Today, we’re getting to check out the business case of investing UX dollars into enterprise solutions, and why organizations can run these projects while achieving a positive ROI.
Intranets are the unsung heroes organizations. While the glory goes to iOS apps and new websites, with slick full-screen videos and high-quality web design
… it’s the intranets where actual work gets done.
And yet, organizations often believe outdated intranets with web 1.0 UX designs when an upgrade is long overdue.
Today, we’re getting to check out the business case of investing UX dollars into internal technical assets, and why organizations can run these projects while achieving a positive ROI.
Why Intranet at All?
This is the constant pushback that style teams get when it involves internal assets. The argument goes like this:
“Why invest in an indoor tool once we could spend that cash on [external goals, e.g. customer acquisition, customer experience, membership user flow, etc..]”
And those external goals, particularly for businesses with bottom line targets, are hardly unimportant. But having an intranet can assist you hit them.
Generally, intranets are built to deliver x3 core benefits:
- Streamline internal processes
- Improve internal communication
- … Which collectively reduce the value of business functions.
Having better information flow internally may be a good thing to try to to , and businesses who have invested in intranets have made the bet that better communication = lower operation costs.
And that’s where our story gets interesting.
Why Not Invest Further?
If a corporation has an intranet, they’ve already decided that communication is worth some investment.
So the only argument against additional investment is that better communication features a diminishing return. Essentially, some communication gets you X efficiency, and better communication won’t get you 2X the efficiency.
And there’s some truth to the present .
Getting two things to 80% is typically better than getting one thing 100% perfect.
But intranets today, with the shifting demographics of the workplace, are failing to deliver that minimal viable benefit. And here’s exactly why they have a UX facelift.
Better UX will improve employee efficiency.
First, UX is quite just an internet site redesign.
It’s how information is organized, looked for , consumed, and distributed – all of which are core functions of an intranet. A UX redesign can help organize and optimize your intranet organization, and confirm that the proper user can find the proper stuff at the proper time.
Because believe this.
~20% of each day is employees trying to find information to try to do their jobs.
That means that even a little improvement in navigation, organization, or dissemination of data can deliver huge dividends.
It’s simple: less time on the low-value elements of their jobs means longer doing the high-value parts.
Better UX Improves Employee Compliance
Have you ever tried to urge employees to a system or process that they don’t like or is tough to use? Compliance becomes incredibly difficult in those settings.
And if your staff are liable for data generation, for instance imputing sales numbers, logging support calls, documenting processes/projects, or tracking their own time/activities, then getting compliance is incredibly important because that data gets uninterested in the organization to form major strategic decisions.
So it’s within the best interest of the organization to form that activity as easy and easy as possible, to urge the cleanest, most complete data and make the simplest decision.
Having a well-designed intranet that creates processes easy to follow and operations easy to finish inevitably drives up user adoption, inevitably cascading up to business decisions above the organization.
Better UX Improves Employee Retention
51% of employers say that poor technology makes it difficult to retain employees, and 76% of millennials say they might take a lower-paying job that they like, over a higher-paying one they don’t. And intranet won’t solve these hiring and retention problems single-handedly. But what employers are learning is that there’s no solution.
Employee retention during a combination of many things, including the technology that staff got to use.
For organizations hiring high-value employees, for instance , a university trying to find a professor, where the value of hiring is often $5,000+, every new hire may be a bit hit to rock bottom line.
By taking an incremental approach to employee retention, organizations significantly reduce their hiring costs. Improving the interior and customer-facing technology that you’re using can and will get on that roadmap.
And because the intranet usually touches every team, improving intranet UX is a simple place to start out .
Final Thoughts
Intranets have, for too long, been neglected thanks to the divide between customer- and user-facing technology.
But actually , the organizational bottom line doesn’t care what side of the table the technology is on.
Internal tools, generally , and informational / communication tools like intranets especially , can deliver significant benefits to a corporation .
By making information and communication simple, fast, and straightforward during a tool that works like every other digital tool your staff is using in their own lives, a well-designed intranet can:
- Improve employee efficiency
- Drive employee process compliance
- Lift employee retention.
Each of those areas delivers enough ROI to justify a UX intranet project. Combined, they create investing in intranet UX the simplest decision a corporation can (and should) make.
