What a Content Management System (CMS) Intranet Can Do

A CMS intranet can boost productivity, foster collaboration, and increase profits across your business. Here’s how.

October 27, 2023
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An intranet can transform how your organization operates…

But only if your employees actually use it.

That’s where CMS intranets come in.

These easy-to-use platforms are easy to sell to your people and will quickly make their lives easier.

Read on to learn everything you need to know about CMS intranets – including how to implement one across your organization.

What is a CMS intranet?

An intranet is a website that can only be accessed by a company’s employees. It’s where your people go to share knowledge, communicate and collaborate with each other, and keep on top of company updates.

A content management system – abbreviated to CMS – is software that makes it as easy to update a website as it is to update a Facebook status. It sits on the back end of any website – including internal company websites like intranets – and empowers employees with no technical skills at all to upload, edit, and manage content.

What are the benefits of a content management system (CMS) intranet?

A content management system intranet can transform the way your organization operates.

Don’t believe us?

Here are the benefits it will bring to your business: 

Make it easy for employees to create, share, and manage digital assets

If your company’s intranet didn’t have a CMS, you’d need a developer to push through every single update you wanted to share on it. You’d need a dev’s help to do something as simple as adding meeting notes to your knowledge base.

Which, for all intents and purposes, would make it unusable as a modern intranet

An intranet content management system empowers employees with zero technical knowhow to quickly and easily do everything from:

  • Running an eNPS survey
  • Gather product feedback from your customers
  • Creating a lightweight sales CRM to track leads, sales, and opportunities

It also allows your CEOs to quickly and easily publish executive announcements on their workplace news feed to keep your people in the loop about what’s going on in your business.

Make important information and resources quick and easy to find

81% of employees say they feel frustrated when they can't get the information they need to do their job.

A well-maintained and frequently updated intranet solves this problem through a company knowledge base that makes it easy for your employees to find the information they need to do their jobs.

But your people won’t use those tools if they’re not quick and easy to use. 

Which is where intranet content management software comes in. 

If it’s as easy to update an internal SOP as it is to post on LinkedIn, then your people are likely to do it – especially if you reward and recognize your people for sharing their knowledge on your intranet.

And that will make sure all the important information and resources your employees need are quick and easy to find.

A more secure solution

Sharing sensitive company information over email isn’t exactly best practice when it comes to digital security.

Make it easy to share information with team members effectively through a CMS intranet and they’ll collaborate there rather than share sensitive information over less secure channels.

Boost all your business’s key metrics

An intuitive intranet content manager makes your employees a lot more likely to stick to intranet content management best practices when they’re updating your knowledge base.

And a well-run company wiki can boost all your business’s key metrics.

First of all, it’s estimated that the average knowledge worker spends an incredible 20% of every working week searching for the information they need to do their job. Which means empowering your people with an intuitive CMS intranet and could save each of them a day a week.

Since employees of companies with higher turnover rates are 65% more likely to state that it could be "very difficult" or "nearly impossible" to "get the information needed to do my job well", a well-maintained intranet can do wonders for your employee retention, too.

Plus, 80% of workers want to know more about how decisions are made in their company. Making knowledge sharing tools like a workplace news feed, CEO and Executive updates, and weekly updates as easy as possible to use through digital content management tools will help your leaders keep their people up-to-date.

Together, this can have a serious impact on your business’s bottom line. In fact, studies show that companies with a headcount of around 1,000 employees could save $2.7 million each year by empowering and encouraging their people to share their knowledge and insights with each other through tools like a CMS intranet.

How to implement a CMS Intranet

With a bit of careful planning, a CMS intranet can transform internal communication within your business.

Here’s how to implement an intranet content management strategy that unlocks all the benefits that come when your workforce shares their knowledge.

Make a shortlist of must-haves

There are all kinds of types of intranet built on all kinds of content management systems. 

The best content management system for your internal comms is one you can tailor to your exact needs.

For example, are you looking for:

Make a shortlist of your team’s must-have features, then pick an intranet that’s going to make it easy to implement those quickly – and scale them as your business grows.  

You’ll also want to consider your current toolstack and make sure your intranet of choice has all the integrations you need.

Get organized

Your people aren’t going to use your intranet if it’s confusing to navigate and difficult to use.

To create an easy-to-use and well-organized intranet, you need to start by getting to grips with what information your teams are going to need easy access to. Then you can plan how all the information in your intranet is going to be structured to make it as intuitive to navigate as possible. 

The best way to make sure you end up with an intranet that’s laid out logically from day one is to take your team into a conference room with a pack of Post-it notes. Spend some time getting their help mapping out how your knowledge base could best be organized to help make their jobs as easy as possible.

Taking the time to take this crucial step will not only make sure you launch an intranet that actually meets your people’s needs. It will also have the added benefit of getting the employees you involve bought into the system they helped design, turning them into your new intranet’s early advocates.

Start with a test run

A lot can go wrong when you’re looking to change the way your people work – especially when you’re planning on moving every one of your company’s important SOPs and documents to a new platform.

You can make the full launch much smoother sailing by running a pilot program first. So, run a trial with a single department – a tech savvy one, like your dev team, tends to work best – for a few weeks to nip any teething problems in the bud before you launch your new intranet company-wide.

Get your people on board and up to speed

No matter how intuitive your intranet’s content management system is, you’d be making a huge mistake if you implement it across your business without guiding your people through how to use it – and what benefits they’ll reap from engaging with it.

So, before you launch your intranet, be sure to:

  • Explain to your team why you’re making the move to your new intranet – and the benefits you hope it will bring to them
  • Spend some time creating training videos on how to get the most from your new intranet
  • Create best practices for how to engage with your intranet to make sure it stays organized
  • Set up rewards to recognize people for engaging in your intranet
  • Set up surveys to go out a few weeks after your intranet is up and running to see what your people do and don’t like about it so you can finetune your system

With all that in place, you’re set for an effective intranet launch.

The final word

A CMS intranet can boost productivity, foster collaboration, and ultimately increase profits across your business.

Follow the steps we’ve outlined here to make sure yours is as useful to your employees as possible – and the launch goes smoothly, too.

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