Since the launch of the Happeo enterprise social network for the Google ecosystem in March 2016, we’ve had potential customers from all over the world contact us to find out what all the fuss is about.
I’ve had plenty of conversations where people haven’t been afraid to ask me straight: “So, why does my business even need a social intranet software, and what does it really mean anyway?”There are a few questions I like to ask right away in return, to get the ball rolling:
- Have you ever really stopped to think why your organization has an intranet software in the first place?
- What benefits does your intranet software bring for your business operations?
- Does your intranet software make your employees’ daily working lives easier? How?
The intranet graveyard trap
In reality your intranet is typically perceived as your company’s knowledge bank; in the worst case people see it as a black hole where information goes to die. But why? Because the content published there is generated by a single department or team, and not by your employees.
Employees will never truly adopt the intranet as their own as long as the information flow remains one way – from the top down, i.e. from the management to the employees. What’s more, this model also makes it increasingly less likely that people will regularly visit your intranet to keep up to date with the latest news.
"What if your intranet could be so much more? What if it could be the go-to place for employees – a social portal that supports people in their daily work?"
Our new vision for Internal Communications
As we began to develop our vision of a completely new internal comms platform, some very clear goals began to emerge. We wanted to develop a communication and collaboration platform that would:
- Bring measurable benefits for employees
- Make it easier to share know-how across organizations
- Be easy to adopt, use, and maintain
- Make it easy to publish attractive and dynamic content that employees get real value from
The biggest benefit that our customers have realized through using Happeo is that it saves them time. Because Happeo is fully integrated with Google Workspace (formerly G Suite), you can access all your favorite Google tools from a single intuitive interface. This means, for example, that when you search for words or phrases in Happeo, you’re searching everything: emails, files, employee contact details, discussions, and static intranet content.
Better collaboration means better decision-making
Happeo makes it easier for any employee to share documents and discuss projects with their team. In this way, it also acts as a forum where the quieter members of your organization can get their voices heard and share their knowledge and experience. Businesses rarely take into account the importance of involving all the different types of personalities in decision making. Different people experience benefits and risks differently, so the more people you involve in the decision-making process the better the outcome will be.
"What if your intranet gave everybody a voice and supported better-quality decision-making in your organization?"
Digital workspaces, which we call Channels, not only make it easier for every employee to participate in discussions and voice their opinions, they also act as central repositories for valuable knowledge. The next time a team is working on a similar project, the information is much easier to find even if the team members have changed completely.
Getting ahead of the competition
The way in which enterprises combine and processes information has a significant impact on their competitiveness, and this is the foundation for the Channels feature. Channels make it easy not only to retrieve valuable information you’ve already saved, but to create new information in the same place so that everything stays connected. This makes it much easier for existing participants to stay up to date and for new team members to familiarize themselves with the topics being discussed.
This type of collaborative working increases the opportunities for innovation, particularly when external parties such as customers or suppliers are involved. In an open and transparent working environment where different kinds of people are able to get involved and know-how is valued and shared, it’s possible to innovate new and wonderful things together with stakeholders and partners.
Get in touch to book a demo and find out more about how our enterprise social network for the Google ecosystem can help your business flourish.
