Building a better intranet – our free guides
All our free intranet guides in one handy place.
As part of our commitment to helping people understand modern intranets, we’ve been publishing a series of guides to thinking about, designing, deploying and looking after your intranet.
You can now check out all our free intranet guides below. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to be the first to know when we publish more handy stuff.
Why is an intranet governance policy important?
If you want to ensure your intranet meets the needs of your users and your business, it’s vital to have a governance policy in place.
A governance policy helps everyone work towards the same goals, makes sure intranet content is kept relevant and searchable, and assigns responsibility for every page to a colleague. It can even give you the tools to resolve conflicts further down the line.
How Dynamics 365 will help transform your business
When we were at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) earlier this month, one of the key announcement was the company’s new enterprise cloud service, Dynamics 365.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, spent a large chunk of his opening ‘vision keynote’ talking about the new service, so it’s clear that it forms a really vital part of their strategy for enterprise customers. But what is Dynamics 365, and what can it do for your business?
Satya Nadella talks Dynamics 365 at WPC 2016 – photo by Brian Douglas, our Business Development Manager
What is Dynamics 365?
Dynamics 365 combines Microsoft’s cloud tools for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) into one service, available on a simplified subscription model similar to Office 365.
Intranets, extranets, and portals: what’s the difference?
What’s the difference between an intranet, an extranet and a portal? The terms are sometimes used interchangeably, but they have very different meanings.
What is an intranet?
An intranet is a private website, accessible only to staff of the organisation that runs it, designed to communicate and share knowledge more effectively across the business. A good intranet makes it a piece of cake for staff to find the information they need.
Intranets can be hosted ‘on-premise’ – on your own infrastructure and equipment, in which case you pay once for a perpetual licence for the software – or in the cloud, in which case you pay a monthly subscription to have it maintained remotely.
The changing face of our online presence – 20th Anniversary
We only have images of our website going back to 2000 – but, even so, they give a glimpse into the fast-changing world of the web.
2000-2004: Going green
Our website at the turn of the century might seem very basic (as well as being very green) – but that’s because this is the ‘No Shockwave’ version. Shockwave was the predecessor to Flash, enabling the development of dynamic, interactive websites with animation and sound. During this period, we built Shockwave-powered sites for some customers, including Historic Scotland.
Looking back at WPC 2016
We were at Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference last week in Toronto. Read on for an exclusive summary of where Microsoft is headed…
CompanyNet was in Toronto last week for Microsoft’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC). Our Business Development Manager, Brian Douglas, and business tech journalist Bill Magee, met with other Microsoft partners, attended sessions on the future of Microsoft technologies, and reported back on what they found.
Day 1
Satya Nadella delivered his Vision Keynote, recognising Microsoft’s achievements in the last year, and setting out priorities for the next 12 months and beyond. The focus was on digital transformation in the cloud through engaging customers, empowering staff, optimising operations and transforming products.
This is great news for CompanyNet, where we are already well-placed to help our customers undergo a digital transformation. Our enterprise-ready software like Kira Cloud intranet for SharePoint is already giving businesses an easy way to get on board with a cloud-based vision of the future.
Satya also talked about Dynamics 365 as a new Microsoft service that embodies that vision, particularly for reinventing business processes.
Digital transformation in action at WPC 2016
Business tech journalist Bill Magee reports from Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Toronto, where big changes are predicted to be afoot…
A telling remark from an AT&T senior executive here at Microsoft WPC 2016 during an exclusive Press/Analyst partner Q&A brings into sharp focus the unprecedented impact that the Internet of Things will have on the workplace.
Mobeen Khan, their AVP Industrial IoT Solutions, said practically every business is studying how to obtain more intelligence out of their remote assets together with improving their management and health across the supply chain.
As IoT gains more traction, improving operational efficiencies within an organization is vital to all of this digital transformation: “It is these operational efficiencies that are going to change a lot of the jobs of employees,” he warned. So best to be prepared.
Earlier, Cyril Perducat, EVP Digital and iOT at Schneider Electric, stressed that in his realm, that of services, digital transformation covers everything from analytics, mobility, connectivity and the cloud. Crucial to each of these key areas has to be providing new value for the customer.
Kelly Malone, VP at Taqtile, who have created a HoloLens-based experience for PGA Tour, explained how the utilization of such an advanced VR/AR tool was leading to a quite fascinating new realm of visualization for the golfer, coach, caddy, broadcaster and fan, not forgetting the PGA folks.
What all three organisations have in common is how they are each creating win/win digital outcomes for what are often complex partnerships and deals.
Who says Digital Transformation cannot be kept simples!
Cloudy with a chance of data – WPC 2016
Tech journalist Bill Magee is in Toronto, reporting for CompanyNet from Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference. Here’s his take on Satya Nadella’s opening Vision Keynote.
Dateline: Silicon Valley North [Toronto -Ed]
“Fresh” from celebrating the Euro 2016 grand final with my new Portugese pals, it’s back to business at this year’s Microsoft WPC with Satya Nadella’s Vision Keynote here in Toronto.
The software giant’s CEO told twenty thousand partner-delegates from 144 countries that his number one priority is digital transformation.
To cut to the chase — more will be achieved in the next five years compared with the previous three decades.
Digital and physical experiences are undoubtedly undergoing inextricably-linked “accelerations” coupled with a wiring and rewiring of business models.
Here it has to be all about empowering an organisation’s employees whilst simultaneously and optimizing everyday commercial processes to engage with and meet customer needs.
The opportunities before each and every one of us are unprecedented: “We are lucky to be involved in information technology as the world is digitising … where for the first time literally everything will be connected. That truly is the opportunity in front of us as the entire GDP is shaped.”
Everyone has the opportunity to tap into this revolution where at its core is handling data to help customers achieve their ambitions. In such a scenario, the key is the “intelligent cloud” where modern IT tools are tailored to specific business processes and needs.
The next phase of the intelligent cloud platform is cognitive capabilities and services. In Microsoft’s case this means, of course, the Cortana Intelligence Suite.
One groundbreaking Microsoft collaboration revealed is with McDonald’s, to dramatically improve its drive-thru experience using voice recognition and natural language processing.
Mine’s a chicken enchilada with fries…