One of the most powerful aspects of Claromentis is the combination of Visual Interfaces with the business application requirement of the users concerned.

I find this hard to clarify without simply referring to images. People are used to interfaces being ‘branded’ – by which they mean the application of a logo and adherence to a style guide – and permissions controlling access to information.

It is quite a leap for clients who have not experienced it to understand that the ability to make available applications, change the interface and also of course access to data creates an extremely powerful web based framework for any business – large or small.

How can the same system provide integrated corporate social networking as well as formal project management? How can users benefit from a comprehensive collaboration framework when in the office, and fast access to prioritized information from a mobile device? How can extranet users have a totally different experience from intranet users in the main office?

Corporate Social Networking

Corporate social networking belongs in the intranet – enabling single sign on, following of corporate information and engagement with the content within the platform.

Formal Project Management

Project management is the next step up from ideas – the act of turning them into reality.

Corporate Home Page

Corporate home pages vary significantly but the general concept is similar from client to client.

Fast Access from a Mobile Device

Staff View

Users from the main company have one view, extranet clients are normally focused on understanding data and KPIs concerned with their own projects.

These images might help to understand that a powerful system like Claromentis can indeed match these requirements – by using permissions, interfaces and applications in the holistic way they deserve.

Client View

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Products intranet software, visual interfaces

Those of you that follow us regularly will know that all Claromentis interfaces are bespoke, and that we are just releasing the Claromentis 6.0 platform.

I just love the possibilities in 6.0 – the MyDesk, the components, the bespoke possibilities and of course the new corporate social networking application – Innovate.

Existing clients are now starting the decision process of how to leverage this, and generally this means thoughts of design refresh, which we would recommend every couple of years even if we had not migrated to a new major release.

I found this example, produced last week, particularly interesting :

Example of Claromentis 6.0 Intranet Design

[Company Logo has been masked]

Of particular interest :

1. The bespoke dashboard – showing individual performance in the business from back office databases

2. The promotion of the general stream of Innovate to the home page – truly embracing Corporate Social Networking.

3.  Multiple business branding

This is a really great example of a Claromentis Intranet. that is driven by business needs and yet is still extremely attractive and dynamic.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet corporate social networking, Design, intranet software

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.

Help me solve a problem!

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

As Claromentis continues to expand the range and depth of our Quality Management solutions, new clients are confirming our strong belief that Quality Management applications should indeed be part of the web platform that supports a business – previously known as ‘the intranet’ – and not yet another island of data and processes.

This is partly of the increasing power of web applications which means  clients increasingly work in the intranet, rather than just look for accurate information.

In addition, again and again we find that certain types of information are required for different applications, and at different levels of detail, across the business. The only central place such data should be stored is the company web platform – accessible to all web apps that need them.

An example at a meeting today was Training Records. These are  fundamental for HR, who needed to track the training that staff undertook over time. But it was also required for Health and Safety – where people could review certificates and check that training was in place to meet legislation.

As if that was not enough training records are fundamental to Quality Management – as the level of expertise of an employee has a direct level on the supporting documentation to get a task done to acceptable quality.

Such a simple concept of training records needed to be available for different reasons, and to different staff with different permissions – they needed to be updatable by some applications and readable by others.

Simply put such fundamental data should only be centrally managed, all software companies use is web based – or should be – and the corporate web platform is where that data needs to be because that is increasingly where the work actually gets done.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Prod-Quality intranet software, quality management software, training, training records

At a meeting today one of the most important features of Claromentis Intranet Manager turned out to be the ability to book a room, with associated services.

For a moment I felt almost negative in my response, we had been discussing the API, bespoke applications, process and quality management – powerful solutions that can make a big difference to any organization – but a simple, elegant solution for room booking really got everyone’s attention.

However after listening to the discussion I realized there are some key lessons here:

1. The importance of specific intranet functionality is not related to it’s complexity – it matters how annoying or difficult performing that function is now.

Particularly a repetitive task like booking the right room and facilities – it is important to the meeting results, it is required frequently, and by many users.

intranet room booking

Of course it is important.

2.When you see a truly elegant solution to a problem, you react to it.

For our new client today they could book meeting rooms before, but it was a painful and unreliable process. When you see something that is currently painful implemented ‘the way it should be’ you feel a natural sense of empathy. We all recognize both good and bad design.

3. Sometimes explaining more complex solutions, like the impact of quality management – is a challenge and the message might not really sink in the first time.

As someone who attends so many meetings where the company is seeing Claromentis for the first time, I do understand that for all but the relevant subject matter experts the simple ideas will translate immediately, more complex ideas take more effort and discussion.

So today I grasped another small lesson, be respectful of the impact of good design on any problem, even if for ourselves as Intranet providers the problem seems so “simple”.

Our own challenge now is to present the more complex ideas and web applications in a way that is as immediately understandable as the requirement to book a meeting room. The penny has got to drop for UK plc before it really is too late – bespoke web applications in a consistent and well designed framework carry a huge benefit and really will make a difference.

