te a strategy for how the intranet will be developed and maintained (and by which departments), and provide ongoing support for the intranet which simply providing access to the Internet does not require. Nonetheless, International Data Corporation estimated that 18 percent of employees had access to company intranets in December 1999, and that number is expected to grow to more than 69 percent by December 2000 (Gantz, 2000, p. 33).
Small and medium-sized companies tend to use intranets to provide general information to employees, such as providing the employee handbook on-line and commonly used HR forms. However, companies of this size are also using intranets to provide benefits information as well as information about the company's finances and sales (as deemed appropriate by management). According to a survey of small and medium-sized companies, 26 percent currently provide access to employee benefits election information on their intranets. In addition, 24 percent use the intranet as a way to collect and distribute personal data to and from employees, a feature which can be particularly useful when employees are located at different work sites. Fully one-fifth of these companies also offer 401(k) retirement information or plan to do so in the future, another benefit of the intranet which reduces the workload on human resource professionals (Troiano, 1999, p. 8).
The intranet at SRS World Hotels was originally developed to provide information simultaneously to more than 80 sales representatives located in 30 different countries. The intranet made it possible to post the information a single time and know that employees could access the information from anywhere in the world. SRS is a group of independent "boutique" hotels and the company "brands" its products through coordinated marketing activities. In the beginning, the company focused on having information available to the sales people, but later, SRS expanded the i...