You have heard of SharePoint and its capabilities as an enterprise tool to boost productivity and facilitate collaboration. An intranet-in-a-box is a set of templates and functionality that transforms the out-of-the box SharePoint experience. The new intranet-in-a-box revolution is set to bring corporate intranet technology within the grasp of SMBs. Many of these intranet solutions have sophisticated features such as a news publishing process, social media capabilities, Business Intelligence (BI) reporting functionality and come designed for enhanced mobile collaboration.
James Robertson, one of the world’s most renowned intranet experts commented in early 2016, “Within 1-2 years, the SharePoint intranet marketplace will shift from 90% custom-coded solutions, to 80-90% out-of-the-box intranet products running on SharePoint as a platform.”
Here are some common characteristics found across all intranet-in-a-box products:
- Rapid deployment – The great thing about these modern ‘intranet-in-a-box’ solutions is that they are quick deploy – you can be up and running in days not months (a typical SharePoint project can take 6-18 months to go live).
- Future proofed – Using an out-of-the-box intranet solution means that your intranet should never become out of date. Development on these products is continuous and users will benefit from these frequent updates. Also, they have been built to cope with the increasing mobile use. This is in stark contrast to traditional intranets which are normally in place for several years.
- They leverage extensive intranet expertise – There is a growing list of providers of ‘intranet-in-a-box’ technology such as Unily, Bonzai, Wizdom, as well as our own solution Boost.These products have all been created by SharePoint consultancies who have used their extensive experience and expertise to create ‘off-the-shelf’ solutions packed with an array of functionality, comparable to bespoke corporate intranets.
- Social collaboration tool – Modern intranets have also been built to become hubs of employee collaboration and communication. The types of social interaction range from leadership videos on the home page to the incorporation of social media tools such as Yammer.
- Cloud based with Office 365 compatibility – This new generation of intranets is cloud based not on a server. They also are powered by Office 365 which means it is supported and have guaranteed up-time (compared with running your own services). Also, having an Intranet build on-top of your existing Office 365 subscriptions means your users do not have to remember another set of login details
So to conclude, an intranet-in-a-box empowers business owners to use enterprise grade technology for a fraction of the risk than ever before. Leveraging the best features of SharePoint and transforming the way their company operates both commercially and functionally.
If you would like to see how easy it is to set up your own intranet in a box, book a demo of our Boost intranet-in-a-box solution.
