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The Internet is a global network of millions of people. It is one vast open land where anyone anywhere in the world can send email, discuss the Year 2000 dilemma, put up a web page demonstrating the life and death of a pet rock, announce the grand opening of her new law practice, etc.
An internal web site is just like the internet but is typically behind a 'firewall' which allows employees to look out, but keep others from looking in. An internal web site is simply a private version of the Internet's World Wide Web available only to individuals internal to an organization.
What distinguishes an internal web site from an Intranet? An intranet is much more than an internal web site hiding behind a firewall. It is much more than a web page informing other departments of your department's accomplishments and services. An Intranet should have value added. It is a network which links the company's people, information and external partners, suppliers, and clients in a way that makes people more productive, information more accessible, and navigation through all the company's resources and applications more seamless than it has been done in the past.
It is also important to realize that there are no geographical boundaries of an intranet. Corporate headquarters, the London office as well as the Singapore office should all have equal access to corporate resources. Many companies have developed Web-based intranets to open up communications among geographically dispersed sites. With the Internet or a private network as the backbone, sharing information across the country or around the world has become cheaper and easier to deploy.
Intranets enable a company to distribute information quickly and reliably throughout the company and to business partners. From client-tracking information to discussion about the latest court decisions, corporate directories to debates on strategic direction, and personnel and policy guides to business and legal wire news, the information and ideas that today are poorly distributed within your organization can become an integral part of your intranet.
Making a case for an intranet is not a difficult task. Intranets hold the potential for enormous benefits to any organization. The need for sharing information has prompted the wave of organizations setting up intranets today. Not only are intranets an ideal way to provide access to corporate information and collaboration, but organizations are finding them easy to implement, cost-effective, scaleable, and most importantly they serve to centralize information.
What is all the hoopla surrounding intranets? The combination of the demands placed on businesses and the ability for intranets to help organizations meet these demands are the primary reasons for the excitement.
In order for a business to remain competitive in today's market requires that decision-makers be able to adapt quickly to the ever changing demands.
An intranet can be used to save time and money by increasing the efficiency of an operation. It can also allow clients and partners quick access to up-to-date information and improve communications within an organization and between the organization and its external partners. Coordination and collaboration amongst teams and partners can be greatly enhanced.
Some Advantages of An Intranet
Intranets are very inexpensive and cost effective. They are not only very easy to deploy and use, but they save a great deal of time. In order to set up an intranet all that's initially required is a web server, a client browser such as Netscape Navigator or the Microsoft Internet Explorer, and a Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) publisher or web developer charged with publishing your organizations' content via the web. You can't get any cheaper than that! Within a few hours of HTML training a legal assistant can quickly publish the latest legal documents. The information is instantly available globally to anyone with access rights.
Documents can be managed from the desktop, within the department, and centrally in one location. The result is a single, seamless environment for all information throughout your company.
An attorney can track her time/expense and generate bills for services, tracks and generates Accounts Receivable aging reports, payment, expenses, and retainer balances reports.
Other types of information included within an intranet could be case calendars, scheduled milestones and changes, costs charts, client leads, key competitive information, client lists, training materials, team member listings and responsibilities, problems status reports, case study reports, client information requests and complaints, corporate benefits information, corporate policies, company mission and goals, job postings, telephone directories, the annual report, employee benefit plan information, employee vacation status reports, etc.
An intranet makes it easy to find any piece of information or resource located on the network. It is ideal for information retrieval and management functions. Attorneys and legal professionals must be able to quickly locate and strategically manipulate electronic data as the need arises.
In addition, the intranet can be designed so that it constantly watches for new information relative to the legal profession on the internet. Providing access to the Lexis and Dialog on-line databases can perform target research. Consequently, all users will have comprehensive access to important information across both the in-house intranet as well as the external internet.
For example, a professional can type a single query which returns all internal and external information related to a particular case, including internal reports, documents, depositions, research, trial transcripts, exhibits, and other competitive information. A document/precedent retrieval application, which is not limited to internal documents but encompasses external documents as well, will give your organization an edge over its competitors.
Trial lawyers know the importance of being prepared and having information at their fingertips. Using full text retrieval for transcripts and other work product, and database systems for management of documentary evidence, you can gain complete control over the facts and law relevant to your case.
You can have seamless access to data repositories and applications. Existing databases, data warehouses, and legacy applications can be accessed easily from a single interface. New applications can be authored once with web development tools such as JavaScript and Java, and quickly deployed on any platform.
