Too often information essential to the smooth running of a business, which should be easily accessible to all employees, is hidden away in manuals and folders gathering dust in some dingy room at the back of the accounts department.

Trotting off to the corporate library, or flicking through a manual or catalogue that may be months or years out of date, is not the ideal way to establishing common practices, processes and procedures.

However growing your own internet and providing on-line services to employees and business partners is proving to be a highly effective way to provide an accurate and up-to-date flow of data for those who need to be in the know.

Enter the intranet, the extranet, the virtual private network (VPN) and the executive information portal (EIP). Some have very definite descriptions of what each is capable of and how they should be used, others say the distinction is blurring into one big network with various security levels determining who's allowed access to what.

Open Standards for Everything

They all use TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol), typically referred to these days simply as IP, as a standard for communication between computers; and hypertext mark-up language (HTTP) as the basic set of rules for exchanging text, graphics, sound, video and other multimedia files. Content is accessed using browser software including Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator.  

An in-house version of the internet, or intranet, may link several or many local area networks (LANs) or use leased lines to run across your wide area network connecting remote offices or even workers operating from home. One of the main purposes of an intranet is to share company information and computing resources among employees. Company's manuals, HR information, online training, and any other internal information can be organised on an intranet. Intranets may also be used to enable collaboration or working in groups.

Intranets can significantly reduce the cost associated with proprietary networking enabling many people to have access to vast amounts of information without having to log-in to different servers. It can help support an organisation's knowledge management, increase productivity, improve workflow and can easily be extended as internal information needs grow.

As technology keeps changing so too do the definitions. Scott Green, general manager of Axon Computertime's eFormation group believes the terms intranet and extranet are being superseded by the concept of the corporate portal. This might include a ticker from the share market, news, weather and an index of resources and key performance indicators such as revenue, inventory levels or debtors. "It's becoming more of a repository of common information services - even a one or two person business could gain value from this."

Only two to three years ago he wouldn't have recommended an intranet for any company with less than 20-30 people, and only then when the company became so complex that the lunch room ceased to be the centre of communication.

All the Nets As One Net

"We're moving toward a single network - forget the extra or intra and just see it as a common information repository with the directory determining what information you are allowed to have access to," says Mr Green.

At its most simplistic he suggests a copy of Microsoft FrontPage and an internal web server will do the trick but when you want to provide common services across a larger organisation the issues of security, access permissions and integrating information from disparate systems becomes an issue.

While Axon Computertime makes good use of Microsoft's Sharepoint Server and XML (extensible mark-up language) to access most of the different document types that doesn't excuse bad information practices. "A lot of information is very unstructured and saved in different formats around the network. These packages still need to know where the data is and who is allowed access." 

One of the first things the company discusses with potential clients is the need for an information structure. "We help them decide how to archive and control unstructured information including Word, Excel and PowerPoint files as well as the need to access structured database files. "

Axon Computertime typically deals with larger organisations such as Foodstuffs, Genesis Power, United Networks and Tower Group so creating an internal portal that is of benefit might cost anywhere between  $20,000-$200,000 depending on the number of seats and the complexity.

Application development specialists Olympic Software also believe enterprise information portals (EIP) - web-based gateways to information relevant to an organisation's needs - are the way forward.

Typically such a portal includes the ability to search one or more repositories of information, enabling business partners, customers and the general public to have access to a subset of that information. It should also allow authorised people to interact with the associated applications. 

One Stop Enterprise Portals

"An EIP is a highly intelligent, security conscious, intranet and extranet that also enables each user to work efficiently inside each application as and when relevant," says the company, which claims the growth rate for EIPs is predicted to be at over 60 per cent compound over the next five years.

A well-designed intranet should be a business tool rather than a mere collection of documents. Companies should consider designing the intranet around dynamic tasks rather than mere static documents. Intranets should group together all the tasks that make up a business process, particularly those that create value for a customer including sales, R&D or product design

An intranet requires a cultural change driven primarily by the support and commitment of senior management. This also involves a campaign marketing the intranet to employees as the company promotes and encourages more collaborative work practices.  This means companies need to consider how documents can be used to complete tasks, how tasks can be organised into processes, and how those processes can be carried out collaboratively by cross departmental work groups, that are often virtual. 

Bruce Trevarthen managing director with Wellington-based ZeroOne uses an intranet in his own business so employees can apply for leave, and as an alternative to the in-board found in some reception areas. From the web browser you can send in a leave application, see who is out of the office or call up a directory of current or potential clients.

ZeroOne has a range of plug-in modules to its core esnz intranet product, ranging from project management to a place to list useful resources or gain daily access to Garfield comics.  The project management module includes a budget and a list of the team involved so you can log in the hours worked and link this into the financial systems.

While the core product is generic there's typically a need to customise an intranet to meet the specific needs of an organisation. The basic hub with most of the modules needed for a fairly robust intranet may cost around $15,000, depending on the level of customising needed, for example if you want payroll modified so its talking to the financial systems.

Many Levels of Security

Intranets and their close cousins extranets and VPNs (virtual private networks) are designed to have a much higher level of security than the internet itself, even when using the public network. Tunnelling, for example creates separate communications layer to you can send private messages through the public network, using special encryption/decryption and other security methods to connect one part of an intranet to another.
Typically users connect to the global internet through gateway servers with secure firewalls allowing authorised users to have access to essential resources and excluding intruders. Firewall servers can screen messages in both directions ensuring only authorised people and document types get through, as well as screening for viruses and unusual patterns of behaviour, which might suggest someone is trying to hack in to your systems.

When part of an intranet is made available to customers, partners, suppliers, or others outside the company, it is known as an extranet. You can use an extranet to conduct electronic data interchange (EDI) transactions, share product catalogues with wholesalers, collaborate with other companies on joint development projects, for training or to share documents of common interest.

Extranets can provide a safe way to allow transactional business-to-business activities and can save your company significant time and money as they get closer to their suppliers and learn how to more efficiently manage the related processes.

The automotive industry is a high profile user of extranet technology which has reduced the complexity of order processing, keeping suppliers up to date on parts and design changes enabling a quicker response to customer needs.

Linking with suppliers and distributors as part of the business-to-business supply chain is becoming an essential requirement for closer e-commerce relationships. Of course you determine ahead of time just what information you will make available to which partners and what it can be used for. These rules are programmed into the firewall and security and access systems to ensure that requests for information are authentic.  You may use a VPN, another way of making secure use of the public telecommunications network, to reduce costs and make encrypted connections with external parties.

Before a company can harness the capabilities of an extranet, a fully functioning intranet must be in place. Typically it requires a much larger investment in technology and planning to get up and running and a lot more consideration about securing confidential data.

The extranet is ideal for medium to large companies and opens the way for faster access to partner information. Increasingly potential partners will no longer do business with companies that are not connected to a secure extranet.

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By Keith Newman