Why an Intranet but not an Extranet?
The vast majority of our clients are using Claromentis primarily as an Intranet, not as an Extranet. Why?
Lets take it as a temporary assumption that our clients are indeed moving forwards from the old fashioned and well established agenda of “accurate content and an appropriate information layer for every user”, towards looking for additional value creation through increased innovation.
I still have my concerns that fundamentally our clients are missing the innovation agenda. If they are embracing it – as I have commented before for example “Extranet Based Supply Chain Innovation” – they are really only going to find it by collaborating across business silos – an intranet is of course ideal for this - or by reaching out to partners with expertise that can help to create improved products or service and delivery.
External collaboration
Using information frameworks like ours you would to use our extranet areas if collaborating with partners is of interest to you.
The fact that so few currently do enable extranet access would seem to me to tell us that many UK SME companies are not actually focussed on innovation – or if they are - they are not using collaboration software to achieve it.
My worry is that our assumption is wrong – most clients are actually still looking for an accurate, permissioned information layer, accessible anywhere, and not yet trying to use our software to encourage supply or customer side joint ventures to truly innovate.
My hope is that with the upcoming web 2.0 intranet that is Claromentis 6.0, and the ongoing developments of our Project Manager product to help project execution – we can finally help to change this. Collaborative ventures with partners must surely hold at least as much value creation potential through innovation as sharing best practices and talent between internal departments.