In terms of collaboration and communication, you can coordinate the efforts of a global defense team by keeping track of revisions, develop newsgroups so that the team can discuss cases and collaborate via the Web. In that way you can quickly assemble workgroups to tackle a case regardless of the location of the legal staff.
Security is an integral part of any information system. The intranet should be designed so that it provides ways for resources to be protected against unauthorized users, for communications to be encrypted and authenticated, and for the integrity of information to be verified. Corporations can issue and manage a security key infrastructure to give employees the ability to conduct company business securely across the network. Additionally, intranet applications can be extended securely across the intranet.
For example, a legal team on a highly confidential case can issue security certificates, which grants different access permissions to core team members, other internal associates, and external partners.
Intranets have experienced an explosion in recent months not only because they allow for fundamental changes in the way business process are conducted but they are relatively inexpensive.
GroupWare has developed the reputation of being complex and expensive. Lotus Notes, in particular, has been shown to cost in the neighborhood of $1,000 per user per year to maintain. Using Internet technologies is considerably less expensive. Since more and more computer users are already running Web browsers such as the Netscape Navigator or the Microsoft Internet Explorer, often the only thing that is required is to setup one or more internal web servers. The conversion of information into the HTML format is becoming very straightforward as more and more tools become available. Administrators simply distribute information onto different servers and everyone can access it from there.
Unlike the highly technical Notes environment, "content creators" can also easily manage the World Wide Web (WWW) server rather than by expensive IS professionals. The WWW point-and-click environment allows non-technical departments rather than the MIS Department to manage, contribute and update WWW content. This shift of responsibility helps reduce development costs, and enhances productivity by enabling the technical support staff to focus efforts on running the computer systems instead of maintaining content via the intranet.
It is less expensive to develop content for the web than for Lotus Notes. A wide variety of third-party content tools are available for the WWW server development, while the few Notes content development tools are those provided. Since familiar tools, such as Microsoft Word or PowerPoint, can generate HTML code, support staff, rather than high-level, technical experts can easily create WWW content.
Intranets have many advantages over GroupWare such as Lotus Notes.
Intranets integrate electronically to corporate data stored in your databases such as tailored legal data, sales & marketing material including price lists and brochures, case reports, human resources data including benefits and company policies, etc.
It's not just the cost of buying Lotus Notes and paying programmers to customize and maintain it. The other factor tipping the scales toward the intranet approach is the cost of training. Not only has the Web's HTML standard emerged as a universal electronic communications medium but it also serves as a standard user interface. By now, millions of computer users have become familiar with the process: Click on a color, highlighted word or a graphical button and jump to another Web page. All Web pages, no matter what their appearance, work this way. It requires little if any training--and makes finding electronic information simple enough for everyone in a company.
The Players and Their Products
In terms of costs, Intranets are cheap compared to proprietary systems such as Lotus Notes. According to Netscape at http://home.netscape.com, Netscape's intranet solution is significantly cheaper to acquire and to own than competitive systems. First, the software is significantly cheaper to acquire. For example, the cost of acquiring Netscape Navigator and one SuiteSpot bundle to be used by 1000 users is approximately $33,000. Current cost estimates for comparable Microsoft BackOffice and Lotus Notes packages are approximately $170,000 and $277,000, respectively. Then, training and development costs are slashed through use of an industry-standard unified user interface - the Netscape Navigator web browser - and industry-standard programming languages. Finally, applications can be developed and deployed far more easily in the Netscape environment than in an environment as complex as Lotus Notes.
However don't be quick to rule out Microsoft! With its behemoth deep pockets and its priority being anything related to the internet, Microsoft is a force to contend with. Microsoft BackOffice Suite mentioned above is a separate product from the Microsoft Office 97 product. The Microsoft Office 97 product demonstrates 'TOTAL' applications connectivity with one standard interface. Microsoft's chairman Bill Gates reiterated his vision of absorbing everything Internet--including browsing features, protocols, and now Java--into the Windows operating system. All of this on the desktop!
An intranet can add to an organization's competitiveness by:
Being able to better serve your clients and to garner new business interests alone are compelling
reasons to implement one or more intranets within your organization.
Contact Information:
Faith R. Sloan
FRS Associates
http://www.frsa.com
faith@frsa.com
(415) 626-9796