This essay will begin with a definition of an intranet and what it’s principle uses are in an organisation. It will continue to discuss the intranets effectiveness in facilitating the needs of employees and other tangible and intangible benefits that will enhanse the productivity of the organisation as a whole. Adversely, intranets can also have a negative effect on the organisation and this will also be discussed.

The report will consider various literature and case studies of organisations that have implemented this technology and will focus from a managements perspective. Organisations of today are replacing traditional methods of handling and communicating information with intranet networks. The reason for this implementation is that intranets better manage informaton that flows through the various platforms of an organisation and it allows authorised employees to have access to the information they require to fulfill thier job-roles effectively.

This has been summarised in the following definition, “An intranet is an organised set of applications installed in a company’s internal network that uses internet technologies to publish, distribute and display information for anyone directly connected to the network”(Source: The Durlacher Intranet Report 1997). Noticeably, the basic concept behind the use of intranets is to support internal processes and encourage sharing of knowledge from all platforms of the organisations.

A market research company in the name of Ovum, found that 1. 06 million intranets were currenlty in operation across the world and this figure is expected to grow to 6. 8 million by the year 2002. An intranet has endless number of applications but they can generally be organised in to three catogories, namely; publishing applcations, transaction applications and community applications.