Hopefully when we present that in the next meeting we won’t be sitting in the corridor because the room is booked by someone else.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet intranet software, room booking

With the ongoing acceleration in the growth of our global intranet client base it is great to see that Claromentis support continues to evolve under Anthony’s guidance to provide a solid, technical and customer facing service that delivers a great service to all of our customers, whatever the nature of their request.

The support portal – ‘Discover Claromentis’ – has been relaunched with a much more appropriate design, and more importantly a very clear separation between Support Requests, Change requests and enhancement ideas.

The Claromentis support portal - Discover

As a sales an marketing person I will leave the technical team to discuss the details, but here is what I really like:

1. The separation between Support requests, Change requests and Suggestions/Enhancements is very clear.

2. Meet the team – our clients build strong relationships with the people that provide such a great technical intranet support service – so why not get to know them?

3. Latest tips and online help – Claromentis is a massive system and we all exchange best practice ideas every day – it is great that we provide a forum for the exchange of ideas and innovative thoughts on the best ways to use the system.

Of course it is all built in Claromentis – Process Manager ( InfoCapture ) builds the ticketing system and Discover itself is completely a Claromentis system.

4. I also like the simple graphical dashboard. We are continually providing intranet KPI systems to our clients – and it is good to see that we implement the same for our own clients.

Our clients are already providing great feedback on the increase we have made to our support team, and the new look Claromentis intranet support portal confirms the effort we are making and the increased clarity in our intranet support services.

Intranet-Extranet, Services intranet software, support

Shakespeare would not be terribly impressed but the point is valid. Although a rose by any other name would smell as sweet – users will get more excited, and participate more, in upcoming intranets launches where the system is not called ‘The Intranet’.

Peace Rose in the Sun

We have posted about intranet names a year ago, providing many project examples form our extensive experience in working with intranets around the world.

The reason for this short post is that we are currently launching an intranet for a company in New Mexico – more on our continued exciting global reach in future posts – where the employee participation on choosing a name for the intranet reached impressive standards even by our own tough benchmarks. In summary

• 93 employees suggested names for the intranet
• A total of 283 names were suggested

Why is this exciting?

• The outcome is great – a great name and a great strap line.
• Extensive participation in this process shows our client is already engaging and generating interest from a wide cross section of employees.

Our immediate challenge is to incorporate the name into the mock up design process – including logo generation – and to bring this whole concept into the intranet as a whole – obeying the corporate style guide we have already been provided with.

Hopefully there will be a celebratory fizz of some kind for the employee that suggested the winner!

Intranet-Extranet intranet names, intranet software

We talk about intranet permissioned news systems and blogs a great deal – internal Marcomms so often have a strong interest in efficient, relevant news systems on global intranets.

It occurred to me that we as a solution provider never actually discuss the content! we just provide a great permissioned news system for our clients to use – yet of course the company is thinking all the time of how they would use it – we all know that it works.

Once I took on this perspective I thought I would look for the use of reporting and distributing news to suit an end goal. I obviously did not look around our confidential client intranets – I just went out to the public internet to compare side by side reporting of the same news stories – looking for examples of spin.

I have to say this has been made so easy with aggregators – I just flipped through some relevant stories on side by side news channels :  I found the results absolutely shocking – call me innocent but I had never realized that even in the most dry, factual events the amount of comparative spin  – and therefore what you walk away with as ‘content’ – is awesome in its power.

I could have chosen much more dramatic events, like the BP oil spill and the discovery today of PhotoShop alterations to the images – but I thought that was in a way not so disturbing – this after all is a very opinionated and passionate space. So I chose instead the rather dull and factual release today by the “Committee of European Banking Supervisors” of the stress test results on European banks. Basically a bunch of numbers, very factual and very informative – if you like that kind of thing.

Totally different perspectives

So basically here are two reports of exactly the same publication.

This, I repeat, is simultaneous ( same day ) reporting of a very dry, factual summary by a relatively obscure financial organization. Fortune, as reported by money.cnn.com – side by side with the same data as presented by Reuters.

So I am no longer surprised by our client’s interest in News systems, and the power they have to provide on message communications. I am also equally understanding of our clients concerns about our corporate social networking application, Innovate, and it’s requirement to open up all communications and therefore lose all control of debates and discussions.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet intranet software, news management

As a company that is ISO9001 certified, and also provides web based software specifically to assist in this area, it is great to get the chance to experience our own QMS software as a user – we have our own very genuine needs and its interesting  to put our own software through our own hoops – instead of everyone else’s.

We actually only have 10 policies – one of those – our core “Specifications, Development, Testing and Delivery” process does have 4 flowchart based procedures, the others are perfectly well represented as application files and version controlled inside Quality Manager itself. We don’t even need the complexity of storing those in the main document management system – another cost saving for an SME client meeting the stringent demands of any QMS framework like ISO9001.

Policy Manager and Policy Publisher

In our case we use InfoCapture to control our audits, as we don’t have multiple sites or multiple legislation – or teams of auditors and quality managers – so the efficiency gains of using Audit Manager as a dedicated and powerful QMS application are just not there for us as a user. It’s a truly great application for larger companies – but we just don’t have the requirements so why use it just because it is free for us!

