Choosing the right name for your intranet is probably one of the most exciting tasks for the Intranet Development Team. (By the time I am writing this I am still struggling to choose name for my baby, perhaps it’s not quite the same

I am seeing there are few interesting patterns based on what our clients decide at the end, here is some example:

1. Greek mythology

Intranet system named after a Greek gods and goddesses, or Greek influence  is definitely the most popular.
Athena - from the Greek goddess of wisdom, the arts, industry, justice and skill, It is the name of Intranet system at Nominet UK.
Atlas -  Atlas was made to bear the weight of the heavens, or was it the earth, this is what will become our own Intranet, and perhaps we’re hoping atlas can help us bear the weight of daily project work and pressure from clients.
Odyssey – An ancient Greek epic poem attributed to Homer. Is the name of intranet for Prometheus Real Estate Company, keep it in-line with Greek theme.
Eureka – (I have found it) exclamation used by ancient Greek scholar Archimedes, appropriate name for Care UK intranet, it certainly has scholar and research flavour to it. Care UK  is hoping their intranet will become  the source of finding information for the entire organisation where every member of staff can say ‘eureka!’.

2. Net-isation

Putting ‘net’ at the end of a choosen word seems quite popular, it’s a hint to network, transmission, exchange information.  Here is some popular example  Infonet, datanet, skynet.

Or you can simply attach the company name with ‘net’ such as intranet for Hanover housing is called the h-net.

3. Synonyms & Popular Culture

Intranet is a virtual place where information is stored; recently many companies are pushing collaboration and application through their intranet. Given this nature these are of popular word to represent the Intranet itself:

he Matrix - Albany Group named their Intranet “The Matrix”  apart from influence from popular sci-fi movie, in cyber culture matrix also means the Internet and other networks that flow into it are altogether.

Nexus - One of the most popular name for the Intranet adopted by many clients. It comes from the Latin “nectere” meaning “to bind.”. The Intranet is a collaboration hub.

Dimensions - Babcock Infrastructure Services named their intranet “Dimensions” Perhaps their vision is to make a multi-dimensional working space.

Basecamp – is the name of The North Face intranet where they visualise their intranet is the a basecamp of outdoor lifes.

4. “My”

Adding “my” in front of company name emphasise on the sense of belonging and ownership. There are several companies who named their intranet with MY+Company name, such as  MySunPower  or  MyGFI.

5. Play with words & accronyms

Tiggle – is a clever acronym from “Tussauds Intranet Global Gateway Linking Everyone” – an Intranet name for Tussauds Group.

Inflo – Interesting play on word. It sounded like “Info”, Inflo is the name of the Intranet/Extranet system of Prefered Brands where they do flooring franchise business.

I am hoping this post will inspire many companies who are thinking about choosing name of the Intranet, why not runs naming competition to find out who came up with the best idea within your company.

We use our own intranet software to deal with website leads and sales management of opportunities that result from them. Whereas previously we used Process Manager to manage the leads and Sales Manager to manage opportunities once meaningful interactions had occurred and an account manager needed to be involved - we had no clean implementation to produce a truly integrated approach. Recently two developments have really boosted our sales efficiency :

•    We started to use Process Manager SLAs to act as auto responders, which meant people who had shown interest in our software were sent personal emails and useful data sheets via 3 emails

•    If an interaction takes place we developed a Process Manager Plug-in to provide a one click process to generate a CRM company, contact and opportunity record in Sales Manager.

The net result has been a very significant increase in discussions with potential customers, and a really efficient enquiry handling process for our own business.

We are often asked how long a ‘typical’ intranet project takes to launch, and what factors can speed up the process.

Well of course firstly it is really hard to find a typical project, but we do know  that from choosing Claromentis to be your provider to deploying phase 1 has over the last 5 years taken an average of 7 weeks.

Software as a service can be deployed within one day, using standard designs and our own infrastructure, if the requirements are simple.

I believe our world record is one week and I will refrain from discussing some of the longer projects, always extended by the demands of assembling and validating content, and nothing to do with technology.

