Feb 23, 2021

How Employee Portal Software Improves Your Company Productivity

Raise your hand if you are thinking about building or upgrading your employee portal software. Do you think it is still necessary for making that shift? Well, the implementation or relaunch of employee portal software is worth investments. Because getting employees into the company intranet often equates to getting time optimization, quick access to guides and instructions, and implementing a culture and team building.

How can you possibly tell that the web portal software will bring new ways of working and operating?! Speculations.

Of course, you’re right. There’s no formula to what exactly it takes to get to the center of a tootsie roll pop. However, to play devil’s advocate - digital transformation in business takes its full swing across many industries. We are getting into a world of perpetual disruption so it makes sense to invest in human capital.

Aiming to transmit a consistent message and useful data to give you a ballpark feeling, let’s go figure out the following questions.

What is employee portal software anyway?

In some way, every company today is a tech company. No matter the industry you’re in, you’ll likely use a bunch of software. And perhaps, you've come across ‘employee portal software’, ‘intranet portal software’ and ‘employee self-service app’. Do they just use the same software for the intranet?

Spoiler alert: they can be either separate software or provide pretty similar features.

Employee portal software helps to create an internal website with a single sign-on. It serves as a single point of access to personalized, categorized content, services and apps. Usually, employee portal software offers data access, content, search and filters, transactions, security, chats and video conference tools.

Intranet portal software helps to design a private, secure network. Employees can communicate and access consolidated enterprise-related functions (i.e., email, CRM, company information, workgroup systems, file sharing, and other apps).

Employee self-service app (aka ESS) enhances the development of a single point with a wide range of relevant HR content. Here your staff gets instant access to information on benefits, HR policies, payroll, surveys, requests tickets, and attendance management.

What are the benefits of an employee portal?

Company transparency

You know that nearly 60% of employees don't know what their organization stands for. Do you have the external resources: freelancers, contractors, and suppliers? Then you’ll evaluate the better transparency and team-building with a web-based portal.

Save time

Note: staff spends 25% of their time on the search. And ‘corporate amnesia’ makes information fragmented and lost. With the employee portal software, you run documents and file base where employees get the right answers. It also reduces time spent on searching. Plus, the centralized guides and training materials enhance new employees’ onboarding.

Engaged staff

The staff sees the appreciation of their performance. Get engaged and encouraged to continue improving skills and learning new. That boils down to getting a better employee experience in your company.

Quality of employee experience

Obviously, employee experience becomes a crucial aspect in today’s workplace. It influences recruitment budgets, operational costs, and company culture. Even 80% of executives highlight its importance. With the employee portal software, you streamline some processes, boost productivity, and reduce recruitment costs. And the quick return of investments is looming on the horizon.

Integrations

Integrate with third-party software to make them accessible from one place. So your employees have the required tools at hand. And your team won’t be in 70% of staff who don’t have tools to work.

Improved HR services

If your employee portal has the self-service capability, your HR operations get offloaded in a half. The staff deals with inbound inquiries, questions and requests via the company portal.

5 trends in employee and intranet portal software

If you really want to make your employees happy, your best move is to stop thinking like a boss. Start thinking like an employee. That way you can spot the red flags and map the hand-picked features for your employee portal software. Besides, these trends might work not just as a quick-fix, but also won’t let you down in the long term perspective.

Personalized content and interface

The intuitive UI and attractive design mean a lot. But today we just got overloaded with information. That impacts our performance and productivity. It’s a fact. Recently, many company intranet solutions give options to pick up who to follow, feeds, approvals, and types of updates. Simply put, follow the principle: less is often more.

Integrations company intranet solutions

Integration with enterprise software (e.g., email services, CRMs, ERP, messaging software) is a must. Mass-integration and SSO are prominent for saving time and depriving you of switching between the apps. The APIs create a single digital space for your employee portal and apps your company already uses. The integration smoothes the adoption of employee intranet software.

