Intranet Management Software Blog

I was reading an article this week about an event back in the good old days when computers were brand new and we all got excited by a little blinking cursor that said c:/> or something similar.

This article was about a couple of guys who won a computer back then and had no idea what to do with it. A friend duly showed up, and gave them a demo of the latest word processing – which at that time was not far short of all it was good for.

However the demo fell flat – the reason being these guys had never even used a typewriter – and so couldn’t see any use for such an easy to use, simple to correct, spell-checking replacement for a machine they didn’t own in the first place.

This got me thinking about our own situation with potential new clients. They seem to fall into some familiar camps:

1.    We don’t currently have any intranet at all ( unbelievably we still get a lot of these – really a lot ).

2.    Somebody wrote one themselves, but really it needs replacing – or – a slight variation – the person who wrote it has left and we have no idea how to maintain it.

3.    We have a product but we all hate it.

Of course we treat all of these with equal interest – but in reality there are some big differences in our engagements with these different types of new customers.

In general I would say that those in the first camp – Group 1 - will start off Googling away and come up with a list of what they expect we will be able to provide, because someone out there has written articles or summaries about what in their view is really essential from an intranet provider. I tend to refer to this as an “outward focussed” approach – in the sense that they look out to see what is possible, and then probably find a few suppliers and ask them to tender against this somewhat arbitrary list of ‘features’ that has little to do with the business they are in, improving their innovation or driving their business forwards.

Group 2 vary a lot – often they are not sure if what the employee created really is “an intranet” in the first place, or if it should be taken seriously – but at least they have some experience of using something.

Group 3 are interesting – their frustrations probably relate to legacy software that uses old approaches like i-frames, or isn’t being improved, or where the vendor has gone bust – but at least they have real ideas about “what a better solution should do for them”. Notice the “for them” – they do have real ideas about what their own company needs, not just a checklist of arbitrary functionality. I refer to this as an “inward focus”

Paradoxically “inward focus” in this sense sounds somewhat negative, as if they lack vision – but of course this is not the case at all, and in many business senses a company that is always spending some time looking to analyze itself and improve has a great  attitude.

The truth is that for us engaging with all of these types of new customers is interesting and varied. The world of intranet software is a large one and we do our best to explain it as honestly and professionally to all companies that ask about our products and services - whether they ever saw that blinking green cursor or not!

Prod-Intranet intranet software

Claromentis Interview with Sean Boos -  Information Technology Director of Preferred Brands.
Burnsville, Minnesota.

Hi Sean, tell us a little bit about Preferred Brands

Preferred Brands is the parent company to some of the interior design and decorating industries’ leading marketing companies. Included are such brand leaders as Floor To Ceiling – a network of over 200 independently owned and operated retail showrooms located throughout the U.S. Each store specializes in offering a combination of flooring, kitchen & bath products and decorative accessories,best suited for that particular market. Also included in the Preferred Brands family is World of Floors, a leading flooring retailer, primarily serving Michigan and the upper Midwest.

Who were the intended users? How many of them?

We have 200+ dealers throughout the US.

Did the portal itself have a project or codename?

We call the portal: InFlo

What applications were most useful or essential in this project?

Document management and forms were probably the most important things.

What was the user response and take up of the system?

We found that the users have been very responsive to the new portal.  They have found the address book to be very helpful along with the instant messaging.

Is your business more efficient? Have fundamental processes changed?

We have 100’s  of vendors that we do business with which translates into tens of thousands of products which all need pricing files.  The indexing/search and meta data features have been a pleasant surprise within the portal.  The really allow us to provide detail custom properties for each file which makes finding what you want a snap.

Were you under any deadlines – if so what was the nature of them?

We had an extremely tight timeline.  We had our national show in February and InFlo was the primary focus of the show.  All  products tested were becoming disasters in the making.  What we typically found through our testing, was most portals did a great job of providing a hierarchical security model for one business unit, but when you starting to add more business units to the portal the security model really didn’t do what we wanted.
I contacted Claromentis 2 months before our show.  Although I was very reluctant that anyone could really pull this off in 2 months, Nigel assured me that, while the timeframe was tight, Claromentis could meet our deadline.

Did the project meet your deadlines?

Yes.  We actually had it live a week before the show

How involved were you in the design process?

Other than supplying some ideas, most of the design process was done by Claromentis

Do you have any comments on the final design?

As far as the UI, we gave our ideas to the Claromentis design team and after a few revisions, we got it done in about a week.

Do you find the system easy to use from an end user point of view?

We’ve had very positive responses from our end users.

How did you find the Claromentis pricing model?

Pricing, like most small businesses, is a very important part of the equation.  Compared to other portal solutions, Claromentis was the best value for with probably a better feature mix.

“InFlo has allowed us to become more efficient in both time and money.  In these difficult economic times, being able to stretch your dollars if very important.   It has allows us to focus more on our core services and products and better serve our dealers.” Sean Boos.

