Intranet uses the services of World Wide Web technologies so as to distribute information within an organization. It supports a company business processes since it acts as the nervous and circulatory system for the company. It is a private network which comprises of interlinked local networks.
The intranet serves the purpose of sharing and distributing company’s information and resources among employees. Intranet uses four types of applications. These include communication and collaboration (send and receive emails, voice mails and paging), web publishing (telephone directories, training material etc), business operations and management and intranet portal management.
Organizations have used intranet so as to enhance the flow of organizational knowledge. Also, organizations have exploited it to create business value. Knowledge sharing is the process of information transfer from one individual to another. As a result of its enormous role of new ideas generation, intranet has significantly improved organizational innovation. Employees share information and ideas to the organization computers.
Research conducted for the use of networked computers, to support building of knowledge among school students, has provided evidence of the success of this approach, by finding positive aspects to the use of networked computers for this purpose. Intranet has enhanced brainstorming among schools i.e. between teachers (as employees) and students. It is a knowledge management tool in academic library, in South Africa (Schwartz 2006, p.858).
The intranet has also been used as a tool to knowledge management in Question Sharing and Interactive assignments for developing and sharing knowledge items. QSIA has enhanced authority collaborations through online recommendations. This has enabled generation of a community of teachers and learners. On the other hand, QSIA has fostered individual learning and has promoted higher-order thinking among its users.
Employees have been able to solve various organizational problems through the intranet through question sharing amongst themselves (Awad 2004, p.73). This system uses an open source, open standards, privacy and ease of use, flexibility and multi-community. The intranet also has acted as a web-tool, permitting easy accessibility to various knowledge databases. Such include multimedia that are interactive e.g. music and films and written text.
Knowledge sharing by use of intranet has also enabled efficiency in organizations. DUBRA (Dubai Revenue Authority) claims that intranet has made it possible for availability of information and knowledge to most employees. The intranet has capacitated employees to get information that is up-to-date and the officers have been able to keep abreast any development and changes pertaining to the organization.
To ease the process and thus evade the tedious process of referral of their clients back to the ports for them to be cleared, the Dubai Revenue Authority simply confirms with the database records accessible through the intranet; communicates with officials at the ports and hence eventually assisting their clients (Maier 2004, p.346).
Through this way, the intranet has solved ambiguities in port clearance through communication and information exchange. This in turn, has enabled increased revenue for the organization since it has fastened the process of revenue collection.
Therefore, in writing this essay, I have learnt that the intranet is an extremely beneficial application for use in organizations since it helps in knowledge management and knowledge sharing. Through this way, the intranet has improved organizational efficiency since employees of an organization are able to share information faster. It is also through the intranet that such enterprises are able to increase their revenue.
List of References
Awad, E 2004, Knowledge Management, Pearson Education, India.
Schwartz, D 2006, Encyclopedia of knowledge management, Idea Group Inc (IGI), New York.
Maier, R 2004, Knowledge management systems: information and communication technologies for knowledge management, Springer, New York.