We do however store the primary flowcharts of our core “Specifications, Development, Testing and Delivery” process in our ‘Process Diagram’ album in image gallery. This gives the designers the ability to work on them as we refine the process, and also makes them available in smaller resolutions for presentations to interested clients and partners.

Flowcharts and online policies

Importantly whereas 9 of our policies are maintained as version controlled application files, the flowchart based process is totally online within Policy Publisher. This is a single policy with automatic inclusion of the latest version of each of the flowcharts – keeping the main policy up to date is therefore completely automatic – if a lead developer changes the process, the policy is automatically kept up to date.

Summary

We ourselves are very typical of any SME company that has some flowchart based procedures, a set of policies, and a requirement to schedule and manage internal audits, with in our case one additional external ISO9001 audit every year.

Of the 5 applications we could use from the Claromentis framework to meet this need:

• Document Management
• Policy Manager
• Audit Manager
• InfoCapture
• Policy Publisher

We as our client actually only need to use 3. Policy manager ( there is a new policy manager tour available here ) provides its own version controlled document management specifically for policies, and InfoCapture is great for scheduling audits, managing non conformancies and moving each audit through the appropriate stages towards a successful conclusion.

For our core development processes we maintain those online in Policy Publisher, removing the need for any application files and allowing us to maintain and present the relevant flow charts and showing how all these processes relate.Since each process chart is maintained as its own procedure, the policy will auto update whenever any chart is changed, as we continue to evolve our own processes.

As a final conclusion we made fast access buttons on our intranet home page to both Audits and Policies just to make sure we are all aware of everything, and nothing is more than a couple of clicks away.

Fast acces links to our Quality Management

All in all I can honestly say we are a very satisfied user of our own QMS software, and I believe we are a typical example of an SME company that has a real need to get proactive value out of compliance – in our case with ISO9001.

This software is helping us break down the barriers between the intent of the legislation – improving quality – and actually achieving that goal with minimum administration and maximum returns.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Quality intranet software, ISO9001, quality management software

• How do you select applications in the Mac apps store?
• How do you select books to buy online?
• How do you chose a hotel?

If like me – and almost everyone else – you flick to the reviews then you are an advocate of social media and a natural believer in the wisdom of crowds. As I am sure you already know.

The depressing thing is the low number of UK B2B company sites that directly give these kind of potential customers the information they so obviously look for when making purchasing decisions.

There are several possible reasons :

•    The company has so little traffic that the minimal level of engagement would actually influence such buyers in a negative way. No feedback looks to impatient prospects like bad feedback.

•    Engagement takes energy – but recession and continued political incompetence in the area of encouraging business has hit energy levels hard in the UK.

•    Engagement takes a strategy – but the whole world of corporate social media is too unfamiliar for most UK SME companies to set strategies for engaging with it.

•    They don’t have an appropriate technology platform.

•    They are genuinely a local business – anything more than a cursory presence on the internet is perceived as a distraction.

•    Companies are just too afraid of what the public will say about them.

I am sure there are others, and I look forward to any comments and suggestions,  but is the last one that I want to focus on – fear of opinions. In general I have noticed a hierarchy of comfort across the main audience lines as follows:

•    Intranets – companies allow engagement provided this is moderated by a ‘manager’ – which amounts to paying lip service to engagement and frustrating contributors.
•    Public – companies remain scared of negative perceptions on lead generation
•    Extranets – marketing view : our customers are the most important assets we have and we will totally control that space to make sure all content is on message.

Modern intranets are at least some way down this path of increasing user engagement, even though very few employees are comfortable engaging with blogs on the corporate intranet compared with the large number that are interested in reading them.

I have already posted on the depressing lag in the UK compared to the USA in adopting openness and engagement, so I will refrain from comparing engagement levels across these spaces. But for interest, in the best of the USA extranets the customers are welcomed to provide feedback precisely because they are the most valued asset – the company wants to learn to do a better job and has identified senior staff ready to engage with and work through any negative feedback in exactly the same public arena.

Lets go back to my original point. We use reviews. But the truth is we also use the content. We look at photos of the hotel, a location map and then read the comments. We know of an author, find their books, then read the reviews. It is a question of balance.

Balance

This is how it should be in corporate B2B websites and extranets as well as intranets – and not just in public large scale e-commerce B2C sectors. The information and the interaction both have an important role to play, but should be directly complimenting each other – and for that reason products like Claromentis Innovate are of great interest. When you can follow a document that is actually in your own corporate infrastructure, and by doing so extend the information layer seamlessly – the results are much greater participation and increased innovation.

In my view significant interaction through corporate social media but without adequate information is just as useless as lots of marketing information with no interaction. Both are increasingly liable to generate a cynical response from the visitor.

The companies that develop strategies to balance the two in a truly integrated environment will provide not just a more engaging and informative online presence, but  generate significant innovation benefits that will ultimately feed through into higher margins and increased sales.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Solutions corporate social media, engagement, extranet, intranet software