Imagine this scenario. Your organization has 100 sites and 5,000 employees worldwide who need timely and easy access to company news, corporate policy changes, training manuals, the company phone book, job postings, and product/pricing information. Individual workgroups and departments require secure and limited access to confidential data. Each geographical region also has its own database containing status reports and financial data that must be shared with the corporate office.

Traditionally, you have used printed newsletters, employee handbooks, price lists, sales guides, and training manuals, as well as other hardcopy communications. This printed material is time-consuming and expensive to produce -- and not necessarily revenue-generating. And how do you guarantee that all your offices and manufacturing plants receive the information on time?

Consider the typesetting, printing, distribution, and mailing charges, not to mention labor costs and overhead. Assume that the average internal price book costs approximately $18 per copy, and now multiply this figure times the number of sales, marketing, finance, administrative, and manufacturing employees who need to use your corporate price book on a daily basis. With an estimated 18% of the information easily outdated within the first 30 days, it's not unusual to revise this internal information several times per year.

Today's cost-cutting environment demands that you do "more with less." Yet, you can hardly afford to eliminate these communications tools. Nor does your busy staff have time to waste chasing down correct pricing or product descriptions. And in today's competitive business arena, timely access to accurate data is probably more critical than ever.

One solution is to e-mail this information regularly to your employees. This approach is inefficient and means unnecessarily stuffing employee e-mail boxes since not all employees require access to the same information. Communications line costs can also be expensive.

Another approach is to store "public employee information" in publicly accessible files on your company's computer systems. But in today's client/server environment, with geographically dispersed workgroups, updating rests on the shoulders of already overburdened MIS staff.

The Intranet: A Cost-Effective, Timely Solution

Increasingly, forward-thinking organizations are taking advantage of the "Intranet" as a more cost-effective and efficient approach. The Intranet refers to the use of Internet WWW technology within the organization or the "intraprise" rather than for external connection to the Internet.

At the foundation of the Intranet is the World-Wide Web (WWW) server. Organizations with internal WWW sites store and update information electronically on a WWW server configured on a Local Area Network (LAN). As information changes, the server content can be easily updated with the new or revised data. This approach enables organizations to deliver timely, consistent, and accurate information to their employees worldwide -- without expensive typesetting, printing, distribution, mailing charges.

Depending on LAN configuration, an organization may have one or more internal WWW servers used as a central, internal clearing- house to manage and disseminate information within the intraprise. For example, a corporate WWW server accessible to every company employee may contain key information such as employee handbooks, internal newsletters, and stock plan descriptions. Multi-national companies may choose to set up a WWW site at each geographical location. And, depending on their size and specific needs, organizations may implement a combination of the above, with a corporate WWW server accessible to all employees, plus dedicated web servers for individual departments.

A secure WWW site offers numerous advantages for the internal exchange of highly confidential material. For example, since a WWW can be set up to restrict information to certain departments, e.g. Finance and HR or for geographically distributed departments to share information securely, using the Internet as the backbone. In such a scenario, the Corporate HR Department of a multi-national company based in Minneapolis can share salary planning information with its European HR Department in Paris.

In any case, a WWW server is easy to configure, use, and manage. Organizations can set up a Home Page for each department or functional area. And since the WWW server is configured on a LAN, it is well-suited to multi-media applications, such as video and audio requiring higher bandwidth capacity and performance, using Ethernet, Token Ring, FDDI, and ATM technologies over a Local Area Network.

What's A Good Fit?

The "Intranet" is an ideal solution for any organization with more than 100 users, and/or with remote locations distributed over wide geographical areas. It's an appropriate fit for any business that needs a cost-effective way to disseminate constantly fluctuating information on demand to its employees. Functional areas that can benefit from this technology include Human Resources, Training, Sales and Marketing, MIS, Finance, Corporate Communications, Telesales, Research & Development, and Technical Documentation.

Human Resources will find the Intranet a highly effective way to enhance communications and increase staff productivity, while reducing costs. The use of an internal WWW server provides your employees worldwide with easy and convenient access to standard HR material, including information about benefits, stock purchase plans, policies and procedures, job postings, as well as employee newsletters and organizational charts. Your HR staff can focus their efforts on critical organizational needs rather than on repetitive, routine requests. And with the average cost of an employee handbook $10 - $15 per copy, the cost savings and budget payback alone are well-worth the effort.

For Training Departments, a continual challenge is to keep courseware and training materials up to date despite changes to the product suite, sales direction, or market focus. An internal WWW site is a convenient way to tackle this problem, provide your employees access to the most current training materials incorporating video and audio, and also allow employees to go at their own pace. For example, a new sales hire may want to simply review the "Solutions Selling" portion of the new hire training class. At the touch of a button and at his convenience, the new hire simply clicks on right spot without pouring through reams of paper.

Marketing must support Sales with a wide variety of material -- customer presentations, pricing, special promotions and incentives, trade shows and user group schedules, competitive market data, product literature, catalogs, sales guides, customer testimonials, boiler plate proposal descriptions, and order forms. But what happens if there's an immediate sales opportunity and the new data sheet is still in print production? Maybe a Sales Representative in Europe needs an immediate referenceable healthcare account? Or perhaps a Sales Representative in the Far East must customize a presentation to fit a specific customer requirement? With the Intranet, Marketing can be confident that their worldwide sales force will always have access to the latest information -- wherever and whenever they need it. For example, by storing PowerPoint presentations on your internal WWW server, you can be sure that the same information is being presented consistently worldwide. And, depending on their needs, sales personnel can use their notebook PCs to download the entire presentation or simply drill down and extract just the slides they need -- even right from the customer site. Instant access to the Intranet saves significant time, reduces costly publishing charges, and eliminates the last-minute, frantic rush to photocopy and special express a package to a remote sales location.