Also, think about social tools integration. Why? To encourage engagement between employees and teams inside the company. Detailed profiles look more attractive, and employees feel a stronger sense of belonging.

Native mobile apps

Your employee portal should try on the mobile-friendly outfit. More often people use personal smartphones and tablets for work. Native iOS and Android apps of your corporate intranet software enhance working on-the-go, optimize performance, and erase the location borders.

AI chatbots to rescue

Artificial intelligence software development and machine learning bring new opportunities. No wonder that AI-based chatbots arrived to transform the employee experience, too. Don’t expect that once they're involved somehow whatever's wrong gets solved. Chatbots aren’t Chip and Dale: 59% misunderstand requests or nuances of dialogues. But chatbots help to automate workflows, ease onboarding, improve skill gaps and training.

Analytics to get insights

The employee portal software influences the productivity and performance of your staff. Every change is essential. And knowing which one caused the final result, makes a big difference. So the analytics in the enterprise intranet solutions collects engagement statistics, employee feedback, task management, and reporting.

Top employee portals

The idea of compiling the top employee portal software list seems utterly absurd. There are a lot of options. To make it transparent, here is the list of the highest rated ‘employee portal software’ on several software review platforms. Here’s what we got.

Capterra	G2	Sourceforge	GetApp
MentorcliQ Employee Mentoring	Microsoft SharePoint	Quip	Samepage
WorkTango	Simpplr	Yammer	OnBoard
Fellow	Workvivo	Onehub	Diligent Boards
OfficeAccord	Blink	Claromentis	Glasscubes
Altiar	Workplace by Facebook	Bitrix24	Yammer
Discover	Claromentis	Boardable	Bitrix24
ARCS	Staffbase	MyHub	vcita
Alaya	Samepage	Noodle	Bloomfire
Sparkbay	Zoho Connect	Glasscubes	Quip
OpenElevator	Happeo	OnSemble	OnSemble

Let’s look a bit closer at those tools that appear more than once in the table above.

Quip

What is it?

Quip is collaborative productivity software. It combines documents, spreadsheets, and chat into a seamless experience.

How much does it cost?

Starts with $30/mo for a team of 5 employees

What platform does it support?

Cloud, Mac, Windows, Android, iPhone and iPad

What attracts its customers?

Quip offers features: board management, collaboration, community, content, task, product and document management. It helps to create and edit spreadsheets, documents and checklists without emails. Team members discuss projects, news, tasks in real-time. A good tool for brainstorming.

Yammer

What is it?

Yammer is an enterprise social network for company-wide communication.

How much does it cost?

Starts with $3/user/mo

What platform does it support?

Cloud, Windows, iPhone, iPad and Android

What attracts its customers?

Yammer offers features: collaboration, portal and social networking. All that help to create groups, provide a collaborative workspace for teams to organize project deadlines, share files and gather feedback.

Claromentis

What is it?

Claromentis includes corporate social networking and collaboration tools, and document management as well.

How much does it cost?

Starting with $1.50/user/mo

What platform does it support?

Cloud, Windows, iPhone, iPad and Android

What attracts its customers?

Claromentis offers features: digital workspace, collaboration, portal, intranet, workflow management, learning management system. It allows creating personalized profiles, searching for other employees, viewing organizational, team hierarchical charts, audit logs, compliance management, and event management.

Bitrix24

What is it?

Bitrix24 brings multiple category tools. It’s a human resources (HR) solution that provides a platform for businesses to manage, engage and reward employees.

How much does it cost?

Starts with $24/mo

What platform does it support?

Cloud, Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad and Android

What attracts its customers?

Bitrix24 HR delivers an employee directory, a report builder, workflow automation, a self-service portal, real-time chats, employee engagement, and time management.

Glasscubes

What is it?

Glasscubes is a cloud-based collaboration platform used by enterprises for working smarter.

How much does it cost?

Starts with £4/user/mo

What platform does it support?

Cloud, Android, iPhone and iPad

What attracts its customers?

