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

As we set our strategy and roadmap for the coming financial year, starting April  – it already seems clear that one element will be to build on our  strong reputation for helping businesses to best use web based software to meet their goals.

Our extensive code base includes information management, process management and custom applications. However in addition to software we also offer wide ranging advice and consultancy.

This is based on our expertise and pragmatic experience over the last 13 years of working with such a wide range of companies at different levels of their own understanding of what web based software can offer them, and how  it can change or enhance their business models.

Under these circumstances it is interesting to us to try to define what world  class intranet consultancy might look like.

Clear elements would include:

• A determined focus on clarity.
• Expert staff sharing knowledge and experiences.
• A focus on the business models of our customers not on our software and processes – these are a means to the end.
• Honesty – recommending products from best in class suppliers of point solution where these are clearly appropriate and can be integrated.
• Risk sharing – through prototypes and innovative delivery of complex solutions.
• Cultural and global sensitivity
• Removing all barriers – so we can focus on getting to the goals : whatever the platform needed, whatever the functionality, via any deployment model, on any device.

It will be an exciting year for our staff and clients as we continue to refine our intranet consultancy – keeping world class standards as our ultimate goal.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Prod-Process, Solutions intranet consultancy

Within many global 2000 companies, the journey to create Social Enterprises (also referred to as Enterprise 2.0) is underway, set against a backdrop of hopelessly outdated methods for employee collaboration & communications.

There’s a lot at stake. Companies that make a smooth transition to a social enterprise can unlock innovation more quickly, capture & share knowledge more effectively and harness their global networks of talent to outwit the competition. But the transition is complicated, requiring not just adoption of new technologies but significant changes in culture and working behaviour.

So how do you set about achieving a smooth transition, preferably before your competition? This is where Microsoft’s Sharepoint looms large, as the intranet collaboration platform of choice across many large enterprises today.

Read more at Knowledge Board

Intranet-Extranet intranet, intranet 2.0, intranet consultancy, intranet roadmap, sharepoint, web 2.0

You might be wondering what on earth such title for a software company blog, in fact there are many similarities when you compare family trip to IKEA and delivering IT project for an organisation.

I begin with a little story that the state of my kitchen is dreadful, the look is so dated and it needs total refurbishment and I’ve been promising my wife a trip to IKEA so we can have one of those shinny looking kitchen just like the one in the brochure.

So we take a look on the brochure and we really like this one.  At £860 It’s a bargain! So let’s go and get it!

Then the reality starts to emerge you don’t came out the store with that kitchen; in fact you ended up with these.

All the good things isn’t included, definitely not the coffee and the laptop, but fittings and lighting, all the things that make it looks good.

If you think about isn’t it an elaborate con? They are selling you the picture with the price tag but you ended up with pile of flat pack?

Have we actually factor-in the cost and time required for transport, unpack, build, other fittings, disposal of the old kitchen units, daily disruption, and possible error?
Of course not we are so blinded with the image in the brochure and the low price!

It makes me wonder how many of the proud purchaser that successfully ended up with the picture just like in the brochure. Perhaps the percentage is not dissimilar to the percentage of successful IT projects.

Now back on the software business. I am seeing the similar attitude of “Honey let’s go to IKEA’ to sort out problem within an organisation.  Many of us still believe that to sort out internal communication problem is to go out just buy the software.

How about that “intranet” Dear? It looks sexy and cheap? Surely it’s within our budget.

How about other things, which we need to factor-in? Such as Planning, resources, preparation Check out 10 steps planning your intranet project.

At Claromentis our attitude is always to go for extra miles, we believe unique solution is required for unique problem, the value it’s not in the product but in the complete solution based on our experience that we’ve learnt deploying more than 100 intranets and bespoke web-based software across the world.

The reality is we are only one side of the coin; the other side is you Mr Customer. We can’t solve your problem if you don’t want it to be solved.

No offense to Mr IKEA, I still think your business model is brilliant, and this post is based on my personal view.

Services Case Study, commercial, fun, humor, intranet, intranet consultancy

Everyone knows that even in the era of web 2.0  and micro blogging today, email is still a powerful and extremely effective communication tool.

