Within an intranet the use of blogs allow for informal, easy to generate and time sequenced content to be generated by relevant staff – and for interested user to be able to comment – in a very similar way to the use of blogs in the public internet space.

Some key differences are :

• The community is already created for the author
• Intranet permissions allow particular blogs to be  revealed to relevant readers only
• The reputation of the author ( CEO for example ) exists separately from the authors ability to generate interesting content.
• Blog participants are much more likely to adhere to conduct and ethical standards required by their organization

Intranet blogs are often generated by executives or the management team as a way to communicate thoughts with their staff and to communicate strategy in a way that employees might be more likely to absorb than more traditional alternative methods.

They can also be used as an interview process with key staff to capture their thoughts on how they achieve results, or by departments to encourage participation in various key initiatives.

Claromentis allows for permission based news channels to be styled as blogs whenever needed, and for those blogs to be seen as components on the home or departmental pages or directly accessed from the internal menu systems.

Commenting and interaction can be controlled with each post on a blog – alternatives are

• No commenting
• Instant publishing of comments
• Approval of comments required
• Anonymous commenting enabled

In general we recommend that commenting should be instant – as that is what participants expect and employees normally adhere­ to reasonable standards­ of language and content – or completely anonymous where ‘the truth’ is sought from the targeted audience without fear that expressing their opinions might jeopardize their careers.

Claromentis also offers corporate social networking through the new Innovate application, that provides features similar to Facebook and Twitter within the corporate intranet. For many clients this newer enterprise 2.0 application is complementing, extending and even taking over the informal collaboration requirements for which blogging and wikis were the only solution before social networking became such a mainstream technique.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet

I have decided to write a series of posts around how we can map the potential contribution of Claromentis as a web platform for your business, against the original components of a value chain as defined by Michael Porter in 1985.

To refresh our memories Mr. Porter described the following Support Activities :

• Infrastructure – Finance, planning etc
• HR Management
• Technology Development – R&D
• Procurement

And the following Primary Activities :

• Inbound Logistics
• Operations
• Outbound Logistics
• Marketing and Sales
• After Sales Service

As the significant building blocks for a value chain, they define the activity in a delivery system which creates margin for the owners of a business.

Back in the mid 80s the main approaches were looking at each of these components, and either seeking to drive down costs without compromising quality – or trying to improve quality without increasing costs.

In general terms the former led to outsourcing and the latter to total quality management.

These early models are still valid, and with technology moving so fast and web platforms like Claromentis able to contribute to so many of these areas, I thought it would be interesting to post on our recent experience in each of them.

My first one this week is likely to be R&D – as it is very much on my mind with our new Innovate 1.1 release.

Thanks also to a strategy handout from Roger Martin-Fagg, provided by Vistage – for prompting the idea of this series of posts.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Prod-Quality, Prod-Sales, The Framework business model, Claromentis, value, web platform

We all want things quickly – but an Intranet in 1 week??!!

That was the challenge laid down in front of us Monday morning – a working Intranet, branded in the companies colours, all content uploaded (including electronic forms) and ready for use by Friday lunch time.

I am happy to confirm that Claromentis has come through with the goods, and the client is very happy.

So was there a secret to this success? It will come as no surprise that the client had done many hours of pre-project work, and had nearly everything ready to go the moment the site was ready for content population.  The old army ‘five p’s’ saying rings true even in IT!

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Services fast, intranet

Claromentis allows an appropriate interface to be assigned depending on the role of the user. This is an addition to all the privileges and access to data they might have because of that role, or memberships of groups and sub-groups, extranets or indeed as an individual.

Interfaces deal with issues separate from access rights to applications or data – that is dealt with by the permission system itself. Instead their job is to present the user with the optimal intranet end user experience.

For example:

• An office worker in head office

Will use the intranet every day to accomplish their tasks. They will normally be allocated a rich interface, with access to multiple channels of information, many applications and the power to interact with all data.

Their role will be as a contributor as well as a consumer – through content creation in their subject areas, as well as by commenting and interacting with information created by other staff.

• A  factory worker

While still receiving an individual access account with access to news, quality management systems and operating procedures, their role is more likely to be as a consumer of information.

Normally  application access will be restricted to those necessary to perform the job, and a user interface will optimize access to critical data through fast access buttons. The interface might be extended to display environmental data such as temperature of various items of equipment.

• Temporary staff

Here the users are likely to share a generic log on based on their location, and they will primarily be accessing news, critical heath and safety announcements and any updates to procedures. They might also access e-forms to report issues or anything that is appropriate to their role. Their access may be provided by kiosks at common staff areas such as refreshment areas, reception desks or other key areas in the facility.

An example is provided by summer staff at amusement parks.

Intranet Interface : Summary

Claromentis allows interfaces to be created that are ‘children’ of other interfaces, so that once the master interface has been created it is relatively simple to create other modified interfaces that inherit the basic design elements of the parent interface.

This is a very powerful part of the Claromentis web platform –a single holistic information store and application environment which be interpreted in many ways according to the needs of staff performing various functions as required by their role within the company.

Data can be seen in different ways

We would however advise against the creation of too many interfaced ‘just because you can’. Some Claromentis clients have produced 10-20 interfaces as new requirements are identified. Although this functionality is indeed very powerful, each interface will require testing with every new release of our software, and that carries a time cost that should not be ignored.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet

Great to start using Innovate!