In terms of what factors can speed this up, here are some of the most important :

• Provide a style guide and general instructions but let our team provide the interface. We have an established process and are just so fast at working within Claromentis.
• Restrict your project team to a manageable number.
• Expedite your sign off procedures for approval of designs or if relevant development.
• Keep phase 1 to what is really important, and not a very long list of functionality that is really only there ‘because we can’. This provides a sense of business focus and urgency.
• Provide a project manager yourselves and take the project management service from Claromentis. Then focus on the critical path, especially early on – prepare for all tasks that are on that path at the expense, if necessary – of those that are not.
• Use telephone conferences and webinars over physical meetings whenever appropriate to do so, they help preserve the focus on what needs to be done and are much shorter.

Finally – if it makes sense for your business to consider our Intranet Software as a Service solution that is the factor that above all else speeds up delivery – mainly because we don’t have to deal with your infrastructure, IT and active directory – but also because the lack of upfront investment makes it a less political project for our customers internally – freeing up motivated staff to just get the job done!

After applying permission to a folder or document, have you ever wonder that you need to make sure the right person can view the document? Let’s say you added Group:Marketing, until now there is no to find out who are the member of “Group Marketing for instance” unless you have to navigate away to ‘People’ application and run a search or filter.

But now in 5.6.1 we’ve got a nifty solution. It’s called “View effective permission”, as you can see you can now review the permission on every single permission dialog box to make sure the right people has the right permission.

Today Albany suprised us with exactly that to acknowledge the hard work the support team have put in recently for them, so thanks to Howard and the IT team at Albany, and here’s Julian about to consume the first one..

Cheers Albany!

Just don’t ask him for anything too technical later today!

Recently we have just completed a web-based job processing application based on Claromentis Sales Manager. For us this is one of the prime examples how a CRM application such as Sales Manager can be tailored to suit specific requirements.

The application is designed for Total Support Group - one of UK ’s largest service provider specialising in satellite/terrestrial antena installation, helping them managing and sorting jobs which has to be distributed through 6 regional support offices through post-code recognitions.

Built-in Claromentis strong permission system allows each regional office to view only the jobs relevant to their region while the head office can monitor them all in real time.

Next time when you buy a digital set-top boxes for your television and having an engineer to install it, it might be one of the many jobs managed by Claromentis. A small contribution to get UK goes digital by 2012.

However with these clients I have seen a tendency to launch similar departmental intranet home pages, each of which has a video introduction to the department from the relevant VP or member of the management team, and the blog – along with of course rich and relevant departmental information – documents, self service, general contextual information and e-forms.

These can be very powerful templates – but what worries me is that talking head video from the VP is only interesting the first, or at best second, time you hear it. Therafter it can be very irritating, however relevant the message.

What I like is a component that checks if a user has seen that video, and if so switches it out for another relevant content or RSS feed that fits well with the design.

Intranets should be multimedia and rich – but they absolutely must be fresh!

Then recently I found myself in the car park of a potential new client, having completely forgotten the names if the main contacts I was meeting with. We had arranged the meeting in somewhat of a rush and over the phone, so emails didn’t help me.

Within a few minutes I had logged onto our intranet on my i-phone, found the opportunity in Claromentis Sales Manager – and had everything I needed.

Sometimes it really is useful to have your intranet accessible from any modern device!

Precisely because Claromentis can easily be given a design that can be completely bespoke – exactly what you would like it to be – we have  encouraged clients to think hard about what they would like the design to be.

But actually it seems that most new companies would prefer that we just tell them!

So we going now through an exciting process to develop questionnaires and models that will allow us to present the new intranet customer with a great design at the first pass – and then just let them comment on it and make minor changes.

What are the positives :

1.    The client gets an intranet with a great and relevant design, fit for purpose, in very little time.

2.    We know from experience most customers refresh their designs in year two or three anyway, after the experience of actually using it.

3.    The client can focus on content, functionality, training and deployment issues – which is probably the best use of their time.

The truth is that we now know this is the best for all concerned – but we still find it difficult to move away from a completely bespoke and individual design for each client – because that is such a strength of Claromentis.

I am reminded of the fact that in previous engagements with intranet clients over the years we should say that certain clients just did things “because we can” – perhaps this is seeing our own process in exactly the same way. Just because we can deploy a completely individual intranet design for every customer does not actually mean that we should!