Our relationship with Email is a bit like a ‘love and hate relationship’. We love it because we don’t have to go somewhere to fetch or read the information, it is right in ‘my inbox’, and for most of us it is part of morning ritual, breakfast, cup of coffee and check email.

We hate it at the same time because our inbox tends to be very messy; there is no easy and reliable way to separate genuine emails we like, emails we hate, good or bad notifications and spam messages.

Not just quality of the messages, sometime we also have to think about frequency, and volume of information being delivered.

People sometime complain they are not being informed about important information, in our case recently our book keepers insisted that they need to know if any of the managers has approved overtime as soon as possible in real-time so they can authorize the payment immediately, without further delay.

Before it was lack of information but now take a look at this person’s inbox :

OK that’s just too much information, the accountant is now complaining that the system is spamming them.

This issue made them realizes the consequences of their request. Sometime it is hard to imagine but what the differences can be simply by the frequency of the email you receive. Less than 5 a day seem acceptable but 50+ a day is just too much. Is it really ‘too much’ or it is a sign that system is working?

The fact is that each request is now visualized, and they can see what’s going on in real-time. It might be  just a  normal psychology reaction, who likes  to see the work has just piling up ?

The problem is where is the balance? Lets say 20+ a day might be OK for someone but it is too much for others. If we change the method for example using daily digest, then some people might complain they don’t get the information in ‘real time’ when they need it, or is it just our way to make ourselves feels better.

Tell us what you think…

Intranet-Extranet, Services collaboration, email, information architect, intranet consultancy, spam

As a web development company we still get involved in numerous projects where the likely engagement or traction of an idea is overestimated by our customer to a significant degree.

This is surprising given the economic climate we are fast becoming used to operating in, but perhaps it is just the nature of certain types of entrepreneurs to believe those columns of excel data which based on simple projections extend ever higher  over time – reaching total world dominance in just a couple of nimble tabs.

As a contrast those of us that work in intranet projects know how hard you have to work to capture and retain users, and how easy it is to disappoint them and lose them for long periods of time.

Both as users and as customers we are increasingly demanding and sensitive – if we cant find exactly what we want with minimum effort we will just go to where we can – without leaving a trace in a project that tried hard to work out what we might be looking for, but didn’t get it quite perfect.

My question is why some people are so optimistic about the external world but so realistic about the likely behaviour of our colleagues. Perhaps this is nothing more than replacing some idealized version of a dissatisfied and excited consumer with reality, having got to know our workmates over extended periods of time.

But perhaps the workplace constrains both our imagination and our behaviour – it places us in a routine where we will simply not respond and change only because we did not do that yesterday.

If that is the case then intranet project teams need to bring a dose of external optimism into their projects, work hard to deliver exactly what their colleagues need and not let old practices continue to constrain both behaviour and innovation.

Intranet-Extranet intranet, intranet consultancy

During early phases of intranet deployment, we are frequently asked by our clients “what do I need to prepare or plan in advance to guarantee a successful of intranet deployment project”.

In our opinion, an intranet project is all about dialog. It’s a dialog between ‘us’ the software vendor with our expertise and know-how and ‘you’ who know the most about your business or organisation.

Step1. Setup a Goal

The first step is determining the goals of your Intranet project. Why do you want an intranet? Some typical reasons:

• Improving and providing a communication and collaboration tool.
• Our existing Intranet is old and dysfunctional.
• Distribute corporate news (electronic newsletter)
• Providing self service staff contact details which are always up-to-date
• Make our company policies and procedures available online
• Sharing documents online instead of using shared drives
• Enabling staff to work from home
• Better searching and easier way finding key documents

Step2. Define the scope & audience

Have you got an answer for these questions?

• Is it just an Intranet for staff or it is also an extranet for partners and contractors?
• Do you want to allow your staff access to the intranet even when they’re at home or client’s site?
• How about mobile access?
• Have you asked representative from each department on what they want to see or get on the Intranet?
• How people currently finding information, which you think should be on the intranet? What are their common pains?
• Would you like to store sensitive information on the Intranet such as payroll ?
• What about chat and commenting? How open is your company culture?

