"If I asked people what they wanted, they said faster horses." That quote from Henry Ford still holds true for me today. When we ask intranet owners what they want, they speak of personalized home pages and target group-relevant news channels. Link lists and content prepared via AI. These features are intended to attract employees to the intranet on a regular basis to keep them informed. Because informed employees are more motivated and productive.
At ahead we strongly believe that the motivation and therefore productivity of employees is strongly related to how well informed an employee is. How well the company manages to communicate the goals, vision and strategy to its employees. That's why we have looked at the tools that enable us to regularly (and happily) call on them in our free time to keep ourselves informed. We wondered what it would be like if the intranet felt like Twitter, Instagram or the news portal of your choice. We didn't create another "even faster horse", but something "new". An intranet that the information worker in the office, the mechanic in the factory or the sales person on the road "checks" several times a day. An intranet that almost has a certain addictive factor.
With the ahead stories we have a feature that we use to fix the users. Stories offer employees the opportunity to show themselves and their work to their colleagues. Successes can be celebrated and linked to the company's goals. This informal channel corresponds to the spirit of the times and leads to high access rates. Right next to it, the user finds the official company news and thus gets to know what is going on in the company.
Of course we didn't compromise on speed, mobile capability and user experience and followed the standards set by Twitter, Instagram and co.
With ahead we have created an intranet that feels like an app that we use regularly in our free time. Like Henry Ford, we didn't just invent a "faster horse", but we completely redesigned the intranet concept.
