Perttu Ojansuu is CEO and Co-founder at Happeo intranet.
Technology and fairy tales don’t often go hand in hand, but as we all watch the story of AI unfold across the tech landscape, it’s hard not to get swept away envisioning all the possibilities.
Once Upon A Time: Cinderella And Intranets, The Housekeepers
Through the power of AI, intranets have experienced what can only be described as a Cinderella story. Like Cinderella, intranets have always had the potential to make a dynamic impact, but they are often deprioritized by business leaders, being seen as unessential or ineffective.
The goal of intranets has always been to bring organizations together as one team with one purpose. But despite solving critical pain points for organizations, intranets have been often cast aside as an appendage technology, unappreciated and invisible.
Intranets do not have the support they need to meet their full potential, just like Cinderella. She was constantly cooking, cleaning and working to keep the household running, but she was still met with criticism and general distaste from her stepsisters, even though they were the ones benefiting from her labor. Because of this, she was stuck in a situation where she was limited in opportunity, and intranets have experienced similar limitations.
These limitations hinder intranet adoption because many fail to put the user experience central to the strategy, with nearly half of employees stating their intranets are difficult to use. But that doesn’t remove an organization’s need for a solution. Users crave a knowledge management experience that works for them so they can stay connected and collaborate more easily.
So regardless of how frustrating the experience may be, they still—as Cinderella did—try to make the most of it, with 74% of intranet users saying they log in daily and attempt to connect, collaborate and find information. The challenge has been in progressing the technology to match the modern workforce and its user expectations.
Starting Small, But Dreaming Big
As the years went on, Cinderella continued to grow and work dutifully as she dreamed of a grander future. Intranets have grown and developed over time, as well. They were originally developed to provide a space to organize and store top-down information in a world that was scaling and digitizing. From there, internal communications capabilities were added, focusing on social connection and the sharing of news and information.
The Covid-19 pandemic served as a major turning point for intranets, as the world quickly pivoted toward remote and hybrid work almost instantly. This also caused many business leaders to take pause from non-intranet routines and reconsider the importance of intranets and their impact on a modern, dispersed workforce.
Cinderella was always valuable but was waiting in the wings for her moment to shine, and intranets have had a similar growing process. They have been evolving, and today, with developing technology, the potential for intranets to be a critical business platform has never been stronger. If you layer that progress with AI, intranets can completely transform their fate.
The F-AI-RY Godmother
In a remarkably swift transformation akin to the magic of turning pumpkins into carriages, intranets have been propelled into the spotlight, thanks to the integration of AI technology. This advancement has elevated intranets to unprecedented levels of functionality and potential.
AI has the power to shift our perspective of intranets. Before the ball, no one noticed Cinderella. She was always there, working behind the scenes, but it wasn’t until being transformed by magic that heads began to turn. Likewise, AI can transform and bring an intranet to life in several ways.
AI can help organizations create an intranet that isn’t just useful and powerful in features but is also appealing. An intranet can, and should, have the same standard of user experience that we expect from external-facing websites and applications we use every day. This hasn’t been possible earlier, but now, with AI, this can potentially happen without a development team or a years-long rollout. The way your intranet looks and works can help drive the engagement that organizations are looking for.
With AI, intranets can shift from being reactive to proactive. Rather than providing access to information when employees need it, they can automatically serve up content in a customized way for each user based on their role, location and preferences.
AI has the capability to enhance an organization’s content, brand and identity, seamlessly transitioning them into a user-friendly digital environment tailored to meet specific needs. This transformation can include the integration of an advanced enterprise search function. Over time, as AI adapts to users and content, its value continues to increase.
Cinderella’s stepsisters attempted to be like her, but they could never replace her. Similarly, a dynamic, modern intranet cannot be replaced. At times, organizations attempt to find stopgap or makeshift solutions for an intranet.
In large organizations, some may leverage bottom-up wikis such as Notion or employ simple AI assistant technologies, but nothing can fully replace the reliability of human-verified information sourced through intranets. These intranets serve as an organization’s central source of truth.
But just as the stepsisters’ feet were crammed into a shoe that didn’t belong to them, stopgap intranet solutions don’t fit the purpose an intranet provides—a dynamic and comprehensive truth about an organization’s knowledge.
No End For ‘Happily Ever After’
A truly modern intranet, powered by AI, can contribute to an organization’s success. But we must also remember that “happily ever after” never really ends. There are always more chapters to write, and we must continue to innovate and prioritize providing user-focused and intuitive intranets for our people.
The key is to adjust what we think we’ve always known about intranets. The magic of Cinderella’s fairy godmother shifted the way that everyone saw her, and AI is changing the way we look at and engage with intranets. The question of what an intranet is is no longer valid. It doesn’t matter what most intranets were or are. What matters is the potential they hold for the future.
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