The Best Intranet Software - 2023

If you’ve gone through just a couple of the reviews above, you’ll likely notice that intranets are no longer just a place for internal communication and document management. As remote work becomes the new normal in all sorts of industries and more company activity takes place within the digital realm, the employee intranet has acquired many new purposes. This is precisely where it can get confusing. 

According to a research project conducted by Simpplr, one of the main factors that drive an intranet project to fail is the lack of purpose. Poorly-defined corporate intranet goals lead to a low adoption rate because people don’t know what they’re supposed to do with the new tool, and that’s something that can be avoided right from the buying stage if the purpose is clear and the priorities are understood by all those involved. 

In fact, one could argue that most of the pitfalls that can befall an intranet project can be traced back to that lack of purpose. Sometimes people simply aren’t engaged with the process, and sometimes we happen to pick the wrong vendor with the wrong features and end up with a tool nobody wants to use. The path to avoiding this is to start off by clearly understanding why we want an intranet and what we expect to gain from it.

What are the benefits of a social intranet solution? Software with use cases as wide as an intranet is bound to have many benefits in the workplace. The following are examples of the common upsides to an intranet, discussed in a bit more detail than before and mentioning some of the ROI that you can derive from them:  

• An intranet increases productivity: Research by Axero has found that the typical office employee spends around 28% of their time on email, 37% going to meetings, and only 35% doing their actual work. They also estimate that around $37 million dollars are lost to unnecessary meetings in U.S. business each year. In the same study, they found that companies that were able to move conversations from email to their intranet managed to have up to 304 fewer business emails per employee per week, on average. This was translated into savings of $1800 per employee, per year.
  
  Similarly, a reduction of 62 hours of meetings per month per employee thanks to intranet use was proven to save 35% of middle managers’ time per week, and 50% for upper managers. ‍
• An Intranet can improve employee retention: Losing a staff member and having to replace them can be expensive. In the UK alone, a study from Oxford Economics and Unum, The Cost of Brain Drain, found that the cost of turnover per employee (if they’re earning more than £25,000 per year) can be as high as £30,000. While it’s impossible to keep every single employee happy, an intranet can be key to tackling issues such as employee recognition, workplace culture, and job satisfaction. ‍
• An intranet boosts employee engagement: By giving people a place where they can connect, be appreciated, and that, if done properly, can embody a company’s culture, an intranet can result in a more engaged workplace. It can also be the ultimate tool for measuring such engagement. Although the exact definition of the term may vary from one workplace to another, research from Gallup has shown that businesses with highly engaged employees tend to have better productivity levels and are actually more profitable than those with low engagement levels. 

As a last word on the benefits of having an intranet, it is worth noting that Oracle, IBM, and Cisco all measured the overall impact of their respective digital workplaces at some point. Apparently, they all estimated the value of their intranets to be more than $1 billion. IBM alone reported the benefits of their training done via an intranet to be worth $284 million.

If we’re to judge from the reviews above, we could perhaps gather that most intranet software out there is priced per user, at an average of $9 USD per month. While that may be true for vendors like Blink or Interact, others will likely ask for a yearly subscription. Also, aside from the price per user, we also have to consider potential add-ons and implementation costs. Research from Centricminds aligns with our own experience in suggesting that the budget for an intranet project can fall between $8,000 to $20,000 per year for a small business, $15k to $50k for a medium one, and as much as $250,000 for a very large enterprise.

What are the key intranet features that we should try and validate first for an intranet? The answer will vary from business to business, but it’s true that most intranet software has certain core features that need to be present. Don’t get scared, however. Although vendors like Axero and LumaApps have put together lists of 28 or 30 features that they consider essential, we’ve gone through similar lists from those companies and others such as Interact and Bonzai. After much research, we’ve rounded up the top 5 that are present in all of them: 

