Great to have had an enjoyable day this week with our external quality management auditors, and to have been approved for another year as a high quality company under the ISO 9001 framework.

Of course it is doubly interesting to have achieved this as we use our own framework and software products to assist us in our quality control. Specifically we use

• Version control for our documents
• Policy manager for all of our policies and procedures
• We don’t use bookshelf, as we have only one brand and a reasonable number of policies that can be managed by PDF and application files
• Audit manager for all of our internal audits
• Business Process Manager for many processes that we use and our auditors need to inspect – such as complaints procedures and product change requests.

So it’s a great experience for us to be monitored and inspected as users of our own software.

I am pleased to say that we enjoyed the day – we certainly felt that our own software is very much helping us to improve our quality and our auditors agreed!

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Process, Prod-Quality, The Framework

I hope this is useful – we are planning an extensive series of instructional videos for all levels of expertise and across all the platform in terms of subject areas. We will make those videos available for download as training aids – and of course from the support portal at Discover Claromentis.

Please do provide your feedback : all of us in support and marketing are excited by this and are motivated to provide a resource library that helps all of our customers get the most from their investment in Claromentis.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Solutions, The Framework intranet news, news management

With Claromentis 6.2 the ability to report graphically on the use of any business process in the company just got a lot more powerful.

The on demand, interactive and always up to date graphs provide summaries of :

User submissions into the business process

Provides information over time of the top 5 users of the process. See who is generating the most requests and provide additional assistance as needed.

The Status breakdowns of all current requests

Gives a snapshot of the current process loads by the status of each request in the process.

A status map as a snapshot

InfoCapture allows the creation of as many individual states as you need for any individual business process. The status map allows you to group these granular and precise states into meaningful sub groups that have a meaning when loking at reports – for example pending manager’ and ‘pending supervisor’ might be successive and important workflow steps, but for reoorting these can both be regarded as ‘In progress’ or ‘Awaiting Approval’

A Status breakdown over time

See the loads in the process by status groups over time. This allows you to allocate resources to make the mot impact to the efficiency of the process, especially where the InfoCapture service level agreements and business timers are engaged, and time on any state is critical.

Combined with the interactive flow charts that are already available from 6.1, these interactive graphs provide a visual representation of even the most complex of processes. They enable managers to predict loads, optimize resources and understand the requests of the users in the most proactive way so as to provide additional assistance wherever needed.

Prod-Process, Services BPM, Business Process Management

Great effort from all 5 from team Claromentis!

Some serious pain was walked through by the team – raising over £2,000 for the charity.

Congratulations to all for going through the effort, showing up and enjoying the experience!

Solutions charity, Claromentis

This evening I was listening to an HBR interview about Net Promoter : www.netpromoter.com : and it really made me sit up and take note – because just an hour ago I had got off the phone from a potential customer who was looking for a reference for us as an extranet supplier, so they made a call to one of our customers – and that customer said ”hey Claromentis is great – but Hannah is just awesome”

And listening to that HBR podcast I thought that was so relevant – a real example of  ‘remarkable customer experience’ – and how one of our team had created that from her own personal passion. In Net Promoter terms Hannah had earned us a 10

Customer Loyalty – ‘The ultimate question’ – but how rarely we close that loop – formally we ourselves as a company don’t do that Net Promoter process – we only got this feedback this evening because a potential new customer called our client, and was so excited that they then gave us back the story of how one particular person had scored a 10 for us.

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Then I thought that just in the last two days we had more great performance from staff stepping up to things that make a difference to our company and to our customers – effort that is way outside their ‘job description’ but where they had the skills to contribute :

• Julian and Andy – help with the NW demo today for implementing a great BPM process – a developer and a designer don’t have to do this – it is not their job – but they did. And they did it really well. Thank you.

• Will and Hannah from support – giving a demo for sales – it is not their job, but they did it, and they did it really well. Short notice, after 5pm on a Friday. Thank you.

• Sweta – attending an all day technical demo for us that took her out of her normal responsibilities as a testing manager. Thank you.

In the Net Promoter system these guys all created ‘promoters’ today. According to that HBR podcast a leader needs to give the ability for people to get a 10 from customers.

It’s that Seth Godin purple cow – that ‘remarkable experience’.

But – remarkably – in Claromentis the leaders are not directly, formally driving this through any process like Net Promoter – the Claromentis team are just working passionately, caring about results – helping each other and putting in  long hours. They really care about what we do.

To me it is inspiring.

It is remarkable.

Thank you.

Intranet-Extranet, Services, Solutions

In a previous post I committed to creating a series of articles about how in my experience a web platform like Claromentis might contribute to discrete value chain components in your business.

In this second post in this series I take a quick look at Research and Development.

The significance of R&D

New products, and specifically their design and development – is important to the growth and even survival of a company. Competitive pressures or the natural evolution of buyer preferences will ensure that innovation is highly placed on the agenda of many senior level meetings.

