We are working with a client under our sponsored development scheme to provide an e-learning module with the upcoming Claromentis 7 – and today we had the first prototype review with the client, the lead information architect and staff from Claromentis sales and marketing.

E-learning Prototype Review

I thought some aspects of the meeting were really instructional.

The value of the prototype

Following on from the initial scoping meeting the client had provided a well thought out specifications comprising several pages of written specifications. Comparing the understanding from the written specifications with the prototype that we created is just inspiring – how any company would want to code business logic straight from written specifications is beyond me.

The value of the framework

Coding in the Claromentis framework gives us so much access to instantly available and powerful functionality – such as permission systems, universal tagging, business processes – applications can be coded so much faster and with greatly increased quality.

The value of Claromentis 7 Standards

Now that the design standards of Claromentis 7 are available in the custom development team everything is so much more consistent, giving a much better end user experience as they move from standard platform products to their custom applications.

All in all a great meeting and we look forward  to the second iteration – the prototype can be shared with all stakeholders in the client team and round two will just be a few days away!

Claromentis 7, Custom Development, Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Solutions, The Framework

I was looking at our own Claromentis Intranet home page ( we call ours Atlas ) and I was reminded how much useful functionality, providing real benefits, you can get from just a few inches of space. Here is a screenshot of just the top right corner of our current home page for Atlas :

Atlas Intranet - Home Page

My second thought was how much of that came from new suggestions from our own customer base.

In this case 3 out of the 4 have been provided as components resulting directly from customer feedback or live project requests. Now all of our customers – as well as ourselves –  can use these intranet components, and many other examples.

1)    A simple task manager – we developed this on the suggestion of one of our intranet customers. It is a highly effective simple task manager, which allows groups of users to share collaborative tasks and be reminded in their inbox – in this case on our home page – that they have tasks allocated to them, and what their current status is.

2)    News – these permission based news channels have long been a requirement.­

3)    Who’s in and who’s out. A simple application to dynamically let everyone know who is out today. It has been a pleasure to develop this – it runs directly from our intranet vacation planner. It even has a sense of humor – ‘everyone’s in – but it’s a Saturday!’

4)    Posting directly to Corporate Social Media – our new Innovate application for sharing status and ideas. This is a hugely popular application – allowing permission based discussion streams, follows, likes, replies and referencing anything in the intranet – so users for example can discuss a particular project task or document.

My final thought was that 3 of these applications did not even exist a few months ago, showing the accelerating pace with which Claromentis is developing. This is  thanks not just to our own developers and designers but to the growing customer base that provides continuous feedback and requests as they implement against their own particular requirements.

Custom Development, Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Products, The Framework Intranet Components, intranet 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

Invoicing is a critical component for any organisation, but in some cases, traditional financial packages don’t work in the way that is best for the business.

Take for example a business where anyone in the organisation can create a quote or invoice. Currently, this would have to be sent to the finance people (remember only a few people have access to an organisations finance package) which can often take time and lead to simple discrepancies.

Using our InfoCapture module, we have built an invoicing system that makes it simple for any user (with correct permissions of course) to create an invoice. While we do not pretend it is a full blown financial package, it does do all the basics very well.

Combine this with all the existing power  of InfoCapture (ie an intelligent workflow engine, advanced permissions, auditing and history tracking etc) and the ability to link in with the Claromentis CRM and Document Management modules, the new Claromentis invoice system is yet another great use for any size organisation.

Custom Development, Products, Solutions

Our meetings and workshops are often focused on quantifying where value lies in our client projects – what combination of Claromentis applications and custom development is going to make the most difference to the business, and add value to the platform as experienced by the user.

The discussion process – normally involving several key staff from the business and our own client team – is always fascinating and enjoyable. The client will be looking to understand the impact of configuration, the value standard projects bring – and then comparing potential e-form processes with custom development. These kinds of meetings are genuinely fascinating and enjoyable.

Sometimes however leveraged value is added from something that to all of us seemed to be a relatively simple addition to an intranet application or process. This happened to us recently when we were in the situation of being an internal customer  – as we now refer to this – we were looking to use our own project application to manage all of our work around the world – including all core and custom projects – development, design and testing teams co-operating on a huge range of projects.

As the scope of this became clear, we realized that we needed an intelligent filter – a method to look at the tasks facing groups of users – such as the design team – and to further filter that by the status of the tasks. Only then could the application really add value to us, rather than just be a neat way of organising our projects. Without such a filter loading hundreds of tasks into our application would just produce confusion through information overload.