As the screenshot shows you can now micro blog and follow users in your own personal channel from right within your corporate intranet – referencing files, documents, links to anything inside or outside the intranet.

Innovate in your intranet!

This is a great product for some companies that are prepared to open up this application to certain types of users to encourage innovation.

One great aspect is that using the interface engine you can enable innovate to exactly the kinds of users you want to based on any combination of individual users, groups, roles or extranet areas for suppliers or customers – but you can leave other users with a more Intranet 1.0 experience – all within exactly the same system.

Companies can also have as many channels as they need – again on a permission basis, so that the right users will be encouraged to communicate with each other and share best practice in their open areas of expertise.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Products innovate, intranet software

So last week we had a video shoot in our office. This was fun – we got to meet Lucas and his very expensive camera. We also managed not to break the camera, and Lucas didn’t lose patience with us, and we generally got through the day having had fun and with only a few hundred bungled lines.

Video Shoot with Lucas at Claromentis

My point is that because of the video we actually had things in our office that we don’t normally have, like glasses to go with the champagne we have had in the fridge for 2 years, fresh flowers and a plate of oranges. Depressingly we still didn’t drink the champagne..

So after the video shoot we were in a meeting discussing all the new recruitment for our technical staff – amazingly we are taking on 6 more people – and trying to work out the ideal structure for core and custom development teams.

After much internal debate Mike started writing names on oranges, and then we all started rolling people about. The top row are developers, the second designers, and ‘JS’ is a front end JavaScript developer we haven’t hired yet.

Claromentis technical oranges

The point of all this is that sometimes interactive visual models really do help solve complex problems. Within a half hour or so of rolling fruit about we all left feeling we were absolutely clear on our plans for each team.

Personally I think in words, and so at the start I was a bit of a prisoner – but by the end I had to admit this really worked. Mike then added post it notes for tasks – of which just a few are in this photo – and this melange of fruit and paper really got results. We were even able to confirm our management structure by drawing stars on two of the oranges.

So I guess my message is that if you are ever stuck in a complex problem that will have impact on your company’s future and the careers of the staff, have faith when people reach for the fruit bowl – they might just surprise you!

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, The Framework intranet software, plans

I had an interesting meeting with the MD of a potential new retail client last week who had allowed the IT systems used in his rapidly expanding company to gradually grow over time. This had just happened naturally, as he purchased systems to meet the separate functional needs of various parts of the business.

He is opening new premises regularly, and the business plan calls for this to continue and even accelerate.

Apart from the obvious need to try to make available accurate version controlled information and news to each new business unit, he shared with me that one of his main requirements for the intranet was simply to allow a single portal to provide access to the other systems.

He had done an internal audit, and his managers now require 17 separate log ins and passwords to access all the systems they need to do their job.

I realized that although all of our clients do use the Claromentis permission system and extensive single sign on support to provide gateway access to other web based applications, I had actually not really thought through how valuable this gateway approach is. Having discussed this with him we added a series of simple slides featuring ‘Puzzled Pete’ – the business owner of a small, growing company without dedicated IT support who feels that life had got to be easier than this!

Claromentis single sign on

It is one of those great features that is really easy to understand and also to provide – requiring a simple once only set up effort in the Claromentis config files and then allowing single sign on systems like Active Directory, Novell e-Directory, or others to just do what they are supposed to do – provide a single access credential for each user, and making it easy to keep up with new hires and staff exiting the business.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Solutions, The Framework intranet software, single sign on

When it comes to famous statements about business models, Peter Drucker would be right up there with his often quoted emphasis on – “who is your customer, what does the customer value, and how can we deliver value at an appropriate cost?”

With all the changes during 2010 in both our own expanding company and the wider internet world in general, it is interesting to apply this to ourselves here at Claromentis.

What we are seeing is that because we now :

• Offer true SAAS deployment as an option, as well as perpetual licence models
• Have a framework with entirely optional modules as entry points
• Have a well established custom application team

This means we have seen a growing engagement with a whole new audience – younger technical companies and start ups that need to offer a corporate web based software solution not for themselves at all, but as an integrated part of their offering to their own clients.

So it does seem that we have two clear sets of customers that both embrace the Claromentis framework with equal enthusiasm, but with very different values and requirements :

• Smaller companies and start ups look to us to deliver solution that is in itself ­a significant part of their sales offering

• Larger companies are looking for efficiency gains, collaboration, innovation, Enterprise 2.0 and internal process automation.

It is fascinating to work with these two very different audiences, and to ensure that our business model delivers what they both value at an appropriate cost. Our new financial year is underway as of 1st April, and it is exciting and challenging to have such diverse requirements from our customers.

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, The Framework business model, intranet development, intranet software, software, web applications

Following on from Phil’s great post on our intranet analytics available in Claromentis 6.1 I wanted to share a screen shot.

Intranet Analytics

The highlights for me are :

• Really a familiar interface that users will easily be able to absorb and use
• Powerful business information, with summaries by object type in the intranet
• Most popular tabs for each object type – including automatic scrolling from tab to tab to add animation
• Analytics summaries on metrics that are very familiar to anyone working on public sites – Unique users, Page views, average time on site, average page views per day
• Importantly – the ability to compare any date range with any range in the past.

This is a very information rich system that will give Intranet Managers and teams a huge amount of useful information on the way their system is being used.

Thanks to Darren at  one of our Platinum customers for helping us understand what metrics are the most useful to our users!

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Services intranet analytics, intranet software

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