Chris M. wants to check his dental coverage before making a dental appointment. While sitting at his desk during lunchtime, he uses his client browser to click on the HR Home Page. He clicks on the section entitled "Benefits" and then drills down to "Dental Benefits." After verifying that root canal work is currently covered under his dental plan, Chris schedules an appointment with his dentist. He knows that the information he has is accurate, and he doesn't need to wait for the HR Assistant to return from lunch. Later that evening, he decides to doublecheck from home the maximum amount of coverage.

Tom R. has returned from a business trip and is completing his expense report. However, as a new employee, he is not familiar with the exact allowable mileage reimbursement figure. Rummaging through his desk, Tom finds an old employee handbook that indicates $.25 a mile. He fills in the expense report accordingly. However, in reviewing the expense report, Tom's manager informs him that the reimbursement has been raised to $.30 a mile. Tom then redoes the expense report, which his manager must now rereview. Had Tom's company provided him with access to an internal web server, he could have saved time and effort for both himself and his manager.

Beth H. has just made a sales presentation to a customer in Salt Lake City. The customer is extremely interested in the solution that Beth has proposed and has requested a price. Using her notebook PC, Beth dials into the home office in Boston and checks the latest pricing on the corporate WWW server. Beth is happy that she no longer needs to lug heavy price books, or call corporate to verify the accuracy of pricing information. Most of all, Beth is pleased that she is able to return to the home office with a PO in hand.

As Reseller Manager for a large Ohio-based electronics firms, Lee L. must manage a world-wide network of distributors. Good business practice demands that each distributor and reseller receive accurate, timely information about new product announcements, price changes, and special promotions. However, sending out mailing packages has proved inefficient because of printing and distribution time. As a solution, convinces his management to place all materials on an internal WWW server that will be accessible exclusively to the distributor channel. By clicking the right buttons, his distributors have instant access to all the latest information, including product briefs with full-color graphics. And Lee must no longer field calls from angry distributors who have quoted incorrect product pricing.

Creating a WWW Intranet Site: Getting Started

Creating an internal web site is a low-cost, minimal risk investment. It is easy to implement, with very little training or equipment required. The basic system configuration consists of a server hardware platform/operating system and WWW server software. Assuming that your organization already has client PCs in place, the client investment should be relatively small.

As a server platform, the rule of thumb is server hardware with sufficient memory and disk space to run Windows NT, Windows 95, and/or a UNIX system platform, depending on your preference and in-house expertise. You will also need to configure the hardware with LAN cards for TCP/IP connection over the network to the clients. Today, an increasing number of organizations are opting for Windows NT or Windows 95 because of their open architecture and ease of use.

Web server software enables you to manage your internal WWW presence on the Intranet. The right WWW server software solution will give you the functionality required to setup and manage Home Pages, develop WWW content based on Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), perform text searches, and integrate with internal corporate databases or backoffice applications.

On the client side, each user who plans to access the internal WWW site will need a 486 or Pentium-PC (or notebook) with a minimum of 8MB memory to run an NT or MS- Windows client browser. Typically, a commercial client browser costs less than $40, although freeware versions are also available. The client browser can launch a variety of applications, access disparate databases, retrieve information from across the Internet, etc.

WWW content software is also required to generate HTML code so that you can add HTML tags to convert your current MS-Word documents into WWW documents. It's very easy to develop content for the web using one of the many inexpensive, third-party HTML authoring tools and editors, including Microsoft's Internet Assistant (which is free of charge). Depending on your organization's requirements, you can also take advantage of numerous other commercial tools are also available, including graphics software and packages to convert FrameMaker documents to HTML, as well as text retrieval/indexing software, links to database management systems, and server configuration or management tools.

Choosing a WWW Server: Key Considerations

WWW servers provide an efficient, single-point source of information. Pointers to information can be preloaded into client PC or Macintosh browsers, with links programmed into the documentation. High level subject lines - Marketing, Technical Support, Corporate Information - provide an easy-to-use roadmap to further detailed information.

Since the WWW server serves as the cornerstone for managing the WWW site, it's important to determine the type of functionality you require. Use the following questions as guidelines to making the right choice?

• Should UNIX, Windows NT, or Windows 95 serve as the WWW server platform?
• Must your employees have access to corporate databases? If so, what type of database support is required, such as Microsoft's Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) standard or SQL for database integration?
• What are your security requirements? For example, will it be necessary to protect highly confidential information and restrict access to certain workgroups? If so, what types of access controls can the WWW server define?
• Do you plan to use WWW browsers such as Mosaic? If so, what Internet proxy support e.g. HTTP, GOPHER, FTP will you need? Does the WWW server support these protocols?
• Will multiple Home Pages be installed on the same server? If so, how easy is it to manage and administer? Is remote administration a requirement?
• Who will be installing the WWW server? How important is easy installation?
• What type of interface does the WWW server use? Is it intuitive, Windows-like and easy to use?
• What type of search engine and text retrieval is supported?
• Are HTML tools supported for application development?
• What addressing schemes are supported?
• Who will setup the Home Page? What type of training is required?
• Who will be responsible for managing the content? Will this be someone technical or non-technical?
• Are there special resource or configuration requirements?
• What type of training, documentation, and ongoing support is available?