Extranet is defined as an extended intranet in an organization to allow other people like customers, vendors, suppliers and business agents to have access to the corporate communication with the ability to share experiences, large amounts of data, services and training programs.(according to www.techterms.com) it is considered as a bridge between the external world and an organization where by interactions are favored by the internet through wide area network (WAN).

Intranet is a network of interconnected computers that is privately owned by an organization or business. It connects people through computers either wired or wireless joined by the internet through local area network (LAN). The intranet helps people within the corporate to share information, documents and make transfers of large volumes of data.

Corporate is a group of people with a defined interest working together to achieve it.

Considering the impact of technology to our daily lives, corporate organizations have adopted several methods to ensure that their day to day activities are directly related and connected by the technology, they realize the hardship of having to transfer massive documents from one department to another physically over the ease of just sending an email with the attached document in it and therefore they have decided to join the rest of the world in the use of technology.

The advantage of the corporate to adapt intranet and extranet is the ability to develop a private network used by only specific people who have access to the network to communicate freely without the interference of anonymous person in the communication because the network is limited to specific people and is protected against intrusion by encryptions, firewalls and passwords.

The intranet and extranet emergence in the business world has vital importance to the corporate daily activities as explained below.

Ø  They are cheap and therefore reducing costs of operation to the corporate since before the emerging of these technologies, corporate used to finance training of their employees to be conducted in one specific area posing transport cost, meals and accommodations, allowances, conferencing facilities and stationeries but today with the technology, all one needs to do is have a personal computer with an internet connection and access to the virtual network and will be provided with training materials, video conferencing, chat rooms, discussions without having to attend to the particular training area.

Ø  Time economy is another importance of these networks whereby thinking of the burden of having to move from the company’s premises to follow customers so as to obtain feedback, comments and suggestions on products and services offered by the organizations, the marketing department can simply visit the company’s network to read the comments and feedback posted by the customers while performing other tasks in the office at the same time. It provides the superior managers to also preview these comments freely and make decisions and setting strategies based on what they read from the customers.   

Ø     Increase workforce productivity whereby with materials stored in the website for anyone with ability to access the information to use the materials, then it is easy for employees to review the company’s goals, objectives, missions and vision and act positively to ensure that they assist the corporate to achieve those goals and objective in a given time whereby with such objectivity productivity is increased through improved effort.

MADAUDA HANNAH

BAPRM 42599