A very simple but very effective improvement to the intranet is to ensure that all staff login to the site in order to use it. This allows a number of immediate benefits to be offered, as well as providing a foundation for future enhancements.

That this is worth mentioning is an indication that many intranets are run on a shoestring, or have grown incrementally over time. These ‘ad-hoc’ intranets are often supported by a minimal (or non-existent) IT platform with no one positioned to implement these types of core features.

This article explores the benefits of implementing staff logins, and outlines how to make it work in practice.

Knowing your users

Having staff login to the intranet has almost nothing to do with security; it’s all about knowing your users. Once you know who has logged in, it then becomes possible to deliver functionality that is specifically targeted or tailored to that staff member.

This opens up the door to many time-saving features on the intranet, most of which can be implemented incrementally with only a modest investment in technology and time. If an intranet redesign is being planned, one element of this should certainly be implementing staff login, if this is not already available on the site.

[CM Briefing 2006-13, read the full article]