Although many agencies have accepted the Internet as part of their business model, not that many are using an intranet, an internal Web site that employees access with their browsers. One reason is that agency management tends not to see intranets as business-critical. But is that perception accurate? This column will examine some of the benefits of having an intranet.

Data managementA wise person once said, "It's not what you know, it's what you do with what you know." Information is the currency of the 21st century. How you manage data will determine the growth and success of your agency.Imagine that you've just received an update from one of your carriers. If you're like many agencies, you disseminate it to the staff via a routing sheet that everyone signs before passing the information along to the next person. This system is difficult to monitor if the routing sheet fails to make its way back to management. If it's lost somewhere along the trail, some of your staff may never see the update.By posting the information on an intranet, on the other hand, you enable everyone on the staff to see the most recent data from the carrier at the same time. You also can track what information your staff is accessing.Whatever time your staff spends looking up old data and replacing it with updates is a direct cost. It may be difficult to measure, but rest assured it's reflected in your bottom line. You can eliminate that cost by putting such updates on an intranet.Agencies also incur a cost when employees leave their current positions. Whether they leave the agency or just transfer to another department, they take their knowledge and experience with them. Intranets enable an agency to permanently capture and store employees' knowledge and expertise.An intranet also can benefit an agency in the following ways:o By reducing the cost of printing, maintaining, distributing and storing hard-copy documents.o By reducing an agency's E&O exposure by having only one copy of important procedures and workflow easily accessible at every desk.o By reducing the need of employees to rely on and interrupt others to get information.o By reducing the amount of time staff spends searching for information.o By enabling you to eliminate outdated versions of the same document on your server.Time managementAn intranet known only for data management will probably get little respect. At best it will be thought of as a giant library where things get stored. That's far from business-critical, so what more can an intranet bring to the table?Greater staff productivity is one thing. An intranet gives staff the ability to solve problems by providing them access to necessary information.For each member of your staff who loses 20 minutes a day hunting for information, the resulting hit to your bottom line over a year's time is equivalent to a two-week paid vacation. An intranet can give back that time.E&O managementAn intranet also can help agencies comply with privacy laws and fare better in any litigation. Imagine that your agency is involved in an E&O lawsuit. A litigation hold will be placed on every piece of paper and electronic information in your agency. You cannot destroy data, and the plaintiff's lawyer may charge for going through every document. This means that:o The more time it takes to examine documents, the more it costs your agency.o Discrepancies between different versions of documents, such as an employee handbook or other materials stating agency policy, could be used against you in court.An intranet is the simplest and most cost-effective way to ensure that you have only one version of important documents, and that an opposing attorney will have the smallest number of documents to examine as possible.'Selling' the staffDespite the benefits of having an intranet, selling it to the staff can be a challenge. One way to overcome resistance is to ask for volunteers to take an hour a week for the next month to look up information about intranets on the Internet. Volunteers can find numerous articles about intranets, the overwhelming majority of which will endorse their value.At the end of the month, take your volunteers out for a working lunch. Everyone may be surprised when the lion's share of the information extols the many benefits of this technology marvel. Schedule a staff meeting so that agency management and the volunteers can explain to remaining staff how an intranet will streamline many of their daily tasks. By allowing staff to discover the benefits of an intranet on their own, you won't have to sell them on it because they will have already sold themselves.Ted Baker is president of Advantage Automation Inc., which for 17 years has offered agency-consulting services addressing a variety of management and agency-development issues. He also is an author and frequent conference speaker. Ted can be reached at [email protected].