Recent economic conditions and pressure has made many businesses to re-think their priorities. In software development world it comes down to cost, time and functionality.

In ideal world all projects would have realistic deadlines, enough resources to do the entire features listed in the functionality requirement. However in the real world this is almost never happened. The real world demand compromises and faced with constant changes.

Diagram above illustrates “The Impossible Triangle” showing the relationship between Functionality, Cost and Time. As a software company we’re constantly under pressure to deliver project on time on-budget and fit for purpose but in reality it is nearly impossible to fix all three aspects in a project.

For illustration, it is possible to work on a fix amount of cost and fixed number of features & functionality  (assuming they are clearly defined) but time to complete the project will have to become variable. In many cases with the software development we don’t know the problem until we’re halfway down with the coding work.

On the other hand, it is possible to fix cost and having an exact date on project delivery but there will be some functionality trade-off.

In many cases, throwing additional resources in the mid-project is not as straightforward throwing more bricklayers to build a wall as illustrated by Dilbert:

In my opinion the role of Project Management in the software project are undervalued. A good software Project Manager is incredibly rare. It is disheartening to know that according to research by Dr John McManus, only one in eight IT projects can be considered as truly successful (1998-2005).

On the bright side, In the recent years we’ve seen the rise of Prototyping  and implementation of Agile methodologies, which in Claromentis we’re proudly adopting and continue to learn from mistakes and “Keep Moving Forward”.

Note: “Keep Moving Forward” is a tagline borrowed from Disney Pixars Movie – Meet the Robinsons. There is an interesting scene from the movie when the Robinsons family rejoices and celebrated “failures” more than “success”.

Intranet-Extranet, Services bespoke development, development vision, internal customer communications, software

Explore Fund is a global network created by The North Face with a mission to help kids discover nature’s playground.

It’s a global initiative by launching 7 sites in 7 countries simultaneously across Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK) and North America (Canada, US)

Their goal is to inspire and enable the next generation of explorers by funding non-profit organisations that are working to re-connect children with nature. We believe in the physical, emotional and social benefits of a healthy, active outdoor lifestyle, and that a strong connection with the outdoors will lead to greater support and protection of our natural landscapes.

The Explore Fund will support organisations that encourage youth outdoor participation, focusing primarily on creating more connections of children to nature, increasing access to both front & backcountry recreation, as well as providing education for both personal & environmental health.

Find out more from these sites below:

ExploreFund.eu (Europe)
ExploreFund.ca (Canada)
ExploreFund.org (USA)

Custom Development, Services bespoke development, Case Study, Design, environmental, Social Networking, web 2.0

You are probably familiar with 4Ds methodology frequently implemented in the web-design and web-development company.

Define, Design, Develop, Deploy

A classic waterfall approach which is very easy to understand but in practical this is hardly the ‘right’ process. The biggest drawback with the waterfall process is there is no room for changes and everything has to be perfect from the beginning to guarantee a project success, which is something that almost impossible to achieve in the real world.

The requirement is always ‘hazy’, it’s incredibly hard to visualize final product, there are too many factors to consider and business & technology and budget may change.

Familiar Project Cartoon

Image credit: projectcartoon.com

When it comes to the question “what is the right process?” we always get the lawyer answer, “it depends”.

A good project manager will realize that every project is different and need different methodology.  How about “Agile?” are they good?

The terms of “Agile Methodology” has been greatly abused and there are just too many different variations which sometime company adopting it for the sake of adopting it. “Yes we do Agile!”.

For us the ‘right methodology’ is an evolving process, we understand that we have to think from the customer point of view. We have to welcome changes!

“We shouldn’t put anyone to the dreadful task reading 200 pages of specification and hoping they can sign it off.

We have learned that we shouldn’t put anyone to the dreadful task reading 200 pages of specification and hoping they are having enough understanding to sign it off.  We all know pictures and models are better way to help us understand complex problem. We want the client involve in the process every step of the way, it is not just for us but good for them.  We want to put things into rigorous testing and not turning them into beta-tester. We want to make the entire process fun and constructive.

And we came up with this!

Custom Development, Intranet-Extranet agile, bespoke development, development vision, fun, humor, internal customer communications, software

Bridgewater Bank is the only Canadian Chartered Bank with head office located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The bank is wholly owned by the Alberta Motor Association (AMA), the largest membership service organization in the province. With assets more than $3 billion, employing more than 215 employees and serving over 60,000 customers, Bridgewater Bank continues its expansion with wide-range of product service offering from Mortgages, High Interest Saving Account and Credit Cards.

Partnering with Claromentis since 2010 we’ve been working on the highly complex and sophisticated portal deployment for a banking industry, and we are delighted to see the project has been well received by the executives, staff, brokers and their customers.

“I went through the app from start to finish including saving and re-entering to edit. Very slick application and user friendly process. I like it., I want to thank you for the time and effort you put into this over the past week to get it done.”

