Claromentis Intranet Software Blog

As being a provider of an intranet software and its side solutions; we develop, deploy and deliver.. an intranet software… Recently one of our clients requested a quotation for an enhanced social networking platform to enable a possible collaboration of their consumers and staff under a single social networking platform. Personally, I think this is a great idea! Specially in an internet age, I can not think of any better solution to improve your public face than this. But there is one small problem… Our software was not developed while keeping the social networking platforms in mind. In other words, we are not the providers of a social networking platform. So how should we answer the client?

To find an answer to this, we did have an internal meeting today to narrow down our solutions and decided the following options:

1. Find a reliable third party social networking platform software, buy the software, customize it for the client and resell it.
2. Create a partnership with a third party company delivering social networking platforms and work on their software together with the owner of the software and deliver the result to the client. Consider the possibilities of learning the social networking platform development and combine it with our own product.
3. Develop our own bespoke social networking platform and deliver it to the client.
4. Say no.

The first three options have their pros and cons, while the 4th option is something we don’t like to go for, therefore I am going to focus on the first 3 options.

We found a perfect software delivering exactly what the client has asked for. It ticks almost every boxes based on the client’s requirements sheet. The software is open source and can be acquired with different pricing structures; starting from free up to good amount of money; depending on the package. In my opinion, the most expensive package, which is still relatively cheap based on its functionalities, is the one we should go for. The main reason behind my defence for this software is it works perfectly, delivers exactly what the client is asking for, the software itself is open source so we can modify it the way we want it, customize it to suit the client’s needs and deliver it to the client. The client gets what they want which works and we are happy to exceed the client’s expectations.

However there were several concerns about this option. The main concern, which is the main reason I am writing this article for is the software is actually an open source software. Some of our team members considered this as a negative point, because you may not get any support for the software. However what was forgotten in this concern was actually the provider of the software is releasing the core code of the software and any additional plug-ins (which we will need all of them) costs money. What took my attention was the word ‘open source’ made them think that this software may be unstable or developed by a student in couple of nights for fun and may well be forgotten by its provider. What I find strange is this thought would have never come to mind if the software was released by companies like Apple, Google, Sun or even Facebook or Digg team, just because they are a well known company and/or charging millions for it… For example, Mozilla may well stop supporting Firefox if it was not financially possible for them to keep the development of it.

But there were some other points which I found logical. Up-to-date, we delivered our own software which we know inside out. We are able to answer every question about it because we developed, deployed and delivered it. We are responsible to support our clients for the software they bought from us. What if something goes wrong with this third party software? OK, we have our own developers who can fix many problems, but to address a problem may take 5 minutes if the problem is occured on our software whereas it may well take 5 hours to address the same problem on some other software, if you are not familiar with it, and we are not talking about couple of hundred lines of code. This third party software is huge, so its’ codebase.

The other unspoken concern, which again I agree with, was the feeling we will have from the result. If the client loves this third party solution and sends their greetings to us, we would not feel the same level of satisfaction and proud as much as if they did the same for our intranet software, because simply what we delivered is NOT ours. We may have done a good job on finding the correct solution, customizing it and deploying it, but these are not actually what the client is requesting. These are expected standard results whereas the capabilities of the software are the requirement itself.

The second option is creating a partnership with a local social networking software developer and work on the actual software itself together. By doing this, there will be a mutual level of knowledge sharing. On our side, we will be learning how to deal with social networking management and implementation of these kind of platforms on corporate environments. And so many other stuff that I am not able to share with you for the moment. Because this will be a partnership, the provider will be reachable, therefore it will be possible for us to mash both of our solutions on one platform. Our client is already using our intranet solution and they are happy with it. Rather than giving them a complete new solution, which does not have the same look and feel as our own software, may be seen confusing to them (which is what may happen with the first solution, but again it is an open source software, so we should be able to customize it).

There is already one company we are considering to have a partnership for this project and we are in talks with them. I can not give you more details about this for the moment.

The third solution is a less likely to achive in a timescale given by the client. Our own software has years of experience and development history and as I said at the beginning of my article, it was not developed as a social networking platform. The strange thing is our software can do many of the client’s requirements on an individual basis, but was not designed to use these features on a public website with social networking ideas in mind.

You are probably asking “So, which option did you go for?“, well, we are still considering these and other  options and there are no decisions as of now. What I wanted to share with this article was what may be thought when we hear the word “open source“.

Can/should open source be considered as professional? How far professional and successful it can go? Can commercial products be open source and if they are open source, are they still commercial? Is open source turning out to be a marketing term because of the success of Mozilla Firefox?

Probably harder questions to answer than the meaning of life.

Clients, Communities and Case studies, Intranet Development and API, Open Source Intranets open source, Open Source Intranets, Social, Social Networking

I am very pleased to say that Claromentis has received ISO9001 accreditation for Quality Management.

This includes the audit of our bespoke and core code processes, which are end to end from specifications to sign off.

It ensures that we :

• Have a set of procedures that cover all key processes in the business;
• Are monitoring processes to ensure they are effective;
• Keep adequate records;
• Are always  checking our code for defects, with appropriate and corrective action where necessary;
• Are regularly reviewing individual processes and the quality system itself for effectiveness; and
• Are facilitating continual improvement.

Thanks to everyone for your help with the work we put in over the last 6 months to gain this important certification.

Corporate News, Intranet Development and API ISO9001, Quality

If you didn’t know already, the Claromentis Infocapture application has the ability to extend it’s framework with the aid of plug-ins.  Plug-ins are add-ons to the application, allowing you to do almost anything with data that the application collects or manages.  You can use a plug-in to import data into the e-form automatically, export the data to 3rd party application/database or file, provide extended field verification and form checking, perform advanced calculations and data manipulation amongst an almost endless variety of other system process enhancing capabilities.