There are three basic terminologies in Document Workflow:

Category: It is a grouping mechanism for Workflow. Permissions are set default through Category

Workflow: A Document Workflow containing set of States

State: State of Document, for instance “Draft, Initial Review, Revision, Ready to Publish, etc”

Each State has one “Action” and one “Transition”

Action: Here we are able to specify what action is to be taken on the document at certain State of the Workflow. There are following actions we can select from: “None, Feedback Request, Move to a designated Folder and Send Email”

Transition: Here we are able to specify what type of transition is to be carried out at certain State of the Workflow. There are following transitions we can select from: “Not Auto (Manual), Auto:Based on Approval (On All Approve, On One Approve) and Auto:Time Based(On Time Elapse, On Date/Time)”

By using Document Workflow, you don’t need to worry about manually chasing each user to look at the document and give there feedback or approve it, it’s all done for you

This article was about a couple of guys who won a computer back then and had no idea what to do with it. A friend duly showed up, and gave them a demo of the latest word processing – which at that time was not far short of all it was good for.

However the demo fell flat – the reason being these guys had never even used a typewriter – and so couldn’t see any use for such an easy to use, simple to correct, spell-checking replacement for a machine they didn’t own in the first place.

This got me thinking about our own situation with potential new clients. They seem to fall into some familiar camps:

1.    We don’t currently have any intranet at all ( unbelievably we still get a lot of these – really a lot ).

2.    Somebody wrote one themselves, but really it needs replacing – or – a slight variation – the person who wrote it has left and we have no idea how to maintain it.

3.    We have a product but we all hate it.

Of course we treat all of these with equal interest – but in reality there are some big differences in our engagements with these different types of new customers.

In general I would say that those in the first camp – Group 1 - will start off Googling away and come up with a list of what they expect we will be able to provide, because someone out there has written articles or summaries about what in their view is really essential from an intranet provider. I tend to refer to this as an “outward focussed” approach – in the sense that they look out to see what is possible, and then probably find a few suppliers and ask them to tender against this somewhat arbitrary list of ‘features’ that has little to do with the business they are in, improving their innovation or driving their business forwards.

Group 2 vary a lot – often they are not sure if what the employee created really is “an intranet” in the first place, or if it should be taken seriously – but at least they have some experience of using something.

Group 3 are interesting – their frustrations probably relate to legacy software that uses old approaches like i-frames, or isn’t being improved, or where the vendor has gone bust – but at least they have real ideas about “what a better solution should do for them”. Notice the “for them” – they do have real ideas about what their own company needs, not just a checklist of arbitrary functionality. I refer to this as an “inward focus”

Paradoxically “inward focus” in this sense sounds somewhat negative, as if they lack vision – but of course this is not the case at all, and in many business senses a company that is always spending some time looking to analyze itself and improve has a great  attitude.

The truth is that for us engaging with all of these types of new customers is interesting and varied. The world of intranet software is a large one and we do our best to explain it as honestly and professionally to all companies that ask about our products and services - whether they ever saw that blinking green cursor or not!

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

According to behavioural economist Dan Ariely, any value which is set by default will greatly influence decision that majority users is going to make when filling out the form or using a piece of functionality.

For example in Claromentis we have news application with option to set a particular news item as ‘sticky news’.  The idea the sticky news will always be displayed on the Intranet homepage until it’s expired. It is a useful feature allowing an important news item remain visible to the majority Intranet users, otherwise it might get buried down quickly by not-so-important news.

What we didn’t realise the default value for the expired date is set a year in advance by default. For example if you submit a news on the 22nd May 2009, it won’t be off the sticky until the same date next year !

The problem is simple majority users are not even bothered to change the expired date.

The result, intranet’s homepage is filled with sticky news which should have been expired long time ago. In order to fix this problem, an Intranet administrator has to go through each news article and correct the expiry date, which was set incorrectly by majority users.

This problem won’t happen in the first place if the developer put sensible value when he or she typing the code for the news submission form.  Interestingly enough in a much larger scale any default value which may sounds simple can have a huge impact.

Check out an interesting video below (open in new window).

