Choosing a new intranet platform takes a lot of work. First, you conduct a thorough intranet needs analysis to figure out what you're looking for, distill it into a list of priorities, and start comparing platforms within your budget. Eventually, you land on the solution that best matches your organization's needs.
But here's the thing: organizations change. And the intranet you choose needs to adapt to those changes, otherwise you'll be right back where you started in just a few years.
In this post, we'll discuss 8 key considerations to keep in mind when you're looking for a scalable intranet solution, so your intranet will still be working for you years from now.
What do we mean by scalability?
A scalable intranet adapts quickly to your business's changing needs. Need to add an extra feature? No problem. Just onboarded another 100 employees and need to set up access? A scalable intranet solution makes this easy.
Put simply, a truly scalable intranet should flex and grow as your organization does. It should work just as well for a small, early-stage startup as for a large, multinational business with thousands of employees.
Why is intranet scalability important?
We constantly hear stories of the world's biggest companies getting off the ground in their founders' garages. But imagine if they were still working out of those spaces as their headcount approached triple figures.
Your company intranet is no different. The solution you chose as a small startup with a handful of employees simply won't work as your organization grows, unless it's built to be scalable. You could start the whole process of choosing and launching an intranet again once you outgrow your current one, but by choosing a scalable solution from the get-go, you can ensure it will still meet your needs years from now, even when your organization looks very different.
Key considerations for a scalable intranet
Here are 8 considerations to keep in mind when you're choosing a solution.
Pricing
Many providers price their products on a per-user basis, which means larger organizations may pay less for each employee. However, depending on the provider, you could be stung by a higher overall cost if your employee count falls at the top end of a price bracket. When costing up your intranet, check what the price will look like at different headcounts.
Infrastructure
The physical infrastructure your intranet sits on will also need to scale, which looks different depending on whether you're using a self-hosted, on-premise intranet or a cloud-based one. With an on-prem intranet, scaling infrastructure likely means adding new hardware and increasing tech support, which can be expensive and result in downtime during upgrades. Cloud-based solutions, by contrast, are built to be scalable, making it much easier to add server space, users, and functionality as needed.
Governance
In a small organization, it might be no problem to give everyone the same intranet access and let them post content, share files, and distribute information as they see fit. This can quickly get out of hand in a larger company. A scalable intranet should come with the access controls and permissions needed to keep everything running smoothly at scale, while avoiding intranet clutter.
Flexible feature set
As your organization grows, the intranet features you need will probably change, and the best solutions let you add new features as you need them. Consider:
Knowledge management. As an organization scales, the amount of information it needs to track grows too. Proper knowledge management features like secure storage and lifecycle management help keep things in order.
Federated search. One of the most important features for a scaling company is a search engine that lets you search multiple applications simultaneously, otherwise your team will just end up wasting time.
People directory. In a small organization, everyone knows everyone, but that gets much harder as the company grows. An employee directory helps employees keep track of who their colleagues are and how everyone fits together.
Rights management. Manually setting permissions and access rights can become a headache as your business grows. A scalable intranet lets you automate these processes.
Internal communications. Your intranet should let you adapt internal comms for your new, larger workforce, through features like departmental channels and targeted news that reaches the right people.
Integrations
The workplace tools your employees use now might not necessarily be the ones they'll use in the future. Ensure your intranet supports integrations with as many popular workplace tools as possible, not just the ones you're using right now. A good place to start is finding a solution that integrates with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, since most organizations use one or the other.
API access
The most scalable intranets are the most customizable. Solutions that grant you access to their API are the best choice, since this lets you build your own integrations when they don't already exist, ensuring your intranet works with every tool your employees need.
Security
You need to be sure your intranet security won't be compromised even as its infrastructure expands and more people have access. This means ensuring your data is securely stored and that permissions are stringently controlled.
Another important consideration is avoiding "shadow IT," when employees use tools that aren't approved by the company. This is a real security risk, but one many employees will take if the tools you provide aren't up to scratch. Avoid this by ensuring your intranet scales with your company and continues to provide the functionality employees need.
Support
As your intranet gets bigger, there'll be more people using the platform, more integrations to manage, more features, and more things to go wrong. If you chose your intranet provider when your company was much smaller, they might not have the capacity to provide the technical support you need as you grow. Verify that your provider also supports larger companies so you know they'll be equipped to help you in the future.
The bigger your company, the more you stand to lose if your intranet goes down, even for a few minutes. Look for providers with high uptime SLAs to guarantee your intranet will always be available.
Scale confidently with Happeo
Times of rapid growth are exciting, but they can also be stressful. Don't let an old and unsuitable intranet add to your anxiety.
Happeo is a scalable intranet solution that works for anything from small startups to global enterprises with headcounts in the thousands. Happeo's cloud-based solution is easy to scale without requiring extra server room or tech support, and you can always adjust your solution by adding extra integrations, features, and add-ons as you need them.
Want to learn more about Happeo's scalable intranet platform? Request a free demo to get started.
FAQ
Why choose a cloud-based intranet over on-premise for scalability?
On-premise systems require adding physical hardware and technical support to grow, which is expensive and can cause downtime during upgrades. Cloud-based intranets are designed to scale seamlessly, letting you add server space, users, and functionality instantly as demands change, without manual hardware upgrades.
What key features support a growing workforce?
Look for robust knowledge management with secure storage and lifecycle tools, federated search across multiple applications, and a detailed people directory to help employees find colleagues as headcount grows. Automated rights management and tailored internal communication tools like departmental channels round out what's needed to stay organized at scale.
How does scalability affect permissions, governance, and security?
As a company grows, giving every employee equal posting rights quickly leads to clutter and confusion, so a scalable intranet needs sophisticated access controls that can be automated as new staff join. On the security side, a scalable platform maintains data integrity as the user base grows and helps prevent "shadow IT," where employees turn to unapproved tools if the intranet doesn't meet their needs.
