Corporate communication 

According to Fombrun (2007) “is a set of activities involved in managing and orchestrating all internal and external communications aimed at creating favorable point of view among stakeholders on which the company depends”. Corporate Communications help organizations explain their mission, combine its many visions and values into a cohesive message to stakeholders.

INTRANET

An intranet is a private network that is contained within an enterprise. It may consist of many interlinked local area networks and also use leased lines in the wide area network. Typically, an intranet includes connections through one or more gateway computers to the outside Internet. The main purpose of an intranet is to share company information and computing resources among employees. An intranet can also be used to facilitate working in groups and for teleconferences.

EXTRANET

An extranet is similar to an intranet but it is made accessible to external partners such as business partners, suppliers, key customers, etc, for exchanging data and applications and sharing information.An extranet can also be used by staff working remotely, eg those in sales or customer support, or home workers.

IMPORTANCE OF INTRANET IN CORPORATE COMMUNICATION

Better internal communications

Intranets can act as communication hubs for staff. Corporate information such as memos, staff news and announcements can be stored centrally and accessed at any time.

Sharing of resources and best practice 

a virtual workspace and community can be created to facilitate information storing, sharing and collaborative working. An intranet can also act as a training platform when providing online training content to staff.

Improved customer service 

 better access to accurate and consistent information by your staff can lead to enhanced levels of customer service.

Share information

Intranet permits companies or organizations to share out information to employees according to their need or requirements. Employees may also link to appropriate data at their expediency.

Gives endless knowledge in web publishing

 Intranet is important in corporate communication because it allows web publishing to be able permit burdensome corporate knowledge to be continued and effortlessly access all through the company using Web technologies and hypermedia. examples of web publishing are  training, news feed, company polices, documents, and employee manual.

IMPORTANCE OF EXTRANET IN CORPORATE COMMUNICATION

Provide secure location

Extranets are able to provide a secure location in which a company and its partners or clients are able to communicate with each other or make transaction. As extranets are also able to communicate with other extranets, many individuals and groups alike can exchange information.

Improve flexibility

An extranet greatly improves flexibility by making applications and information available to customers, clients and partners, allowing all the involved parties to operate with convenience. Since all the organization's associates have been granted direct access to information on the network, and productivity and efficiency is improved because tasks that were initially done manually are automated.

Improve an organizations security

 An extranet can help improve an organizations security if well implemented through creating different access levels, thus easily controlling who can access company data. However, extranets may also leave company systems vulnerable to security breaches since they give outsiders access to internal databases and systems.

Help to reduce cost

An extranet can offer a range of benefits to your organization from lowering costs through producing faster results and improving the quality of service given to stakeholders. Also extranets happen to be costless by making manuals and technical documentation available online to trading partners and customers(stakeholders).

Enable quick communication

Extranets tend simply communication amongst various organizations, this is if a document is stored on the extranet by the organization, an employee of another one could update it in real-time, therefore making the updated document instantly available. The turnaround time involved is drastically reduced, as compared to more traditional sharing mechanisms like emails.

Conclusion is that today we are living in the era of technology where everybody wants
to save time and save money, one of the goal of every organization is to be cost leader
in the market to reduce cost as much as they can do, organizations can reduce cost by
using these networks ”Intranet and Extranet” because these networks enable organization
to have quick links with stakeholders.

By Wilbrod Regina