How much will your new intranet cost?

Your current intranet is outdated, you want to improve your internal communications or want to connect people within your organization better. You’re looking at a new intranet solution. But what will it cost? Which factors impact the bottom line? What will be the ROI of your investment?

I can tell you: there’s more to consider than the initial price of the software. Read on to learn more.

Infrastructure cost

An intranet is only possible with the proper infrastructure. It takes servers and network connections and your investment will depend on how the system is set up and maintained. There are 2 main options to consider.

• On premise solution: Some organizations prefer on premise servers, or private clouds. Most of the times because they believe this will keep their data safer. It’s a good topic for another blogpost but to keep it short; this assumption is wrong. Organizations with an on premise solution need skilled IT professionals to setup, maintain and secure the intranet but won’t even come near the safety measures a cloud provider may provide – and guarantee.
• Cloud solution: Cloud solutions have an off-site server your organization connects to via the internet. The advantages are quite significant. Involv is built on Office 365 SharePoint which means you enjoy all that Microsoft has to offer. Plenty of storage, data backups and the best data security measures to name only some. All the technical stuff is managed for you, meaning your IT department has more time to focus on your core business. Cloud intranets often come as a Software-as-a-service (SaaS) subscription, meaning you’ll pay a price per month, depending the amount of users. Some cloud intranet offer a one-time fee model too.

Custom or ready-to-go

Although your first instinct might be to create a custom intranet for your organization, an out-of-the-box intranet is all that is required in many cases. Choosing a ready-to-go intranet will offer many benefits. These are the two most important ones:

• Lower costs. Don’t spend months designing your own solution, reinventing the wheel. A turnkey solution can meet the vast majority of your business needs. Some ready-to-go products like Involv will let you develop extra functionality on top, if you need to.
  The cost of maintenance can also be much lower. Instead of having to find solutions to unique problems that only exist in your system, you can rely on standard updates for your out-of-the-box intranet solution. Meaning you’ll also need less technical knowledge.
• Easier and faster deploy. Building a custom intranet solution is like building your own car from parts. Although this might make sense for some people, you will probably just go to the dealer to buy a car. He will sell you a car that is roadworthy and tested and you will still get to choose some features like the soundsystem and finishing of the seats.

Cost of a ready-to-go solution

Considering the lower infrastructure cost and advantages of a ready-to-go solution, I assume that you – like most organizations – will opt for a turnkey solution. So, what do these cost? We like transparancy when it comes to pricing so you can download our pricelist here, but mostly the price depends on these factors:

Size of your organization

Cloud intranets usually have a price per user. The larger your organization, the more licenses you will need. These come as a subscription model, or a one-time fee.

Functionalities

What functionalities should your intranet have? Do you opt for a standard package or do you want more? Are these extra functionalities available as an add-on or do you need to have them developed? Click here for our 1 page intranet focus plan which will help you describe and find your ideal solution.

Integrations

Many organizations choose to use the intranet as a digital workplace: it will be the start of the working day. Employees have access to various other systems via the intranet. The costs of an intranet also depend on the type and number of links with external software packages.

What is the intranet ROI (Return On Investment)?

Turnkey intranet solutions make it quite easy to calculate your total investment. But what’s the return on your investment?

An intranet is often a multi-year investment and strategic choice that must match the future vision, plans and objectives of your organization. To reduce risks and justify the costs of the intranet, you can prepare an extensive business case, define goals & KPIs and ultimately have these goals measured.

Some example objectives might be:

Make knowledge accessible

Knowledge is widely spread within your organization. But chances are a lot of it is stuck in information silos. People don’t know if information exist, where to find it or who is the expert on the matter.

The intranet is your information hub that helps you profit from all that knowledge and put it to use. Save time, become more productive, solve problems faster and provide a better customer experience.

Become a more flexible organization

Working 9 to 5 behind your regular desk at the office is no longer obvious. Organizations tend to opt for a more flexible approach.

Employees want access to the digital workplace, even when they are on the go and don’t have a computer at hand. They want to be able to contact colleagues, share or edit information and get notified when relevant information was added.

In this way an intranet increases the flexibility of your employees – and therefore that of your entire organization.

Improve internal communications

Email is still the main business communication system. Although it can be very effective, it has quite a few downsides like having a jumble of different mail conversations on the same subject and not having important information accessible for other colleagues.

The intranet collects information so every user immediately sees what is going on. Nobody misses out and less time is lost.

It also creates opportunities for large-scale interaction. Not only between colleagues who know each other well and who work together on a daily basis, but across all layers of the organization. Colleagues who had no idea of each other’s existence are connected via the intranet.

Short connections ensure that problems get solved faster. This way you work more effectively and your organization can quickly take steps forward.

Productivity up, costs down

Self-service, project-based work, agile – just a few terms that have been discussed in many meeting rooms recently. A good intranet supports these modern methods. It eases communication between employees, partners and customers.

Shortening the lead time of a process will cut costs considerably. And when you engage people with the right knowledge at the right time, you’ll see an increase of overall productivity.

Is this ROI too vague? Make it more tangible with some simple calculations. Check this example:

Let’s say the average employee salary is $30/hr and each employee wastes 5 minutes per day looking for information. That’s $2.5 per day or $652.5 per year (for 261 working days) paid to every employee each year just to find the information they need to do their job. If your company has 300 employees that’s $195,750 spent on wasted time each year.

There are several ways to measure the ROI of your intranet and it’s certainly eye-opening to do so!

So, What may your intranet cost?

It’s clear that every organization has its own wishes and goals. I hope this post made it clear that a ready-to-go cloud intranet will suit most organizations, even if there’s a need for customizations. Let me remind you to think about calculating your intranet ROI too. It will help you look beyond the initial cost and make you think about the benefits rather than focussing solely on the price.

That said, if you want to use Involv as it is, you can calculate the cost easily. Check the pricing for your organization and add it to your current Office 365 subscription cost.

Do want some customizations, help with onboarding, support or configuration? Get in touch for a quote.