Step 3. Build a SiteMap

Build a sitemap, using your favorite tools such as Visio or simply hand drawn, create draft of Intranet sitemap, typically the main branch are represented by each department, you can see various examples below:

Step 4. What are key application do you want to use?

This step is simply determining what are the main application do you want to use on the Intranet, Claromentis provide these following applications,  you can simply choose which one to use.

News and Blog– Share and distribute company news and blog
Documents – Document collaboration with version control
Publish – Page creator, a content management system
People – Self service personnel database
Calendar – Shared company calendar
Image Gallery – Corporate image database
Bookshelf – Online Policies & Procedures
Policy Manager – Managing lifecycle of the company policies
Holiday planner – manage corporate holiday and absence
Room booking – book a meeting room and office facilities
InfoCapture – Electronic e-forms builder and workflows
Project – Manage project online
CRM – Opportunity Management

Outside these applications we built many other bespoke applications to suit your need

Step 5. Understanding Permissions

A scalable intranet should have a strong permission system, it also helps to distribute information easily. For example you may want to have area where only people in your department can produce or edit its content while everyone else simply just view.

This can be done easily by setting up permission, ie : Roles, Group and Sub-Groups.

To make our job easier when configuring your system, have you got a Company org-chart available?

Step 6. Create Homepage Wireframe

As you know the homepage is the first page everyone is going to see, it’s worth the extra effort to design this carefully after all it is a gateway to all other content within the Intranet. Look at several examples for inspiration and decide what you want to see on the homepage, my advice is to keep it clean and simple.

Step 7. Budget & Resources

How many users will be using the Intranet? Many Intranet software vendors  price their products by number of users.

Hardware, who is going to provide you with the hardware?  If you don’t have any we’re happy to source this for you or you can take the SaaS model.

Have you got an internal project team?  Usually we recommend a project sponsor, an internal project manager as the main contact, a technical contact, and a rep from marketing or communication as a minimum team – smaller companies might have fewer people involved.

Step 8. Timeline

Plan your project timeline carefully.  Each company is different – an Intranet can be deployed from 2 weeks up to a year, these are some key points worth considering which may cause delays:

• Sourcing hardware
• Getting access through your office network
• Finalising design
• Updating user list
• Content population
• Content migration.

Like everything else in life, execution is quick, preparation is the key so do your homework!

Step 9. Future plans (keep evolving!)

I’ve seen many intranet projects loose momentum after the initial launch phase. A successful intranet is something that grows over time, start simple and add new features gradually. Learn from  user feedback and implement user requests wherever feasible.

Small improvements can make a huge different – it’s like the breath of fresh air. Keep the original team and meet regularly for project reviews and brainstorming of new ideas.

Here are some ideas to think about once you have your initila intranet.

• Is there any business processes which can be done electronically?
• Such as overtime request, time cards, new hire.
• Is there a database, which is currently in Excel, and you think it will be much better if it is an online application?
• Any existing system, which can be better integrated with the Intranet?
• Thinking of deploying corporate micro-blogging? Online videos?

Step 10. Do it now!

This final step is the most important of all. You can make all the planning you need but without execution it is still a plan. Get the ball rolling now, gather your team, email them now, start researching or simply drop us a line to discuss your requirement, or book an online demo!

Good luck with your Intranet project!

Intranet-Extranet Claromentis, collaboration, Design, extranet, intranet, intranet consultancy, intranet development, intranet project manager

Document Management System with Submission Wizard.

Maintaining consistency and integrity of the technical documents is a business critical issue for Crondall Energy Consultant. Crondall Energy is a Floating Production System consultant which helps their clients in many areas ranging from Strategic planning, Market analysts up to Project Delivery and Training.

Claromentis Document Manager

Utilising built-in Claromentis Document Management system, we recently develop bespoke document submission wizard based on specification and guideline from Crondall Energy.

The document submission wizard is not only helping users submitting document into the right storage path (folder), it also automatically creates documents with the right name convention and automatic numbering system.

The same wizard can also be used to make strict control on making revision to the existing documents.

Intranet-Extranet, Products Design, document management, intranet consultancy, user interface

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

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