Cloud Based Intranets For Employee Engagement - UPDATED 2021 - Best Intranet Platforms

​An intranet or a digital workplace solution is a must-have for many organizations as it provides a centralized place for employees to connect with each other, find and edit information, and learn about the company.

A cloud-based intranet serves a wide range of purposes, but the primary goal of the platform is to support and engage employees. 

An intranet can be accessed from PCs, tablets or smartphones 24×7, whenever they're connected to the internet. No downloads are required.

By enabling people to work together, you'll quickly see your intranet platform evolve from a simple company noticeboard to a place where employees instinctively innovate.

What is Cloud Based Intranet – A Complete Guide

Cloud technology has revolutionized the way businesses work and has made it possible to operate without a central infrastructure or server. Cloud-based applications provide a host of benefits and flexibility to organizations, opening up a large number of possibilities for remote working while being productive.

While on-premise intranet solutions are installed on the company servers, a cloud-based intranet provides a simple and convenient alternative where the provider hosts, manages, and maintains the intranet software and the customer just needs to pay a subscription fee to use it on demand without having to bear any operational overhead.

A cloud based intranet provides employees secure access to all the resources and tools to work from anywhere, any device, and anytime. As workforces become more mobile, cloud intranet software offers organizations the technology to collaborate, communicate and drive productivity effectively. As most businesses today rely partially or fully on cloud services to solve a myriad of issues, intranets have evolved from traditional on-premise to mobile-first cloud software. 

Best Intranet Platforms – Getting Started

 While looking for the best intranet platforms for your business requirements, it might be difficult to make the right decision. Amidst a plethora of options ranging from free open-source intranets to expensive custom-designed, advanced intranet suites, the choice can depend on a variety of factors including the extent of collaboration, budget, technical knowledge of employees, and more.

Here are some of the best intranet platforms you can consider for your business.

1.AgilityPortal

Packed with features that helps leaders connect, communicate, and collaborate to unite and grow together. Built in machine learning, analytics, reports and easy to use features for your teams, designed and developed as the your go to go-to place for Employee Engagement.

2.Jive

A machine-learning-based intranet portal with advanced features like urgent notifications and personal analytics, Jive is an easy-to-use and intuitive platform that focuses on creating the best user experience with personalized dashboards and other offerings.

3.Simpplr

With an extensive set of collaboration tools and features, Simpplr is one of the best choices in the intranet space. The platform is highly scalable and customizable with Adaptive Personalization that shows employees personalized content based on their preferences.

4.Beekeeper

This cloud-based collaboration and communication platform is optimized for remote workers and connects with other cloud applications to fetch data for analysis. It supports omnichannel communication tools to let users conduct surveys, share news and updates and send group messages from their mobile devices.

5.Microsoft VIVA 

The latest offering from Microsoft, VIVA focuses on bringing employees digitally closer for learning, collaboration, and engagement. It intends to help users learn and develop by utilizing the collaborative features of various Microsoft tools and its extensive set of intranet features.

Why Do I Need A Cloud Intranet Solution? – Important Question

​Companies relying on cloud-based intranets don't need to spend on hardware and infrastructure as with an on-premise solution. You can configure and launch your intranet quickly and the IT team is free of the burden to upgrade and maintain the software. Your organization can benefit from high performance, availability, security, and innovation from the vendor's existing investments without bearing the risk and expenses yourself.

A cloud intranet solution provides a centralized location for employees to find information, people, and tools to get their work done easily and increase their productivity. It helps the employees by making their work-life simpler, connected, and engaged. The cloud-based intranet enables all the employees to work on a piece of information at the same time, allocate resources, log ideas, track progress and do a lot more, boosting the company's overall productivity. 

The Differences Between Cloud Intranet Solutions and On-Premises Intranets – What You Should Know? 

​With an on-premises intranet, the company owns its personal intranet software. It hosts its own data center and bears all the costs associated with it. This includes buying and maintaining the hardware and other components the software needs to run, installation, deployment, and testing of the software, its upgrades, and maintenance, security, and expansion of the capacity as the use increases.