• Social: This aspect is what will fuel a lot of the adoption and engagement within the tool, and in turn do what we’d expect from an intranet in terms of Human Resources concerns such as employee retention and satisfaction. Being able to see a personalized newsfeed, like posts, comment, share, see relevant content tailored to each profile, or in other words, have a social network-like experience for the company, is paramount these days. ‍
• Knowledge Management: This is one of the classic uses of a traditional intranet and one that will surely stay so. Whether it’s as basic as file-sharing or as complex as allowing you to onboard employees in a near LMS-like fashion, the modern intranet needs a strong document management system and shared drive capabilities.‍
• Mobile Readiness: Of course, an intranet will do little good if people need to use it exclusively from a laptop or desktop computer. A proper mobile app will ensure that people can stay connected in a similar manner to their use of Twitter or Instagram, and that can be key for its widespread adoption. ‍
• Smart Search: All the content that is created, shared, and stored in the place where most communication happens should be readily-available, and that’s where a smart search engine comes in.  ‍
• Analytics: While a “virtual water cooler” will likely never come close to the real thing, the beauty of having so many of our workplace interactions happen digitally is that everything can be recorded, measured, and thus become a source of insights. If an intranet vendor you’re looking at doesn’t have solid analytics and reporting tools, run the other way.
  

Some of the other top features, like blogs, content management, forums, templates, an employee directory, or an internal chat, will be more important to others. Certain things can be managed through the proper integrations and you can keep using Slack if you want to. But if a vendor you’re considering doesn’t have the five features we expanded upon, it’d be wise to think about it twice.

Hopefully by now, you’ve been able to select a couple of the vendors that could become the providers of your next intranet system. If these seem to align with your budget, needs, and expectations, it may be time to book a demo and see the platform for yourself. 

As with any software purchase, it’s important to go into the demo with clear objectives, questions, and specific concerns to resolve. Don’t be afraid to hijack the demo at all. If you did your due diligence and are fairly certain that the answer to your questions simply isn’t available elsewhere, it’s perfectly fine to make the demo about those concerns first and foremost. 

To help with that, here’s a list of common questions to ask during an intranet demo, even if you already have all the info we’ve listed for each vendor: 

• What are the key features I want to try out and validate?
• How will this solution fit into the rest of my tech stack and therefore what integrations do I need?
• How will others in the organization use this solution?
• How can this tool improve the experience of each and every one of our employees?
• What are the things that would make me or my coworkers nervous about switching our current processes to this platform? 
• How is our employee and company data kept safe if trusted to this vendor? 
• What conclusions can I start to make about the quality of customer support? Is there a help center? Are the support articles clear and easy to read? 

You can also use our excel organizer to help you brainstorm before the demo or trial.

The process to get your new intranet up and running will vary depending on the vendor and your company needs and requirements. In the case of a vendor like Samepage, you can launch an intranet within minutes and with practically zero IT intervention. Others, like Happeo, will have very personalized onboarding approaches that try to guide you through every step of the way in order to ensure that the project is a success. From Happeo’s roundup of a standard intranet implementation process, for instance, we can consider the following stages: 

• Technical Implementation: This is what can take just a few minutes, since it may be as quick as signing up after the demo. 
• What do we want?: This is where the purpose of your intranet should be stated again, now with the vendor of your choice gearing up towards keeping that purpose in mind during the next stages. 
• Content: Then it’s time to plan and create the content that will populate the platform at first. A good question to ask at this point is whether most of the content will be bottom-up or top-down. 
• Roll-Out: With content ready, it’s time to let people in and see how they start using this space. Ideally, all the stakeholders should be quick to adopt it and make sure their teams follow suit. ‍
• Iterate: As with most things in tech, the real learning comes once people are using what you’ve built. Having regular touchpoints with your vendor will help identify areas to improve and keep bringing the usage rates up.

What are intranets?

Intranets are private online networks for a company’s employees to collaborate, communicate, and keep up to date with company news.

What are the benefits of using an intranet software?

Benefits of using intranet software include increased productivity, improved retention, and heightened engagement.

What are the key features of intranet software?

Key features of intranet software include social tools, knowledge management, mobile readiness, smart search, analytics, internal chat, and blogs.

What is the major pitfall that can occur when implementing intranet software?

When looking to implement intranet software, the biggest pitfall is not having a strong purpose for doing so, leading to low adoption rates. Make sure you have well-defined goals for purchasing the software and ensure a careful implementation process.