We went ahead and improved the Intranet project management application to provide this filter – and the impact on our project delivery has been significant – making a material difference to our business.

Our project plan with a filter

All of our projects are indeed now in our project application, and anyone finds it a simple process to see  the upcoming tasks for themselves, their team, or any other group of users – directly from within Atlas – which is our own Claromentis intranet.

We are already engaging in workshops to extend this concept and the application further – we would like to see all our projects being stored as separate projects within a programme for example, so that we can grant our clients direct access to each project while maintaining security and integrity across all of our clients. These projects would then transparently build into a master view for all users according to their permissions, appearing to be one Gantt chart for example when in fact the system is generating the Gantt chart on the fly for each user.

Our experience with introducing filters has been enormously successful, we must be one of the happiest customers we have ever worked with. Simple enhancements can indeed produce extraordinary value.

Custom Development, Intranet-Extranet intranet project manager, intranet software, intranet software discussions

We have been reviewing many of our recent projects – combinations of intranet projects, business process management, document management and custom web application development – and getting feedback from those customers on the difference our projects have made to their business.

I do feel that the most measurable value comes from creating a web application within our framework that meets a clear business need, embedded within the portal and leveraging our interfaces and code base.

Measurable Value

Using our prototype process and our API means that we can ensure that the client will receive exactly what they need with minimum risk, modest budgets and over a reasonable time frame.

The fact that we have such a significant code base that can deliver the basics for any corporate application does enable a refreshingly ‘can-do’ approach for even the most complex requirement.

This is a great differentiator for our company – to have a code library at our disposal that already offers :

• Information Management ( content and document management )
• Process Management
• A visual interface engine
• Permissions
• Localization to any language
• Active directory integration
• Cross platform ( Windows and Linux ) and any database ( Oracle, MySQL and MSSQL )
• All browsers
• A component Library
• A significant number of relevant applications

Means that we can in just several weeks build on this to add exactly the web based application our customers need.

To have staff that are available to whiteboard ideas, talk over requirements and in general engage with customers to mature their often early stage ideas is also extremely important when thinking about how a company obtains value in their interaction with Claromentis.

All this was brought home to me when one of our designers said ‘its really unusual to work for a company when a whole team is working to make sure the customer gets exactly what they want’

I would only add that we do this even before the customer actually knows what they want to any level of detail.  We enjoy this whole process, and I think that sense of fun and engagement really comes across when we discuss web applications with our customers.

Of course that fun only comes with years of hard work that provides us with a real confidence when listening to the most complex needs – but in the end I suppose this lines up with most businesses not just web software – whatever you do you need stuff, people and processes – and the more confidence you have in all of those and their ability to deliver, the more you can relax and listen to the customer.

Custom Development, Intranet-Extranet custom development, intranet value

I am often asked by potential clients to provide information on how project funds can realistically be allocated across the spectrum of software licenses, services, support and custom design and development.

I think one of the best ways to think about this is to take an example small project and a very large one. So I did this for two recent projects – one a very standard example of a standard Claromentis Intranet product led engagement with a UK company of less than 50 staff, the other a recent deployment in the United States for an unlimited user system with a very significant custom development to provide specific sales related functionality, integration with third party systems and reporting through an Extranet.

Small Project Analysis

What we see with this project is that

• There are only 3 areas of spending – Software, Services and Support
• Software is 75% of the project spend
• Services and Support equally share the remaining 25%

Large Project Analysis

Large Project Financial Analysis

By contrast a large project has significant spending on Development and Design, as well as international travel and general expenses.

• Software licenses are one third of the spend
• Development and design are equal, totaling half of the project

Clearly these are just two examples, but comparing these to our license records for many projects does show that simple projects have a larger proportion of costs related to software licenses, and adding 25% for support and services give a good approximation to the total budget.

However when estimating budgets for larger deployments with more complex and custom requirements half of the project costs are concerned with the delivery of the custom functionality.

In my next post I will be comparing the customer costs for deploying intranets and custom frameworks through our cloud based SAAS offering, compared with a perpetual license model. I will be comparing these costs over a 2 year period.

Custom Development, Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Products, Services, Solutions, The Framework cost, graph, intranet software

A short description of our custom web application development

All comments welcome!

Custom Development, Services custom development, development

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