Your public-facing web presence is vital in letting people know about your organisation, so its design and efficiency should reflect the image that your company wants to project. But now increasingly developed web technologies can also offer you internal business benefits.

Intranets are internal-only websites that allow all members of your organisation to access common resources. What you put on your intranet is entirely up to you. At a basic level, it provides a place to store such things as internal telephone directories, policies and procedures, or customer contact details. Intranets are now also used to post company announcements and important events. Areas can be given to post lighter topics, such as bulletin boards and online polls. They can even be integrated with core business applications such as account report generation. The scope is endless, and the beauty of the cross-platform nature of the internet is that no matter what kind of computer your employees are sitting in front of, they will have access to all these resources.

Extranets are like intranets, but they are for your clients. Rather than being designed for true public consumption, you can give your business partners special access rights to your extranet. You can allow them to see the status of their orders, or make new orders, or look up staff contact details within your firm.

Dean & Hilton are experts in setting up and maintaining all kinds of intranets and extranets for your business.