Glasscubes offers features: collaboration, portal, file sharing, document, project and task management. It provides an efficient way to share files, manage projects and communicate, all from a central, secure online workspace

OnSemble

What is it?

OnSemble is an employee intranet that keeps remote teams engaged increased productivity and meaningful engagement.

How much does it cost?

Starts with $5/mo

What platform does it support?

Cloud, Windows and Mac

What attracts its customers?

OnSemble offers features: collaboration, document control, employee engagement and recognition, learning management system, portal and productivity. It helps to improve communication with all employees, keep employees connected and engaged, align staff with company objectives, and enable document sharing.

What functionality adds value to employee portal software

The good news about the employee portal: you can find practical information and fresh news, ask for feedback and get help and guidance.

The bad news: what are the features to look for (or develop) in a (nearly) perfect employee portal software?

Here is the list of features that aims to play a balancing act role. You can have it your way and add or omit the functions. Nevertheless, it is a good draft to start with.

Employee profile page. Add basic information, photo, contact details.
Staff directory. Show the company structure by departments and their employees. A useful thing for onboarding a new employee.
Instant messaging. A built-in chat for private or group conversations.
Company policies. Document and forms are important for business running categorized in a single place.
Support tickets. Employee submits and tracks the status of their requests without sending additional emails to/fro.
Workflows. Automate the repetitive, manual tasks for more important jobs to be done.
Benefits information. Every employee has access to their payroll, health plan summary, dependents coverage, and life event changes. No need to reach out to the HR department.
Feed. Help share and discuss news across the company. Follow the user, department, or new messages updates.
Time/leave management. Self-tracking system to submit the work hours.
Document management. Central storage for file management and sharing.
Knowledge base. Provide the information in a Q&A format.
SSO. Ensure quick, secure sign-in without friction.
Push notifications. Fast way to inform about news and updates company-wide.
Search. A quick way to get the information, employee contact, or guidance.
Calendar. Improve business and events planning and staff coordination.

Why do you need custom employee portal software?

To build an employee portal or not to build? That is the question in the mind of the business owner. You see, employee portal software has the potential to change the internal company flow and get your team engaged.

SaaS vs custom employee portal

The pre-built, hosted software for the employee portal is quite attractive. They offer a pack of features that can be tailored to your business environment. Still, the testing of the intranet portal can be smooth. While the adoption might take effort and require some additional training. So the implementation won’t be cut down like some providers ensure us.

On the other side, building your own employee portal software takes more time and money. Thus, you choose design, features, and integrations. You can, for example, choose to build and AI chatbot and integrate it with your software. Once you get a skilled development agency, you can make it more like the tools you’re already using. That makes the adoption faster. But you need somebody to manage your custom-built portal. Everything comes with a price.

How to build an employee portal?

A quick answer: hire the outsourcing company that develops a custom solution as you want it.

The long answer comes with an action list.

Define the core reason why you need this software: automate tasks, cut down paper-based workflows, reorganize team collaboration or boost employee engagement.
Begin with understanding company and employees’ requirements. The best way to get actually valuable feedback and avoid wasting time is to talk to employees and supervisors.
Find out what things or operations they want to optimize. Determine the crucial needs. Sit down with line managers and analyze and prioritize the areas to improve.
Jot down the outline that includes every discussed detail on

features (workflows, feed, employee profiles, document management, task management, service information, company policies and procedures, and the like)
design (the layouts for business, departments, dashboards, etc.)
integrations (third-party business tools, communication tools, social tools, etc.)

Once your idea is locked in, look for an outsourcing agency to develop custom employee portal software.

Wrap up

Technology doesn’t wander aimlessly along with any industry. You are looking for resetting, rethinking, and changing the path of your internal company management. Then employee portal software is the right place to kick things off. Either you relaunch a current platform or want to build a custom intranet app, be realistic with your budget and expectations. If you have an alluring concept in mind, reach out to the Apiko team to discuss how to shape it into the software.