Intranet & Extranet Development
Large corporations, small businesses and organizations are continuously challenged by their employees, customers and business partners to provide timely access to personalized up-to-date information and business-to-business transactions from any place, at any time. Intranets and Extranets are a proven way to meet those requirements and to manage the flow of communication with employees within a corporation, and with customers and partners outside the corporate environment. Both Intranets and Extranets allow information to be delivered through a standard Web browser interface and they can be extended to include access into other core corporate business systems.
Intranets and Extranets Increase Efficiency
Intranets and Extranets are changing the way companies do business with their suppliers and customers, as well as within their own organizations. They allow the organization and dissemination of information, share calendar appointments and documents, assign and manage project tasks, and enable efficient communication – all accessible from anywhere in the world where there is an internet connection. Intranets and Extranets are contributing to the bottom line through increased efficiency and customer service.
Custom Intranet and Extranet Development
webRulon develops customized Intranets and Extranets for large companies, small businesses and organizations. We provide experience, expertise and a dedicated staff to help clients develop and implement their Intranet or Extranet projects. Whether it is an Intranet for company employees working in multiple locations, or an Extranet to allow transactional B2B transactions with customers or extend business operations to business partners, our experts can work with you to drive real business value including increased productivity and efficiencies.
The Role of Intranets
An Intranet is a private computer network that uses widely accessible Web technologies to securely share parts of the organization’s information or operational systems with its employees. Intranets are much more than a basic host for the company’s electronic phone book and human resource manuals – though these components remain critically important. Today, they are having a growing strategic role at companies in supporting work processes. Intranets differ from Extranets in that the former are generally restricted to employees of the organization, while Extranets may also be accessed by customers, suppliers or other approved business partners.
Extranets Give Corporations a Competitive Edge
Extranets are essentially Web-enabled closed networks within a corporation. An Extranet can add significant value to corporations and small businesses by facilitating more effective communication and collaboration with clients, customers and partners by extending the network access to customers and partners, with special provisions for access, authorization, authentication and permission. Extranets allow customers and company partners to access information, place orders and perform simple online transactions. When properly implemented, Extranets can give corporations and small businesses an edge over the competition, saving them money by streamlining traditional business functions and cutting overhead costs.
Custom Intranet and Extranet Development Services
webRulon builds customized Intranet and Extranet systems for clients, based upon their requirements. Our Intranet/Extranet applications will help large corporations, small businesses and organizations streamline and automate their workflow, collect information online, perform business transactions, manage content and documents for multiple departments and report on data from multiple systems.
We leverage more than 10 years of experience in information design and usability and application development to deliver the best possible solution for our clients. Our extensive application development and systems integration capabilities allow us to provide our clients with solutions that meet their business requirements. Whether they require an Intranet or Extranet, we can deliver a user-validated and fully integrated solution that works.
We approach Intranet and Extranet development with a strategic, user-focused design, intuitive navigation schemes and site architecture through integration and implementation.
Strategic Consulting
We evaluate the client’s business needs, collect and document Intranet/Extranet requirements, and create stakeholder consensus. Our experience with custom Intranet/Extranet solutions allows us to recommend the best technology for the client’s organization, and establishes a road map for successful design and application development
Functional Requirement and Specifications
After we’ve gained an in-depth understanding of the client’s business objectives, content and functional requirements, we produce a detailed description of the required functionality requirements. Once the functional specification is agreed upon, our team creates a technical specification that describes in detail how the Intranet or Extranet will operate.
Intranet/Extranet Information Design and Usability
We utilize our extensive information design and usability expertise to deliver the best possible user interface while leveraging our broad application development and system integration capabilities, to develop the best possible solution for our clients.
Our information architects and usability analysts design the site with the end user in mind. Through audience analysis and user-centric design activities, our team delivers a navigation scheme and user interface that is easy to use by employees and customers. The development team delivers a branded visual design that enforces the client’s corporate identity without compromising the web site’s purpose as a business tool.
Application Development and Integration
Our Web application developers bring the experience and expertise needed to build and deploy scalable Intranet and Extranet solutions, and the application integration skills required to extend these systems to include access into the other core business systems. We can transform your Intranet/Extranet vision into reality, whether it is the custom development of an Intranet or Extranet, or the planning of a systems integration project.
Managed Hosting and Application Management Services
webRulon can host, monitor, support, maintain and manage all operational aspects of your Intranet and Extranet. Our managed hosting solutions go well beyond what hosting firms typically provide. We provide reliable and scalable, high availability hosting configuration options with application management services that minimize the possibility that a company’s systems will become unavailable, thereby minimizing the risk to our client’s business operations. Our proactive monitoring solutions, which include systems and security monitoring, load testing, site administration, application updates and custom reporting, provide deep insight into the activity levels and the health of the business processes that run on the Intranet/Extranet systems.
Intranet/Extranet Benefits
Intranets and Extranets offer corporations, small businesses and organizations many benefits:
- Increased productivity – Intranets and Extranets are opening new opportunities for corporations and businesses to communicate and operate more efficiently. Employees can be more efficient with up-to-the-minute information at their fingertips. Customers can be allowed to perform actions, such as referencing information and performing transactional business-to-business activities, thereby boosting customer loyalty, improving customer service and responsiveness, and saving the business time and money.
- Reduced margin of error – An Intranet and Extranet can reduce the margin of error when specific groups directly access internal applications. This could be as simple as giving employees access to human resource forms or providing customers with access to their order histories, or something as complex as processing orders.
- Flexibility - When information and applications are directly available to employees, partners and customers, everyone can work when and where it’s most convenient. This self-serve approach improves efficiency, and eliminates the costs associated with in-person information exchanges. For example, a company can provide customer service information after regular business hours through an Extranet.
- Timely and accurate information – An Intranet and Extranet can be used to provide accurate and timely information. They can be utilized to instantly change, edit and update information such as human resource forms, price lists or inventory information.
- Faster time to market – An Intranet and Extranet can help a company to get products faster to market by using it as an internal project management system. By making proposals and specifications available to suppliers, and by giving customers and partners up-to-date information on current projects, development time can be reduced significantly.
- Reduced inventory – One of the hallmarks of a business-to-business Extranet is its impact on supply-chain management. By connecting an inventory application directly to a supplier system, companies can process orders as soon as their system knows when they are needed, thus reducing inventory and making the procurement process more efficient.
- Greater customer loyalty – Extranets enable companies to establish and maintain powerful, long lasting relationships with their customers and business partners by making it easier to perform business-to-business transactions and to get timely and accurate information to them, whenever they need it.