Peter Flannigan │ Director, Customer Solutions

All Star Broker Portal

All Star Portal is the result of Bridgewater Bank’s commitment to their brokers and their business. Having visited several broker houses in Canada and understanding their day-to-day job provides tremendous insight of what they actually need, instead of just working of the requirement documents. The result is outstanding the broker loves it and the project has been a great success. Here are some of the key features:

• Secure and Robust Permission
• Ease of Access (any browsers, PC, Mac, Smart Phones, Tablet)
• Real-Time update
• Drag-and-drop secure document upload for mortgage application
• Automatic email notification
• Auto-sync with third party Mortgage system

Broker Information System

Broker Information System is the back-end of central database for Bridgewater Bank ‘s Brokers. We have done complete transformation on what it was difficult to use in-house software into an integrated web app with the portal itself.

Key Features:

• Broker’s profile database
• Broker-Sub Broker
• Ratings & Super Broker Concept
• Red Flag warning
• Commenting facility
• Integration with Google Map
• History
• Fully integrated with Broker Deal Management

New Website

We are also working with their team giving their tired public website a new live with complete redesign and implementing Claromentis CMS.

Smart Applications

For the ‘cherry on top’, we’ve created custom web-form allowing web visitor applying to their products such as Mortgage and Smart eSaving Account through the built-in easy to use web form

Features:

• Strong Field Validation
• Saving application to submit later
• Auto secure password generator
• Email Notification system
• Real time application status

At Claromentis we believe that user experience is paramount and cannot be compromised, however sophisticated the technology we always put human aspects behind it.

If you would like to know more about this project and find out more on how we can help you. please contact us.

Intranet-Extranet, Services, Solutions bank, bespoke development, Design, intranet consultancy, online collaboration, portal, user interface

Background

The United Bible Societies is a fellowship of 146 national Bible Societies (NBS).  This fellowship is served by the UBS Service Organisation (UBSSO) that operates from the World Service Centre in Reading, UK and has four area offices across the world.  From time to time the fellowship meets as a World Assembly.  At the last one of these in 2004, it was felt that it would be helpful to have a worldwide picture of the combined resources and work of the whole fellowship.  The Global Stewardship Report (GSR) was developed to meet this need.

Report History

A small trial of collecting the report data started in 2008, followed by the first full exercise in 2009, in which all Bible Societies were asked to participate. Almost all have now sent in their return.

Data collection was in an excel spreadsheet that could print on one A4 page. The form used is included as Appendix 1 and the accompanying notes to explain the data required are in Appendix 2.  Experience from the first round of collection is that not all Bible Societies read the notes carefully and that some information is still missing or obviously incorrect.

The Way Forward

Working together with UBS Service Organisation, Claromentis develop a bespoke Global Stewardship Web-Application within UBS Intranet/Extranet allowing member of the National Bible Societies to fill in the information online on the web.

Using a wizard-style approach, built-in checking, and dynamic currency conversion, users can simply guided through the forms, minimize mistakes and no training is required

All the details are kept in a secure central database from which, at any time, the most updated consolidated stewardship report can be easily be generated online and a hard copy can be printed from a print-friendly view of the report.

Solutions bespoke development, intranet 2.0, online collaboration, web 2.0

I think we have been witnessing a quiet revolution over the last couple of years that might not have generated the publicity it deserved.

The Web has moved inside the heart of even small to medium corporations – no longer as a product set – but as a framework, API and information layer within which web apps are rising to their natural place in helping the business to solve real problems.

I work in the front line of our sales efforts and in the last few months I estimate that 75% of our projects started with a requirement to do something in a better way. Only 25% have started with ‘Our company is looking for an Intranet’. The rest start with ‘can you help me do this?’

The customer has a problem and needs modern, elegant, fresh software to deliver a solution. Of course it will be web based – what new small to medium sized applications are not?

And of course the new software will not be accessible to the public – but by the company associates and optionally the supply chain and reaching out to key customers.

The ‘web within’ has truly arrived in a way that can now be leveraged by any SME business without prohibitive costs or the need to take unnecessary risks – and without calling it an “intranet”. Indeed in many cases they already have one of those – but it does not address the problem bought to us in any meaningful way – if at all.

At Claromentis our framework of existing code and applications, our information layer and prototype based development process, our natural understanding of what businesses need and our honest and open engagement make sure that ideas are sanitized, jointly refined and finally deployed successfully.

These are agile projects and exciting engagements that make a real difference to a business – one set of stakeholders at a time.

They also make life really interesting for the sales team!

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet bespoke development, intranet software, web apps

I find it interesting that since I started working at Claromentis – an intranet solution provider, I have mainly been working on bespoke applications for clients. The variety of specifications I have seen for these different applications from client to client really highlights the versatility of Claromentis as an intranet and its ability as a framework to grow and adapt to a company’s requirements.

Desk booking for me was a great example of this. The “Hot Desk” system is usually employed by large companies who want to maximise the use of their desks.  Essentially employees will work from which ever desk is available on the day rather than have their own personal desk. When employees might work at different times and for different lengths of time this minimizes desk redundancy.

