Extranets uncovered17 August 2005
What is it?
An extranet draws together the freedom and speed of access offered by the Internet, with the firewall protected information available through an intranet, to allow businesses to transact with selected partners and customers. An example of this would be an international courier service that allows customers to login to an online extranet site and trace where a sent item is in the chain of delivery.
Extranets are essentially an extension of a company intranet. This can simply be a secure area of an organisation's website that requires a user name and password to be entered prior to viewing the protected information. This means that the company still maintains control over who can view their information, by limiting access to those they have chosen to give out user names and passwords to.
How can this benefit small businesses?
There are a number of ways in which utilising a broadband connection for this kind of business communication can deliver tangible benefits for small businesses.
- Time efficiency: Using an extranet can save time compared with traditional methods of business information exchange, allowing for improved staff productivity and a reduced margin of error.
- Customer service: Quick and efficient availability of key data to clients will improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, increasing client retention.
- Market competitiveness: Products may be supplied to business markets more quickly, giving firms a leading edge over competitors and therefore encouraging new business and profit growth.
- Effective product tracking: Administration details may be updated more quickly, for example an inventory can be amended as soon as an order is placed, allowing stock, orders or deliveries to be more easily tracked.
- Flexibility: Operated over an Internet connection, remote or mobile workers may access up to the minute information regarding business transactions without compromising data security.
Although extranets are slightly more complicated to establish than intranets, requiring as they do a system of identification and authorisation passwords and codes, this doesn't mean that adoption should be limited to large businesses. Internet and application service providers can assist companies in establishing extranet technology, and help small businesses capitalise on the flexible benefits of broadband.
You can find out more about the benefits of intranets in our earlier feature: Why Intranets are good for business.
