Claromentis Intranet Software Blog

As the Claromentis reseller in Australia, R&D Knowledge Services have the privilege of talking to many interesting and varied companies. A recent discussion with a pharmaceutical company brought up the issue of not only how companies go about creating new documents, but also about how the software is compliant with FDA an TGA regulations.

We all know Claromentis offers exception capabilities in regards to document management (audit, version, granular permissions, roll back, searching etc etc) but in these highly regulated industries, the complainace and validation of such systems is of equal importance.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Australian TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration) require manufacturers to comply with stringent conditions to ensure integrity of the drug approval process. 21CFR is of particular importantance, and we are currently working to ensure Claromentis passes these tests. More to come as we tread down this validation path.

Claromentis around the world, Clients, Communities and Case studies fda, tga, validation

I have recently been working on one of our large clients intranet deployment in the USA and I wanted to write how amazed I am when I see a client finding different ways of customization our intranet software to suit their needs.

As of Claromentis 5.4, we have developed a new feature called Smart Objects. This feature helps Claromentis users importing content to their intranet pages from different sources within Claromentis, such as News, Forum messages and Document lists. No longer will users have to navigate to separate areas to see application files as opposed to web based content, for example. A dynamic view of disparate content and objects is possible from just one location.

This company is part of one of the worlds largest clothing manufacturers, and they are using our software to improve the communication between different departments within the organization, as well as simplifying the process of managing documents securely, all within one instance. Departments varies from variety of sources, such as Sales, Finance, Warranty, RD&D, EMEA and more… Without a doubt, a web based intranet solution like Claromentis was the best choice for an international company. Having its employees across the world makes the importance of communication and document management through the Internet was an appropriate choice.

Because Claromentis is permission based intranet software, it is possible to hide your content from different departments using the same intranet software. You simply create groups and roles within Claromentis and identify your content (documents and news) to be shown to a certain number of users.

As you can imagine, a company like this literally has tens of thousands of documents stored within the software, so making these files to be found easily is not an easy job. That’s where the Smart Objects feature is going to make this process a lot easier than our competitors’ solutions.

Let me explain how different parts of Claromentis can work in collaboration to solve complex intranet problems. In this example, I would like to share a document folder containing financial sales targets of this month and a list of products needs to be highlighted during sales campaigns. I would also like to share news belonging the sales department and I need to show all of the above content visiting the Sales Department home page.

In the above example, I am actually aiming to solve my problem by sourcing the content from the following corporate solutions.

• Document Manager
• Content Manager
• Permission Based Intranet Management
• Permission Based News Management

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, Smart Objects enables you to show contents from different parts of Claromentis, and this is exactly how this client actually solved this complex collaboration issue.

1. Define Groups and Roles (SALES > Sales Managers | Sales Team) and assign users to the appropriate level.
2. Using Document Manager application, store my files into one folder created for the special sales campaign.
3. Change the permissions of all my files and make the “financial sales targets” viewable only by Sales Managers and the remaining files viewable by people belonging the SALES group.
4. Using Web Based Content Management Solution, create an intranet page and fill up the content areas, such as TITLE, SUMMARY, GOALS, REWARDS.
5. Using Smart Objects, embed the document folder containing my files into an appropriate space within my intranet page.
6. Again Using Smart Objects, embed the Sales news (blogs) channel.
7. Save the page and share the web address of the page with my staff.

What will happen is people who has an access to view the page I just created will only need to remember one web address (which can be pasted into an e-mail message) and when they click on that link, all of the information they have a permission to see will be visible to them. Remember that we have embedded one single folder containing both financial targets as well as documents containing products need to be highlighted? Because I set the permissions for my documents, Sales team will only see the files they need to see and managers will also be able to access the financial target documents, even though they are in the same folder and I have embedded that folder into my Intranet Page.

All within one single page. How Smart is that?!

Claromentis around the world, Clients, Communities and Case studies, Products, intranet applications, technical complex intranet management, document management, intranet, intranet applications, intranet blogging, news management, permissions, smart object

The purchase this month of Claromentis Document manager by SCOMI, a public engineering company in Malaysia is particularly important as on a group basis they are employers of over 4,800 employees at 65 locations in 36 countries.

They worked with Michael Christian and Alexander Polyanskih from Claromentis to specify a document submission wizard, which working with our name pattern records management functionality will ensure that all new engineering documents are automatically given an appropriate reference number on addition to the document management system.

Engineering Document Management

We look forward to working with the staff of SCOMI to provide a robust document management system for this significant Malaysian public company.

Claromentis around the world, Corporate News, Intranets by Industry Sector or Job Role document management

The most published department in the UK government, the Department for Communities and Local Government, has purchased Process Manager - the e-forms solution from Claromentis.

This will be a fascinating project for Claromentis as Process Manager is a focus Product for 2009 and working together with the Local Government Department will allow us to ensure  the product receives the feedback to ensure it is developed to met the real needs of our business process driven clients.

Claromentis around the world, Corporate News, intranet applications e-forms, government e-forms

The world is a challenging environment right now, but for Claromentis it is full of opportunity as our cross platform, commercial but open source extendable information management solutions continue to be adopted around the world.

This global opportunity brings with it several challenges for us:

• Making sure we provide the partner channel with everything they need to promote Claromentis in their own language and culture. This involves localisation files, user guides and web site content translation just to get on the first page.

• Making sure we are sensitive to understanding the partners abilities – when all of the communications with us is in for them a foreign language and if we are not extremely attentive this can lead to considerable misunderstandings and incorrect perceptions.

• Recognizing that in many parts of the world we as a company do not yet understand which of our solutions are the most appropriate to add value to the local customer base.

• Being very aware that we are not aware of the alternative solutions available in that country, and so need to embark on a discovery process with new partners in each new area.

• Trying to set and maintain a suitable pricing model for our customers, partners and ourselves.

But despite these challenges this is just such an enjoyable process. Working with customers and partners from other countries and cultures brings all of us a special interest. We so enjoy meeting our partners and customers from around the world – it adds to all of our lives in so many ways.

Claromentis around the world, General Intranet Posts, People and Cultural Issues global, partners

Two weeks ago I was visiting a new customer in Atlanta, and next week we  go back to the USA to train another new Intranet client – this time in San Francisco - ahead of the main launch at a trade show later in the month.

The approach we use in delivering intranet training on these longer visits is becoming standard in the sense that we now completely prioritize a generous amount of flexible agenda. We do this for two main reasons:

1.    We know the staff will be under pressure to deliver their real work while also attending the training.

2.    We know individuals will react to the system at certain times with a real sense of the potential for their role or department – and we need to be able to explore that properly to make sure the business value is identified, and training time is allocated on the fly to make sure the project can react.

But in addition – we frankly know from experience that the first time you go from a proof of concept to a full training workshop we will meet a whole new set of interests and challenges that the initial client specifications did not cover – and we need to reserve time to make sure we can respond.

Overly detailed planning of our intranet training agenda would just prohibit the exploration of these very important aspects which often contain true insights on where the value is for the real users.

Claromentis around the world, General Intranet Posts, People and Cultural Issues, Services intranet training, intranet value