’t you like to give everyone in the office a central place to store files and share information? Building your own office intranet doesn’t have to be a science project.
Problem: Your employees store files willy-nilly, and communication is near a standstill.
Solution: Set up an intranet as a central location for shared files and discussions.
You’ve conquered the Internet. Your e-commerce applications are a smash hit. Back-end integration couldn’t be tighter. Even your desk is immaculate.
But don’t forget that charity begins at home. A corporate intranet is the key to keeping your employees informed and productive. If your intranet now consists of a file drawer full of old floppies with scratched-out labels and sticky notes like the ones you use to scribble your lunch orders, perhaps it’s time to consider an upgrade.
Determine Your Needs By Jason Compton, Smart Business December 2000
Step 1: Figure out what you need and then make an action plan.
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But look at your available bandwidth before you leap to outsource your intranet. LAN bandwidth is almost always plentiful, but if your company has several people sharing a dial-up connection, it might not be feasible to get to internal resources over the Internet. Then again, if you have a robust DSL or T1 connection, outsourcing makes sense.
Decide Who Will Have Access By Jason Compton, Smart Business December 2000
Step 2: Determine who will use your intranet both inside and outside the company.
Next you should determine who will use your new intranet.
Intranets can provide unexpected opportunities for collaboration across your entire company, so in most cases you should give everyone access. You might, however, want to limit access for certain employees. For example, you might bar that new temp from sensitive file and discussion areas.
If you want to invite valuable customers, partners, or suppliers to participate, spend additional time planning your security measures before you start giving out IP addresses and passwords. On Intranets.com, for example, new users need to input a special “invitation code” before they can join your system, allowing you to invite friends in and keep interlopers out.
Stimulate Conversation By Jason Compton, Smart Business December 2000
Step 3: Get your employees talking through discussion groups and bulletin boards.
With so many low-cost ways to start, there’s no reason not to get your employees talking.
If you already have a Web server for internal use, add a free discussion group script like Web Based Message Board from Techno Trade http://www.technotrade.com/. Or use the Internet standard Network News Transport Protocol (NNTP) system to set up Usenet-style groups. An NNTP server comes with Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/Windows NT/2000’s Internet Information Server ($1,199), and free open-source versions of NNTP abound on the Web.
You may already have a serviceable discussion group and not know it. Many companies ran dial-up bulletin board systems for customer service and tech support before the Web explosion. Using the shareware Net Modem/32 from Allen Software http://www.allensoftware.com/ ($30 for one node), you can tell your BBS software to watch for incoming telnet sessions over your LAN.
Consolidate Shared Documents By Jason Compton, Smart Business December 2000
Step 4: Rein in your company’s unwieldy file sharing system into a single intranet location.
Too often companies fall into the trap of having too many shared network drives, each with a cryptic name and an even more cryptic directory structure. Other companies get bogged down with one large pile of files still adhering to the outdated 8-dot-3 filename limit. Some companies are so jumbled they share certain files over Microsoft Networking, others over Novell NetWare, and still others through FTP.
Take this opportunity to give your employees a single, well-organized location for all their shared documents. Pick a sharing protocol, build a rational directory structure, and assign someone to keep it all in order.
Intranets.com gives your company 25MB for free file storage; HotOffice provides 40MB. Extra space is available for an annual fee. If you have high-volume or extremely large files, a locally managed file server will better serve your intranet. Microsoft Networking is free, as are various FTP servers such as Dragon Server http://www.shadowopsoftware.com/ ($40). Commercial FTP servers come with Windows NT/2000 (as part of Internet Information Server), as well as with packages like Wildcat Interactive Net Server http://www.santronics.com/ ($1,495 for Business Edition, 16 nodes).
Keep It Manageable By Jason Compton, Smart Business December 2000
Step 5: Keep your documents safe and intact with overwrite protection.
Now that everyone is talking and working from the same file base, you need to make sure nobody overwrites several years’ worth of work.
If your office works primarily in common formats (like Microsoft Word) you can use Microsoft Office’s built-in versioning features to track and preserve changes without adding software. Post those tracking-enabled documents on your intranet and they will almost manage themselves.
If your needs are a little more intricate, you may need a higher-end system like Merant http://www.merant.com/ PVCS Professional 3.6 ($1,199) or Microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/ Visual SourceSafe ($549). These systems are geared primarily toward programmers, so tread carefully before you buy. Merant offers a 30-day free evaluation.
For a time-tested and low-cost (but low-finesse) approach to version control, simply disable write access to important networked drives, directories, or files. Establish one or more directories to house new revisions of important documents instead. Even though an administrator will have to approve submissions and move them to their proper place, it’s better than losing work to a careless overwrite.
Case Closed By Jason Compton, Smart Business December 2000
Using Intranets.com, a South Carolina court was able to get lawyers and paralegals on the same page.
Robert Duncan knows law is a messy business. As court management supervisor of civil cases for the Charleston County (South Carolina) Circuit Court, Duncan maintains courtroom schedules and delivers them to several hundred lawyers and paralegals. He figured he could post the schedules and encourage discussion among lawyers and paralegals by building a Web community using the court’s IT resources. Motion denied. “IT won’t let us touch our Web site,” he says.
Undaunted, he turned to Intranets.com http://www.intranets.com/, which offered the chance to set up an intimate community without hassle or expense, and without IT approval. The court intranet offers monthly dockets in Microsoft Word and WordPerfect formats so the attorneys can make notes in the documents before printing their cases.
“The attorneys and paralegals love it,” Duncan says. “Before we went on [Intranets.com], they would have a paralegal flip through 30 pages just looking for cases and the attorney’s name.” And because all the information on the intranet is public knowledge, anyone is welcome to participate without security worries. “We’ve had some pro se [self-representing] litigants take advantage of it.”
Online since December 1999, this intranet still has room to grow. Duncan hopes attorneys will take advantage of the discussion board so they can notify colleagues when they have settled a case before trial, moving everyone else’s date up.
Intranet Resources By Jason Compton, Smart Business December 2000
Web-based tools to make your intranet development quick and easy.
HotOffice Technologies http://www.hotoffice.com/ (561) 995-0005
An easy-and free- way to set up an instant intranet.
Intranets.com http://www.intranets.com/
Lets you establish and maintain a managed intranet environment free.
O’Reilly WebBoard 4 http://webboard.oreilly.com/
A Web messaging system for high-volume intranets.
Name:Grant Johnson
Email:grant@amadensor.com
Location:Aurora CO
Occupation:IS Consultant
You missed the boat.
An old PC with a nice new big hard drive and a Linux install can accomplish all that you reccomended NT for (NNTP, MS Networking, FTP, Web) as well as more (IMAP, Apples and Unixes sharing the same files as your Windows machines). You can make a file server than can integrate all of you dissimilar platforms. Your Macintosh people, Windows people, and Unix people can all share the same files, and all for the price of an outdated PC, a little memory, a big HD, a network card, and $30 for the CD’s.
Of course if you aren’t up to it, a local builder specializing in Linux would make you a server, or you could get one from an appliance server vendor.
Remember that most of the cost of having your own server is administration. Here is the big cost savings over NT or Win2K. Once it is set up, other than adding user accounts, removing user accounts, and fixing lost passwords, you can forget that it is there.
