Papyrs – A New Idea for Intranets

Businesses of all sizes can benefit from having company intranets. When utilized effectively, intranets make it possible for colleagues collaborate on documents, share information, process forms, collect data, and communicate in an efficient way. The problem with intranets, and the reason why more companies don’t have their own, has to do with the set-up process.

Traditionally, intranets were thought to be difficult to create and set up. Not so with Papyrs. With Papyrs, you can create your own company intranet where employees can share documents, fill out paperwork, and collaborate on projects in minutes. The pages that you have available on your company intranet will depend on what type of company you run. Add new pages for anything that you want to share and work on as a team. Each page gets a name and a category, and you can decide which members of your team will have access to view or edit any page at any time. Add widgets and move around text until you’ve created the page you want using checklists, images, attachments, and discussion boards. Papyrs can be used for any number of things, from posting employee dress codes to creating expense report forms that employees can fill out and submit online.

Avoid missing any important notices or conversations on your company intranet by subscribing to email updates for specific pages. By adding a navigation widget to the Papyrs homepage, intranet administrators can also ensure that important pages are quickly accessible to everyone on the team. With used effectively, Papyrs can serve as a private social network for companies to use.

Practical Uses:

• Create an employee manual that all new hires must read
• Brainstorm with colleagues who work remotely
• Fill out expense reports and submit them online
• Consult the company knowledge base when you need instructions about a specific procedure

Insider Tips:

• Users can only see links to pages they have access to
• Email notifications let people know when the pages they follow have been updated
• Media widgets can be used to add recent tweets to any Papyrs page
• Administrators can create subgroups of employees based on the department they work in

What we liked:

• Companies can decrease paper use by implementing an intranet
• Papyrs can be used in hundreds of different ways
• Employees can find answers to commonly asked questions on the intranet
• Timesheets and expense reports can be submitted and managed online

What we didn’t like:

• Nothing

Alternatives:

• Backpack – http://backpackit.com
• Google Sites – http://sites.google.com
• WORKetc – http://www.worketc.com

Company Info:

• Launched: April 2011 (Beta)
• Privately Held
• Headquarters: Eindhoven, Netherlands
• Founded by: Stunf
• Web site: http://www.papyrs.com

Costs:

• Free in beta