What better way to enhance this system than provide the ability to book desks in advance?  This is precisely what the Desk Booking application does. This in turn allows a company to measure desk occupancy making sure they are getting their monies worth from their office space.

The application also allows managers to maintain a database of desks and their features, as well as providing the ability to assign fixed desks, browse an availability calendar, provide floor plans with desk locations and much more. Another great bespoke project that really highlights good use of Claromentis as a framework.

Intranet-Extranet bespoke development

The functionality of the solution set in Claromentis intranet framework are so large now that we often spend considerable time during projects, and especially at inception – in choosing from various options in order to meet a business need.

Since the Claromentis business framework also includes a complete intranet API, we also need to consider whether a bespoke application to meet the client need is the best solution, as opposed to the superficially ‘easier’ route of configuring an existing application to meet the requirement.

This is particularly the case with e-forms, which for many simpler business needs can indeed be configured to meet a requirement as initially expressed to us.  This is basically because many small applications are based on collecting data, moving along a process and notifying participants of significant events that need their attention – exactly the space Process Manager occupies.

When we are making these decisions we are in general terms trying to balance 3 disparate needs :

• Project risk – configuring and localizing an application is a relatively simple and certainly time limited process that does not involve scope creep, whereas developing a bespoke intranet application takes time and resources.
• Budgets – applications need to be licensed, this might be commercially inappropriate for the number of users that need access.
• Flexibility as a solution for future requirements – we have learnt that there is always a phase 2, and after using the solution in phase 1 the client may well drastically change the application requirements – it is so much easier to evolve a bespoke application.

What we are finding is that we are emphasizing flexibility more and more as we continue to engage with intranet clients around the world. And because we can now give so many examples and speak with the confidence that comes from working in this space for 10 years now, we are noticing that clients are increasingly listening to us.

The result is that they do take slightly longer to get to phase 1, they take more risk, and generally may spend slightly more to get to the first release  – but the platform for their success is built on the solid foundation of an intranet application that was built from the ground up to meet the need, and can grow without constraints to continue to serve the client well.

If, as is so often the case – phase 2 is considerably different to the initial requirements – the client in the end saves money as well as getting exactly what they need – since the changed specifications do not require us to start again.

In the fast moving web based intranet world where there are almost no technological limits, building for possible feedback and change requests is basically too important to ignore.

So in the longer term it seems that time and time again actually focusing on flexibility can minimize budget and project risk, rather than increase them. Another great lesson.

Intranet-Extranet, Products, Workflow Services bespoke development, e-forms, intranet software

We have had so many discussions recently about how to establish legitimate boundaries for modern intranet software.

At a recent vision setting meeting at Claromentis we did decide that we would never produce accountancy software – but the only reason seemed to be because Nigel thinks its boring and no-one else in the room understood much about it. Hardly a valid rule for deciding when business functionality should be excluded form our product set looking out beyond Claromentis 6.0

If you think about it, as well as the API for bespoke applications, we now have major application sets for:

Information management across every imaginable file type through to online
Collaboration and Innovation
Sales Management
Project Management
Image Management
MarComms
Across the board Quality Management solutions

As we move into a world where it seems the browser can deliver just about anything to the desktop and client software is dying faster than newspapers, it seems that at Claromentis the only rules we can find for a product line in our intranet system is :

It makes a difference to a business
It is aesthetically beautiful and highly usable
It leverages the permission system

Can anyone come up with a better rule for helping us not to deliver accountancy software as part of an intranet? Seriously – where should we stop? How can we say – “but that is just not what an intranet should do”?

Intranet-Extranet, The Framework bespoke development, intranet software

Over the years we have seen many changes in the requirements of our new customers as we deploy Claromentis in a hugely varying client base.

These changes have been gradual and material, driven both by the significant increase in capabilities of web based frameworks, and by the changing nature of modern collaboration.

In just the last couple of years I have noticed the increasing importance of bespoke applications – customers looking for assistance from Claromentis are more and more focused on software to meet their particular needs – rather than anything that would normally fit under the increasingly flexible definition of “an intranet”.

We experienced this first with Process Manager which allows any customer to implement form based processes, and this interest continues to grow significantly, but now we have implementations of much more complex bespoke software within the Claromentis framework implemented by means of the API.

These projects are extremely varied in their nature –  recent examples include managing specific sales inquiries, retail store inspections, sustainability, donations, job scheduling, desk bookings and corporate audit management. It would be difficult to find any common ground between them – except that they are all web based, manage information for staff and require a strong permission system.

I have been asking myself why, and I think the answer is simply ‘ because we can’. By this I mean that when companies come to us asking if some new idea is possible, our answer is almost always ‘yes’. We have the experience, framework, code base and API – but more importantly the  consultative people that can listen to ideas and not only show how they can be implemented, but with a clarity on at what cost, with what alternatives and with what implications for our client.

For those clients that require it we are becoming more and more a true technology partner – the latest significant step in our 10 year history of providing web based software.

Custom Development, Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet bespoke development, intranet software