On the contrary, a cloud intranet solution is where all these responsibilities belong to the service provider and software vendor. The intranet software is hosted on the cloud, to be accessible by a large number of customers over several computing resources. Servers and other resources are allocated in a flexible manner depending on the needs of clients.

While an on-premise intranet solution gives better control over servers, better security, and incurs low monthly costs, most organizations have started adopting cloud services for their operational needs. Choosing between on-premise and cloud solutions is difficult and the decision depends on the scope of your business. You should assess your company's needs and calculate costs to make an informed decision. 

What are the Benefits of Cloud Intranet Software? UPDATED 2021

Cloud-based intranet software solutions have proven to be effective at engaging employees, improving internal communication, making projects and information more accessible, improving work collaboration, and more. Based on these factors, the cloud intranet software offers several benefits for business operations. Let us look at some of these.

1.Cost Saving

​ A cloud-based solution involves a low upfront investment as compared to an on-premise solution. There is an affordable monthly subscription charge that covers everything you need to run the workspace like hosting, maintenance, updates, security, and more. A cloud provider saves from distributing the overall computing load across a large number of shared resources and passes the savings on to the customers.

2. Easy to Launch​

​ While setting up an on-premise solution can take a lot of time and effort, a cloud intranet solution can be easily deployed without having to spend any resources on installation, deployment, or testing. It is easy to configure the intranet to suit your business requirements, customize it to get the desired look and feel and launch it in a short time for any size of an organization.

3. Ability to Scale​

With the cloud, your intranet grows as your business needs change. There is no hassle of adding infrastructure to accommodate more users. Everything is handled by the cloud service provider. Scaling is almost effortless with no worrying about additional storage, security, and upgrades.

4. Lower IT Management​ 

A cloud-based intranet takes away the burden of upgrading and maintaining equipment, managing software, applying security patches, and taking care of other things. You don't need a specialized IT team to handle all these tasks as everything is taken care of by the cloud provider and software vendor, freeing up your valuable IT resources that can be assigned to other priorities.

​5. Free Upgrades​

Most cloud providers facilitate clients with automatic periodic updates to keep their systems loaded with the latest features. Your IT team doesn't need to install new versions as they are introduced and work on the time-consuming task of upgrading to the newest offerings.

 6. Great Support​

With a cloud-based intranet software, you generally get 24/7 support, easy access to expertise for any issues that arise, and seamless updates that fix any bugs instantly, thereby saving you the cost of hiring IT professionals.

How To Choose The Best Cloud-Based Intranet?

When selecting cloud based intranet software, there are several factors you should consider including the product, the software vendor, business size, cloud platform, product features, and offerings.

1.Size of your Business

Your intranet software needs would differ drastically based on your business size. For example, if your business has only a few employees, you may not benefit from intranet software. A mid-sized business with 11-100 employees would find intranet useful for managing forms and documents and creating teams. Organizations with more than 100 employees would find an intranet a must-have to keep the company organized and provide the staff an easy way to access information.

2.Cloud Platform

An important consideration is what platform the vendor uses for hosting the cloud intranet. Reputed platforms like AWS provide the best in terms of performance, availability, security, reliability, and scalability.

3.Software Vendor

​ Before deciding on the cloud-based software, check whether the provider has a proven record of success and is helping organizations across industries to achieve their business goals.

4.Intranet Product​

Check whether the product delivers an engaging and easy-to-use experience driving high levels of adoption in the organization. Also, the product should feature an impressive array of collaboration and communication capabilities to simplify work for employees. It should also include advanced features and integrate with external systems to create a collaboration hub. A product that is optimized for a wide range of business use-cases is a more preferable solution.

5.Mobile Capability

​ These days, it is important that employees can access documents and information on their phones. Most vendors provide mobile support but you should check this before making a purchase.

Conclusion ​

​ A cloud-based intranet software helps keep the workforce connected, engaged, and productive. It can be often difficult to choose the best intranet platform for your business but there are several options that provide you customized, feature-rich intranet to match your organization's needs. A little research and comparison of the options should help you find the best solution for your business.