Would you have any advice to companies considering Claromentis? Were there any special factors that were part of your selection process?

Claromentis is a very flexible platform.  I come from more of a development background and I was amazed at how much I could integrate with the system.

Thank You Sean, we appreciate your time.

Learn more about soluton for franchise based company

Solutions Case Study, collaboration, commercial, document management, e-forms, intranet consultancy, online collaboration, user interface

Working on application design or creation of e-forms, we often make check boxes or drop down selector. In most cases you probably don’t pay much attention setting up the default value of each choice you created. Should a particular checkbox is checked by default or unchecked.  How many items to be displayed per page by default, or which country or age group should be selected by default for instance.

According to behavioural economist Dan Ariely, any value which is set by default will greatly influence decision that majority users is going to make when filling out the form or using a piece of functionality.

For example in Claromentis we have news application with option to set a particular news item as ‘sticky news’.  The idea the sticky news will always be displayed on the Intranet homepage until it’s expired. It is a useful feature allowing an important news item remain visible to the majority Intranet users, otherwise it might get buried down quickly by not-so-important news.

What we didn’t realise the default value for the expired date is set a year in advance by default. For example if you submit a news on the 22nd May 2009, it won’t be off the sticky until the same date next year !

The problem is simple majority users are not even bothered to change the expired date.

The result, intranet’s homepage is filled with sticky news which should have been expired long time ago. In order to fix this problem, an Intranet administrator has to go through each news article and correct the expiry date, which was set incorrectly by majority users.

This problem won’t happen in the first place if the developer put sensible value when he or she typing the code for the news submission form.  Interestingly enough in a much larger scale any default value which may sounds simple can have a huge impact.

Check out an interesting video below (open in new window).

Resources-Technical Design, e-forms, fun, user interface

I have seen articles recently that praise the fact that intranet 2.0 is starting to deliver value and becoming more mainstream.

Great! But then I read on and they are talking about the same old functionality : Forums, Wikis and blogs.

This is a shame - I think many corporate intranets and extranets are missing the true synergy of innovation and collaboration that a web 2.0 intranet should address - which at Claromentis means the progression of a concept from an idea, through to a collaboration space and then onto execution in a project - the “shout - collaborate - execute” mantra of Claromentis 6.0

Missing the point

Yes we do implement - and for certain company cultures see a lot of value - in the intranet equivalents of Twitter - our “what am I dong at work” concept for example - and certainly Blogs are really adding dynamism and freshness to many of our implementations - but in our view intranet 2.0 is a platform for collaboration, innovation and establishing connections in the workforce to break down silos and encourage lessons learned from best practice.

We need to unearth new ideas, bring them through to sharing with hitherto unknown colleagues from disparate experiences and then actually take that shout and make something different for the company that didn’t exist before – in summary we need innovation!

Many of the applications and approaches that others see as getting a tick in the box for intranet 2.0 we view as latest generation approaches to information management – a truly important piece of the puzzle – but not the answer.

Prod-Intranet intranet 2.0

As an integrated framework that provides significant applications it is great to see how easy it has become to link between them – and how pragmatic and useful the resultant functionality is for companies.

One great example is the use of Claromentis for managing a customer relationship – from initial lead processing, through to sales management and onto the implementation using Project Manager. In all cases the integration is simple, effective and efficient.

• Lead processing : managed using InfoCapture auto responders and using notifications and SLAs – the leads are responded to and useful information provided. At any stage manual interaction can take place, and auto responders are then set on hold. When gates are passed and the lead qualifies as relevant and appropriate – one click generates a company, opportunity and contact record in the relevant Sales Manager territory.

Direct Integration

• Sales Management : from this point all relevant information, activities and documents are captured as the new account moves through a customizable sales cycle.

• As soon as the project is approved, a direct link form the sales Manager record is generated to the new Project in the correct Programme in Project Manager to deliver the products and services that have been ordered.

For completeness the project metadata can link back to the Sales Manager records – so there is no need to duplicate relevant documents and data in project manager.

This level of integration and support is a pleasure to use and really offers the sales and project managers an integrated platform of information on which to ensure success for both our company and our new clients.

In our own company as we continue to accelerate our rate of customer acquisition this platform also allows us to scales up our delivery side with no loss of quality. It is becoming one of the most critical sides of our business as we continue to grow - which is particularly satisfying when we recommend this approach to our own clients.

Products efficiency, integration, Prod-Intranet

We have talked a lot about the fact that there are so many ways to do things in Claromentis that sometimes new clients can get confused. What kind of format should this information be in? A document or a page? Should my intranet home page list of job vacancies be a small bespoke addition, an e-forms solution or a smart object looking at dynamic data on a forum?

Intranet choice

We are learning a lot about how to approach new clients – the truth is that in certain situations it is better just to implement what we think is best – rather than distract the project team with discussions about choosing between approaches that they really don’t yet understand – after all they are not yet a client. We would spend too long training them on each approach just so they can then chose one - it is better they stay focussed on the project objectives and let us just implement the most appropriate solution based on our extensive experience.

