3 Tips To Building An Intranet Business Case

Summary:  Build an intranet business case to present to the executive level using these best practices.

In most organizations, the person who is out there researching solutions, going through demos and narrowing down providers is rarely the one who holds the checkbook. Time after time we hear potential customers come to us saying we love the solution/ it’ll solve our problems, but because of budgeting constraints or a lack of willingness to change the project gets shelved. This is particularly prevalent in organizations that don’t currently have an intranet because while from a high level it may seem as though things have been working fine up until now getting that approval for an investment into an intranet can be a challenge. With this post, I’d like to share so information and practices that should help build an intranet business case that gets that approval from executives.

Time / Cost-Benefit

The time-cost benefit is one element that is most often overlooked when a business decides not to implement an intranet. In every organization, employees are paid for the time they are at work. This may seem like an obvious statement, but what a lot of organizations fail to consider is you’re also paying them for any time that’s being wasted. If you have no intranet and have resources spread across various solutions (file share, through payroll, a directory in an excel file, communication mainly through email), your employees waste time hunting for information, and they waste time switching back and forth between solutions to find what they’re looking for.

Consider this: you have 150 employees on an average wage of $20 an hour. If each employee wastes even just 5 minutes a day this could cost your business about $200 a day or $73,000 a year. So, if you are looking to get approval for your new intranet business case knowing that it will save just 5 minutes a day, this simple calculation demonstrates the time/cost benefit of an intranet.

Get the Decision Makers in a Demo

Often as we run through features during a demo, everyone gets ideas about other ways the solution would work in their organization. While the initial set of requirements might be A, B and C through the demo, organizations often discover that it could also work for D, E and F. Having the decision makers in these demos to see the benefits for themselves and to allow them to ask their own questions and voice their own concerns. Removing the middle man drastically improves the likelihood of getting approval. After all, it is a lot easier to say no if you haven’t seen the benefits first hand

Ask us for help

The last thing that could improve the likelihood of getting approval for an intranet is to ask us for help. Our sales team deals with customers from all kinds of varied businesses, with a host of problems they’re trying to solve and their experience is a resource that you can use. Also, our dedicated support team has tonnes of experience working with our customers to help solve their problems, and we can provide references for your intranet business case with current customers who can describe the improvements they’ve experienced.

So if you’re in the position where you know an intranet is something you and your company needs, but you’re not sure if you’ll be able to get it past the higher-ups, then let us know and we’d be happy to help!