How Companies Use Extranets

The goal of an extranet is to streamline communications between your business and external clients, customers or partners. Beyond these general goals, however, different industries may use extranets

Manufacturing. From airlines to automobiles, the manufacturing industry uses extranets to provide access to product manuals and technical specifications. Extranets make it easy to share and transfer this type of information, which can run to thousands of pages in print format. Also, those with access can update information, flag problems and issue warnings ? all instantly, in a self-serve format.

Financial services. Banks, brokerages and other institutions use extranets to perform a variety of transactions, covering everything from consumer banking to check-clearing services. Even the Internal Revenue Service has developed an extranet that allows tax-processing companies to submit forms over the Internet.