But the use of plugins doesn’t just stop there…

When you think about integrating the InfoCapture Application with another (or several) of the other applications within the Claromentis Framework, plug-ins step into a whole new league .

The InfoCapture Application can already integrate easily with Claromentis Sales Manager, to embed e-forms within pages about each company (to work in conjunction with Contact and Opportunity management), but combine that with InfoCapture plug-ins, and not only are you extending in the CRM system by intergrating with Infocapture, but you have the ability to extend it even further with the use of plug-ins.

I should also not fail to mention that InfoCapture and the Claromentis Document Manager application are also close friends, with linking to documents available within e-forms as standard(while still applying the correct document permissions!).

So where else can this go…

InfoCapture has envolved over the years to become such an adaptable data collection application, it could sit comfortably with so many of the Claromentis Applications.

You could use InfoCapture with other applications such as…

• Creating Special Calendar Events (Calendar)
• Booking meeting rooms (Room Booking)
• Booking holidays (Holiday Planner)
• Managing your email (Webmail)
• Managing your un-qualified sales leads (CRM)

The list could go on….

Imagine combining the Claromentis Project Manager Application with InfoCapture, and using plug-ins to extend the capabilities of them both.

The effectiveness of easily customizable and incredibly powerful e-forms solution combined with a project management application is a sure guarantee to gaining a decent ROI.  How many other project management applications allow such flexibility and extendability with the aid of an application like Claromentis InfoCapture and plug-ins?

So I ask the question again… how powerful are InfoCapute plug-ins??

And the answer appears to be… incredibly so….

Intranet Development and API, Products, Technical Support, intranet applications e-forms, extending, infocapture, plugins

I am thrilled that two developers will be joining our UK office to provide support in our bespoke work for our customers around the world. Their tasks are not only bespoke applications but also e-form plug ins to assist with more complex form based work flows and processes.

The exciting parallel development is that we are scheduling long term visits from our core outsourced team into our UK team as well. This will produce a healthy cross fertilization of best practices and closer cooperation, with the UK team also helping with tighter core product specifications to go back to the core team.

At the same time we are decoupling some of our core intranet applications to allow them to be developed more rapidly than the 3 or 4 releases per year of Claromentis core code. At least one of these applications, Sales Manager, will be taken over by UK developers to increase the efficiency of customer feedback for this important application.

While this is all great – I would be really interested in hearing from anyone who has been through a similar process of combining in house developers with offshore development of complex products.

General Intranet Posts, Intranet Development and API, Services bespoke development, intranet development

It seems we are the victim of our own success sometimes when using our bespoke development teams to deliver very significant focussed applications on top of Claromentis.

We are working on Competitive Intelligence portals, and Environment Sustainability Portals at the moment – to name just two of the largest bespoke projects our Claromentis clients are asking to add to their systems.

This work is immensely enjoyable – concentrating on delivering very real business value on top of the information layer that is already well in place across the companies concerned.

The reason for this post – is how do you respond to the initial requests from the client for a budget? We draw up specifications, mock ups, we are good at this. But as soon as the client sees the results they get so involved and excited – how should we react as they add functionality and raise the bar ever higher?

Easy you would say – just put the specifications through change management and come up with revised budgets. Normal procedures. Now here is the complexity. These are shared intranet development projects which Claromentis undertakes because we think there is value in us being able to build a core product from this clients ideas and expertise. For example Quality Management Software – we are now adding an entirely new second application to sit alongside Quality Manager – and perfectly reasonably the client sponsoring this wants to know what it will cost them.

Looking at the work Michael has done this is a potentially outstanding addition to Quality Management Software we already have. It is an exciting space to be in, one where we have unique skills and great partnerships with our client.

But we are being taken into functional spaces where we actually have no previous experience – we simply do not know the potential business value of the applications we are creating on a shared development basis. And to add complexity – we will need to move those applications into core code, and of course market them before we even get a foothold in these new spaces and so realize some return on the shared development, probably with 3-6 months sales cycles as well.

So what seems to be a simple problem turns out to be far from that. How much money would we be prepared to lose in developing an application for a specific client as they want to improve on everything they have– in a part of their business we do not have any previous experience – in order to encourage the client to make our application as extraordinary as possible. Even if we have no idea if the way they do things is the way anybody else does?

General Intranet Posts, Intranet Development and API, intranet applications intranet development budgets, intranet shared development

One of the hardest processes to define and implement successfully is how to gear our development for ultimate product success – with consequent rewards in terms of commercial rewards and client satisfaction.
Over the 10 years since we formed Claromentis Limited here in the UK, we will always defend vehemently that we listen to our customers. On the flip side the strategic vision always rests with Michael, Alexander and I.

For example we have resisted many times requests to provide accountancy as a core application or even as some kind of an integration toolkit, because that just is not a core expertise and that is not where we want Claromentis to move towards.But sometimes it is not so easy to defend why for example sales opportunity management is definitely a core direction for us, but accountancy is not. Both are key requirements for our clients – generating beans and counting them. Why did we wholeheartedly embrace the request to develop Quality Management Software, but resist what was codenamed for 2 years CRM2 – and centred on marketing?

Personally I think we have this just about right, 3 people set the broad brush of where we will invest our R&D and within this defined development map customer and partner requests, through meetings and our enhancement request projects in Bugtracker and discover.claromentis.com, are kings.

For us as a company, a crucial event last year was to separate out core and bespoke development resources, without that I think we would always have struggled to be nimble, agile, responsive and yet develop core releases on schedule that move onwards to where we want Claromentis Intranet Software to be.

General Intranet Posts, Intranet Development and API, Services, intranet applications development vision, intranet roadmap, quality management software