After all they can always change it later, or on a refresh project – by that time they will really understand how the relevant applications work, and can make a much more informed decision.

This paralysis through being presented with a choice is actually the most pronounced when we are at the design stage – so not the details of how to provide the functionality at all yet - but going through a mock up process on how the intranet home page should be designed to match objectives for the project as well as reinforce the company culture through branding and embracing intranet 2.0, for example.

There are important principles at stake here. One of the most relevant is the sense of ownership that a new client gets from being involved with the process, rather than just being presented with the answer. Participating in the creative process has significant implications for the sustained interest levels from the client project team – and this is fundamental for the longevity and ROI of the project.

So it seems we are in a dilemma. We often know the answer, but we should not tell them because they will then lose the sense of ownership that is fundamental for the ongoing project success.

Services choice, intranet

We are very often asked for advice at the beginning of projects on the ‘best way’ to set up intranet menu systems, document folders and the general framework of information including permissioned access.

In short - how to set up information so it is easy to navigate and has the right level of detail in the right format.

Of course if we are providing in depth services as part of our engagement with a new client, then we use a workshop approach with the project team to find agreement on the most suitable site architecture and user experiences.

But if the client has not formally requested our help with professional services, then simple advice can still go a long way to get an appropriate framework in place.

Firstly think if the CMS menu as the way to put the more detailed information found in the documents in context. They will also be pages from which related information can quickly be accessed, and where e-forms using process manager can be launched. Imagine that HR has a page about Policies and Procedures – that might summarise in just a paragraph why they are important, and have a statement like to review our expense claim policies for your department, please “click here”.

The link on the page will go to the correct document folder, where the user can automatically see the detailed policies for the department the user actually reports to.

The same page will have a link to actually make an expense claim, using the relevant e-forms process.

Once this simple concept is in place, we just need to create starting top level menus, these can be initial top levels for both the documents and menu system.

To do this just list the main informational areas involved. These are normally a combination of departments, projects, work streams and office locations – of course varying by company but in essence often similar.

Then group these as much as possible, so we get as few items as possible at the top level. Both menu systems and document folders can have as many sub folders as you need, all reacting to permission of each user – we just need an intuitive high level grouping to start the system off.

Naturally once the start is in place, both the document store and the menu systems can expand and diverge from each other as needs dictate. But by following this simple advice :

•    Users that naturally browse are always just a couple of clicks from the right information in a relevant level of detail
•    A permission structure can easily be set up to reflect the structure – for example a group for every department
•    Using inherit permissions from above will allow robust and scaleable expansion without being prone to errors

Services intranet consultancy, navigation

You must have read about Process Manager Automation in the previous blogs, I would like to take this opportunity to explain further about this

To automate the process manager process to send 3 emails over a period of 14 days, we have used a file named background_custom.php located at “../intranet/common” which execute every 5 minutes. In conjunction with background_custom.php, we have used SLA’s (Service Level Agreements) and different statuses

SLA’s: SLA’s closely monitor what stages the issues are at and changes the Traffic Light of the issue after a particular time depending on the condition(s) defined. When traffic light is changed, it is used to trigger notifications after 1, 4 and 10 days after submitting an issue

Statuses: There are different statuses defined in the project according to the project requirement. In this example, when the issue is submitted the status is set to “New” and is changed gradually to different statuses after each notification is send. If any user by any reason does not want to receive any further notifications after receiving first and/or second notification, we can set status to “No Further Notifications” and stop sending notifications to that particular user

Actual Process: In background_custom.php, it checks for the Status and SLA Traffic Light. If the condition in background_custom.php matches the status and traffic light of the issue, the notification is triggered

Now you don’t need to worry about manually sending notifications after n number of days, background_custom.php takes care of it for you

Prod-Process

We ourselves at Claromentis have an interesting example of complete automation versus manual interaction with a process.

We have recently changed our follow up or inquiries – via a public web form – so that filing in that form kicks off a process manager process that automates sending 3 emails over a 14 day period. In essence we are now using InfoCapture as an auto responder according to SLAs.

Previously the sending of a relevant email would need editing of the ticket to select that an email should be sent, via a simple check box.

We still allow for manual intervention – the account manager can mark any lead so that the emails will no longer be sent.

In this way the benefits of automation are kept – but the flexibility of manual intervention ensures the process is still valid for very important enquiries where dialogue is already taking placed and automated emails would damage that process and so needs to be stopped.

The account manager can automatically create entries in our Sales Manager system with just one click, and can allocate telephone qualification according to the country of origin.

InfoCapture reports are available to show what the lead funnel is looking like, what call stats are by area and anything else recorded in the forms.

So we ourselves are heavily dependent on our own technology to automate core business processes – in this case lead generation – and that is exactly how it should be.

Prod-Process process manager