Great! But then I read on and they are talking about the same old functionality : Forums, Wikis and blogs.

This is a shame - I think many corporate intranets and extranets are missing the true synergy of innovation and collaboration that a web 2.0 intranet should address - which at Claromentis means the progression of a concept from an idea, through to a collaboration space and then onto execution in a project - the “shout - collaborate - execute” mantra of Claromentis 6.0

Missing the point

Yes we do implement - and for certain company cultures see a lot of value - in the intranet equivalents of Twitter - our “what am I dong at work” concept for example - and certainly Blogs are really adding dynamism and freshness to many of our implementations - but in our view intranet 2.0 is a platform for collaboration, innovation and establishing connections in the workforce to break down silos and encourage lessons learned from best practice.

We need to unearth new ideas, bring them through to sharing with hitherto unknown colleagues from disparate experiences and then actually take that shout and make something different for the company that didn’t exist before – in summary we need innovation!

Many of the applications and approaches that others see as getting a tick in the box for intranet 2.0 we view as latest generation approaches to information management – a truly important piece of the puzzle – but not the answer.

One great example is the use of Claromentis for managing a customer relationship – from initial lead processing, through to sales management and onto the implementation using Project Manager. In all cases the integration is simple, effective and efficient.

• Lead processing : managed using InfoCapture auto responders and using notifications and SLAs – the leads are responded to and useful information provided. At any stage manual interaction can take place, and auto responders are then set on hold. When gates are passed and the lead qualifies as relevant and appropriate – one click generates a company, opportunity and contact record in the relevant Sales Manager territory.

Direct Integration

• Sales Management : from this point all relevant information, activities and documents are captured as the new account moves through a customizable sales cycle.

• As soon as the project is approved, a direct link form the sales Manager record is generated to the new Project in the correct Programme in Project Manager to deliver the products and services that have been ordered.

For completeness the project metadata can link back to the Sales Manager records – so there is no need to duplicate relevant documents and data in project manager.

This level of integration and support is a pleasure to use and really offers the sales and project managers an integrated platform of information on which to ensure success for both our company and our new clients.

In our own company as we continue to accelerate our rate of customer acquisition this platform also allows us to scales up our delivery side with no loss of quality. It is becoming one of the most critical sides of our business as we continue to grow - which is particularly satisfying when we recommend this approach to our own clients.

Intranet choice

We are learning a lot about how to approach new clients – the truth is that in certain situations it is better just to implement what we think is best – rather than distract the project team with discussions about choosing between approaches that they really don’t yet understand – after all they are not yet a client. We would spend too long training them on each approach just so they can then chose one - it is better they stay focussed on the project objectives and let us just implement the most appropriate solution based on our extensive experience.

After all they can always change it later, or on a refresh project – by that time they will really understand how the relevant applications work, and can make a much more informed decision.

This paralysis through being presented with a choice is actually the most pronounced when we are at the design stage – so not the details of how to provide the functionality at all yet - but going through a mock up process on how the intranet home page should be designed to match objectives for the project as well as reinforce the company culture through branding and embracing intranet 2.0, for example.

There are important principles at stake here. One of the most relevant is the sense of ownership that a new client gets from being involved with the process, rather than just being presented with the answer. Participating in the creative process has significant implications for the sustained interest levels from the client project team – and this is fundamental for the longevity and ROI of the project.

So it seems we are in a dilemma. We often know the answer, but we should not tell them because they will then lose the sense of ownership that is fundamental for the ongoing project success.

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

To automate the process manager process to send 3 emails over a period of 14 days, we have used a file named background_custom.php located at “../intranet/common” which execute every 5 minutes. In conjunction with background_custom.php, we have used SLA’s (Service Level Agreements) and different statuses

SLA’s: SLA’s closely monitor what stages the issues are at and changes the Traffic Light of the issue after a particular time depending on the condition(s) defined. When traffic light is changed, it is used to trigger notifications after 1, 4 and 10 days after submitting an issue

Statuses: There are different statuses defined in the project according to the project requirement. In this example, when the issue is submitted the status is set to “New” and is changed gradually to different statuses after each notification is send. If any user by any reason does not want to receive any further notifications after receiving first and/or second notification, we can set status to “No Further Notifications” and stop sending notifications to that particular user

Actual Process: In background_custom.php, it checks for the Status and SLA Traffic Light. If the condition in background_custom.php matches the status and traffic light of the issue, the notification is triggered

Now you don’t need to worry about manually sending notifications after n number of days, background_custom.php takes care of it for you

We have recently changed our follow up or inquiries – via a public web form – so that filing in that form kicks off a process manager process that automates sending 3 emails over a 14 day period. In essence we are now using InfoCapture as an auto responder according to SLAs.