Leveraging a web platform can greatly assist the innovation agenda. This is true both for

1. Larger corporations with significant information stores and internal resources that need to be encouraged to share diverse expertise

2. Organizations of any size that need to reach out to partners for collaborative R&D efforts.

Fundamental characteristics of R&D in a business context

Although R&D is a general phrase, the included activities for any company will often have the following characteristics :

1. The outcome is of course unknown.

If we knew what we would get as direct benefits – this would be an investment stream with well quantified budgets and predictable return on investment – rather than R&D

2. The required resources are similarly uncertain

Similarly as the project starts and evolves, the findings and progress will require resources – both human, time and material – that were not recognized at the outset. Flexibility and locating those resources are therefore significant.

3. The returns are hard to quantify

Since we do not know the results it is impossible to estimate the returns.

4. Alliances are becoming increasingly significant

The extended enterprise includes a range of interested parties, and often an agreed alliance can offer predictability and efficiencies

5. Processes and reportability are important

From the initial submission and approval of research ideas, through to quantification of outcomes – processes and reportability are extremely important.

6. Information Centric

Clearly research and development is centered on capturing, assessing and then generating new information – often comprising relevant papers, temporary project stores and of course the publication and re-use of results.

7. Team based collaboration is central to the project

By their very nature R&D projects need the timely contribution of different resources and subject matter experts, working effectively as a team as the project evolves.

What do companies spend on R&D?

Although it is immensely variable companies in general might look to spend 2- 5% of their revenue on R&D. Sectors of course vary considerably – pharmaceutical companies might expect to spend 15-20% of their prescription sales on research and development.

What Claromentis technologies are appropriate to Research and Development?

The core intranet platform, with the included extranet permissions, form the central deployment for R&D centric portals. Business Process Manager is used to implement processes, for example internal to the project or for the approval and funding of R&D efforts at the outset.

Graphing and presentations of dashboards, status and results are also important, although these can be implemented of course within the application files if this is preferred.

How can Intranets, Extranets and Process Management in a Web Platform  Contribute to R&D?

There are many ways that a web platform can contribute to R&D, I have just suggested 6 that seem to me to be particularly important.

1. Encouraging Innovation

Corporate social networking, often reaching out to staff in partner organizations, forms a powerful way to seek out and leverage relevant experience.  Informal collaboration networks encourage contributions from people who initially may not have been identified as a valuable resource based on more conventional criteria.

These weak ties can then be explored further, strengthened and leveraged as the project team matures.

Applications such as FAQ and more formal discussion boards are also important, allowing the posting of questions and voting on answers to rapidly move information forwards.

2. Extending out through Extranets to partners

Research and Development is often an effort that needs collaboration between companies – even those companies that in other projects might be competitive. The powerful permission systems of web platforms allow such sensitive collaboration to take place securely.

3. Version control of information

The natural version control of information, such as documents, lends itself to the evolution of information as a research and development project proceeds.

4. Free collaboration on information

In contrast to formal version control and ratification systems, direct and informal collaboration can speed up team based contribution to information. Historically such technical scratch pads were the natural domain of Wikis, recently we have seen Google docs as a natural evolution in this area. This is mainly because they do not require any understanding of unusual syntax and are a more natural evolution for those staff who are used to using application files like word and excel to store information.

5. Project Planning

As research projects start and evolve they need of course an element of planning and control, web based project management tools provide access to all parties, wherever they are located, to the appropriate task and project status.

6. Research Project Approval

For many organizations processing project applications for research and development is extremely important – they need to be seen to be clear and transparent in which projects are approved, or receive funding.

For example the Nottingham University Hospitals Research and Innovation Extranet www.nuhrise.org describes a very clear process for the submission and governance approval for any research project impacting their patients, staff or facilities.

Claromentis are currently working with a national Innovation Agency for their own approval of projects. The organisation was established by the government and is responsible for the National Innovation agenda. In line with one of its core functions, it is required to ensure that government investment capital in innovation is efficiently allocated. Business Process Management starting from a public facing Extranet for project submission, and with internal approval processes and proactive notification systems, is ideal for such a process.

Summary

Web based platforms are ideal for research and development projects. Permission systems allow the collaboration of various stakeholders in a secure way, and business process management allows for clarity and transparency as decisions are made.

Modern corporate social networking implementations within web platforms are also significant – allowing companies to draw in talent that might not initially have been formally identified as relevant to a particular project.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Document, Prod-Intranet, Prod-Process, Prod-Project, Solutions business centric portals, extranets, R&D, research, web platforms

I was looking at our own Claromentis Intranet home page ( we call ours Atlas ) and I was reminded how much useful functionality, providing real benefits, you can get from just a few inches of space. Here is a screenshot of just the top right corner of our current home page for Atlas :

My second thought was how much of that came from new suggestions from our own customer base.

In this case 3 out of the 4 have been provided as components resulting directly from customer feedback or live project requests. Now all of our customers – as well as ourselves –  can use these intranet components, and many other examples.

1)    A simple task manager – we developed this on the suggestion of one of our intranet customers. It is a highly effective simple task manager, which allows groups of users to share collaborative tasks and be reminded in their inbox – in this case on our home page – that they have tasks allocated to them, and what their current status is.

2)    News – these permission based news channels have long been a requirement.­

3)    Who’s in and who’s out. A simple application to dynamically let everyone know who is out today. It has been a pleasure to develop this – it runs directly from our intranet vacation planner. It even has a sense of humor – ‘everyone’s in – but it’s a Saturday!’

4)    Posting directly to Corporate Social Media – our new Innovate application for sharing status and ideas. This is a hugely popular application – allowing permission based discussion streams, follows, likes, replies and referencing anything in the intranet – so users for example can discuss a particular project task or document.

My final thought was that 3 of these applications did not even exist a few months ago, showing the accelerating pace with which Claromentis is developing. This is  thanks not just to our own developers and designers but to the growing customer base that provides continuous feedback and requests as they implement against their own particular requirements.

Custom Development, Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Products, The Framework Intranet Components, intranet software

A  Claromentis team will be testing their legs, feet and willpower over 100km of the south downs on September 17th, through the night and onto the 18th in an attempt to raise £2,000 for children with Cerebral Palsy. There is an outside chance we will still be going on the 19th and late for work so if you cant buy anything or get any support that day please bear with us, and send out search parties with lots of sticking plaster and beer. Or Burgundy..

It’s a great cause, and certainly for all 3 of us in the team a heck of an ask, as none of us have ever done anything like this.

You can find descriptions of the event here

We are really excited about trying to give something back to such a deserving cause. Hannah has already started sleeping more, Hilda has bought a pair of socks and Nigel went out for a rigorous stroll after Sunday lunch this weekend – then had a good lie down. So the training program is going really well.

If you would like to help us raise money every pound / dollar or anything else that can help these children would be so much appreciated.

You can find our team and individual charity pages here :

The Claromentis team

Hilda

Hannah

Nigel

It’s just great for us to get out there and fight our lack of self belief to see if we can do this, and help such a great cause. If you can donate anything at all please do – as I write this we already have 40% of our £2,000 target and that’s super – but we would really love to get to our target!

Thank you so much!

Intranet-Extranet charity, Claromentis

Within an intranet the use of blogs allow for informal, easy to generate and time sequenced content to be generated by relevant staff – and for interested user to be able to comment – in a very similar way to the use of blogs in the public internet space.

Some key differences are :

• The community is already created for the author
• Intranet permissions allow particular blogs to be  revealed to relevant readers only
• The reputation of the author ( CEO for example ) exists separately from the authors ability to generate interesting content.
• Blog participants are much more likely to adhere to conduct and ethical standards required by their organization

Intranet blogs are often generated by executives or the management team as a way to communicate thoughts with their staff and to communicate strategy in a way that employees might be more likely to absorb than more traditional alternative methods.

They can also be used as an interview process with key staff to capture their thoughts on how they achieve results, or by departments to encourage participation in various key initiatives.

Claromentis allows for permission based news channels to be styled as blogs whenever needed, and for those blogs to be seen as components on the home or departmental pages or directly accessed from the internal menu systems.

Commenting and interaction can be controlled with each post on a blog – alternatives are

• No commenting
• Instant publishing of comments
• Approval of comments required
• Anonymous commenting enabled

In general we recommend that commenting should be instant – as that is what participants expect and employees normally adhere­ to reasonable standards­ of language and content – or completely anonymous where ‘the truth’ is sought from the targeted audience without fear that expressing their opinions might jeopardize their careers.

Claromentis also offers corporate social networking through the new Innovate application, that provides features similar to Facebook and Twitter within the corporate intranet. For many clients this newer enterprise 2.0 application is complementing, extending and even taking over the informal collaboration requirements for which blogging and wikis were the only solution before social networking became such a mainstream technique.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet

I have decided to write a series of posts around how we can map the potential contribution of Claromentis as a web platform for your business, against the original components of a value chain as defined by Michael Porter in 1985.

To refresh our memories Mr. Porter described the following Support Activities :

• Infrastructure – Finance, planning etc
• HR Management
• Technology Development – R&D
• Procurement

And the following Primary Activities :

• Inbound Logistics
• Operations
• Outbound Logistics
• Marketing and Sales
• After Sales Service

As the significant building blocks for a value chain, they define the activity in a delivery system which creates margin for the owners of a business.

Back in the mid 80s the main approaches were looking at each of these components, and either seeking to drive down costs without compromising quality – or trying to improve quality without increasing costs.

In general terms the former led to outsourcing and the latter to total quality management.

These early models are still valid, and with technology moving so fast and web platforms like Claromentis able to contribute to so many of these areas, I thought it would be interesting to post on our recent experience in each of them.

My first one this week is likely to be R&D – as it is very much on my mind with our new Innovate 1.1 release.

Thanks also to a strategy handout from Roger Martin-Fagg, provided by Vistage – for prompting the idea of this series of posts.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Prod-Quality, Prod-Sales, The Framework business model, Claromentis, value, web platform