Previously the sending of a relevant email would need editing of the ticket to select that an email should be sent, via a simple check box.

We still allow for manual intervention – the account manager can mark any lead so that the emails will no longer be sent.

In this way the benefits of automation are kept – but the flexibility of manual intervention ensures the process is still valid for very important enquiries where dialogue is already taking placed and automated emails would damage that process and so needs to be stopped.

The account manager can automatically create entries in our Sales Manager system with just one click, and can allocate telephone qualification according to the country of origin.

InfoCapture reports are available to show what the lead funnel is looking like, what call stats are by area and anything else recorded in the forms.

So we ourselves are heavily dependent on our own technology to automate core business processes – in this case lead generation – and that is exactly how it should be.

So it is with interest that I read research and opinions that point out the many pitfalls with teams, and the occasions when they fail.

Many corporate cultures, indeed one might even argue national cultures, encourage teams as some higher goal and ‘being a team player’ as skills to be rewarded above all else – and that expression of individual talent can be taken sometimes as selfish or detrimental to the corporate good.

Team players

I watch people in our company, talk to our clients and read with interest examples of great team success : and I have a few rather disjointed observations.. hence this post.

1.    When is a team not a department and what does that imply?

To me a team is obviously volatile, it will be ultimately disbanded – and therefore everyone on it has a real job and a personal agenda somewhere else. That doesn’t sound like a great start.

To me that certainly means they need a strong leader and a vision to carry them through – and a good selection of skills to get the job done – but how can these needs be met if by definition there is no recruitment process for a team, by contrast with jobs in a department or business unit?

How do you make sure a team has the best resources if it has no recruitment and assignment process to go with it – just because it’s a team not a ‘proper  job’?

Would it be better to resource up your top talent and change the jobs of everyone else so they are available to help on demand?

And anyway - if you decide to form a team instead - who wants to spare their best people for an uncertain innovative collaboration agenda?

2.    People talk about team Obama

Often raised as a great example of a quickly implemented and talented team – he implemented his top officials in record time.

Yeah right – so he had a real recruitment problem – only had to chose between about 200 million American citizens who would have loved to spend the first term in a highly paid job with loads of travel working for someone generating a global buzz of anticipation…

3.    My productivity Nirvana – a uniquely talented individual having all required resources..

In Claromentis I see time and time again that a really talented person can achieve so much if they just have resources to allocate to a task they need done, and be able to trust in the quality of that work. They don’t see this as a team at all – they just see it as someone available to do what they need to the standard they expect.

They don’t want anything in the way – this isn’t a team –it’s a resource pool they can select from on demand because they are the most talented implementers of our objectives. They get so frustrated if there isn’t someone to do the required work fast enough, or to the appropriate skill level.

So its all about managed execution with the right resources always available to help talented people.

So I vote for a team that is just in existence because someone sufficiently talented needs to allocate some skilled recourses so as to deliver their vision.

I know I have to have resources on the bench ready for his assignments – but in reality they can be working very effectively in their ‘normal’ jobs.

So maybe Claromentis 6.0 is right on the money – the final emphasis is resource allocation management to implement the vision of the person in authority – the ‘execute’ stage.

Just make sure you have the right person approved as someone who has overriding authority over all those resources – that’s actually manageable in a small company  - but of course completely impossible in a larger one – which is why an oil tanker can’t turn on a sixpence.

Or more appropriately why every manufacturer of yesterdays mobile phones cant just create an i-phone. They have no-one with the vision, the authority and the resources just sitting on the bench. Shame for them – they probably have quite a few teams in place, lots of budget and a very large HR department…. and they had all that way before the time when the i-phone was invented.