Bridgewater Bank is the only Canadian Chartered Bank with head office located in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The bank is wholly owned by the Alberta Motor Association (AMA), the largest membership service organization in the province. With assets more than $3 billion, employing more than 215 employees and serving over 60,000 customers, Bridgewater Bank continues its expansion with wide-range of product service offering from Mortgages, High Interest Saving Account and Credit Cards.

Partnering with Claromentis since 2010 we’ve been working on the highly complex and sophisticated portal deployment for a banking industry, and we are delighted to see the project has been well received by the executives, staff, brokers and their customers.

“I went through the app from start to finish including saving and re-entering to edit. Very slick application and user friendly process. I like it., I want to thank you for the time and effort you put into this over the past week to get it done.”

Peter Flannigan │ Director, Customer Solutions

All Star Broker Portal

All Star Portal is the result of Bridgewater Bank’s commitment to their brokers and their business. Having visited several broker houses in Canada and understanding their day-to-day job provides tremendous insight of what they actually need, instead of just working of the requirement documents. The result is outstanding the broker loves it and the project has been a great success. Here are some of the key features:

• Secure and Robust Permission
• Ease of Access (any browsers, PC, Mac, Smart Phones, Tablet)
• Real-Time update
• Drag-and-drop secure document upload for mortgage application
• Automatic email notification
• Auto-sync with third party Mortgage system

Broker Information System

Broker Information System is the back-end of central database for Bridgewater Bank ‘s Brokers. We have done complete transformation on what it was difficult to use in-house software into an integrated web app with the portal itself.

Key Features:

• Broker’s profile database
• Broker-Sub Broker
• Ratings & Super Broker Concept
• Red Flag warning
• Commenting facility
• Integration with Google Map
• History
• Fully integrated with Broker Deal Management

New Website

We are also working with their team giving their tired public website a new live with complete redesign and implementing Claromentis CMS.

Smart Applications

For the ‘cherry on top’, we’ve created custom web-form allowing web visitor applying to their products such as Mortgage and Smart eSaving Account through the built-in easy to use web form

Features:

• Strong Field Validation
• Saving application to submit later
• Auto secure password generator
• Email Notification system
• Real time application status

At Claromentis we believe that user experience is paramount and cannot be compromised, however sophisticated the technology we always put human aspects behind it.

If you would like to know more about this project and find out more on how we can help you. please contact us.

Intranet-Extranet, Services, Solutions bank, bespoke development, Design, intranet consultancy, online collaboration, portal, user interface

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

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

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

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

Clear elements would include:

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

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

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

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

One of the biggest riddle using Microsoft Projects is the confusion between Type : Fixed Work, Fixed Duration, Fixed Unit.

If you ask any hard-core Project Manager who uses Microsoft Project every day they will be able to explain it to you immediately but if you are newbie I can guarantee you will be still confused.

Here are some of the quotes I gathered from numerous forum & blog post:

Project.net

“When creating a task, you have the choice of fixed units, fixed duration or fixed work. Most use fixed work tasks, but what exactly do these terms mean? “

“In order to get my mind around it, I had to rewrite it in my own words and try to work out example cases for each type in order to try to understand it.”

TheDailyReviewer.com

“it is, I now a famously tricky concept to get hold of or to teach”

Tek-Tips.com

“I am confused about Task Types in project planning. I am using MS Project for a requirements project. Up till now we have not utilized any formal project structure to get this job done.”

Take a look at the option of adding a task in Microsoft Project there are 5 tabs and at least 30 options to choose from not to mentioned options within options.

It is a real issue, Microsoft Project is just too complex for most of the projects we’ve undertaken, yes it is a sophisticated tool but you probably need a week course before you can use it.

Recently I read about  “Designing the Obvious” by Robert Hoekman Jr. on my kindle and the principles in designing a software is the fact that the software must be able to

• help users to get started quickly
• hide advance & unnecessary features out of sight
• deliberately persuades users to take a specific action.

We are currently developing a web-based project application, powerful enough to manage complex project yet it must be easy enough to use.

Check out the video below showing how we’re planning to solve the same problem with a simpler solution.

Solutions Design, online collaboration, Prod-Project, user interface

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

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 summary of our products in the Intranet, Business Process, Quality management and Document Management space – and the fact that customers are increasingly selecting more than one product line to create an embracing web platform for their businesses.

All comments welcome!

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Content, Prod-Document, Prod-Intranet, Prod-Process, Prod-Quality, Products, Solutions products

In this short video Nigel tries to define Claromentis

We welcome comments and questions – thanks!

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Solutions Claromentis, video

Background

The United Bible Societies is a fellowship of 146 national Bible Societies (NBS).  This fellowship is served by the UBS Service Organisation (UBSSO) that operates from the World Service Centre in Reading, UK and has four area offices across the world.  From time to time the fellowship meets as a World Assembly.  At the last one of these in 2004, it was felt that it would be helpful to have a worldwide picture of the combined resources and work of the whole fellowship.  The Global Stewardship Report (GSR) was developed to meet this need.

Report History

A small trial of collecting the report data started in 2008, followed by the first full exercise in 2009, in which all Bible Societies were asked to participate. Almost all have now sent in their return.

Data collection was in an excel spreadsheet that could print on one A4 page. The form used is included as Appendix 1 and the accompanying notes to explain the data required are in Appendix 2.  Experience from the first round of collection is that not all Bible Societies read the notes carefully and that some information is still missing or obviously incorrect.

The Way Forward

Working together with UBS Service Organisation, Claromentis develop a bespoke Global Stewardship Web-Application within UBS Intranet/Extranet allowing member of the National Bible Societies to fill in the information online on the web.

Using a wizard-style approach, built-in checking, and dynamic currency conversion, users can simply guided through the forms, minimize mistakes and no training is required

All the details are kept in a secure central database from which, at any time, the most updated consolidated stewardship report can be easily be generated online and a hard copy can be printed from a print-friendly view of the report.

Solutions bespoke development, intranet 2.0, online collaboration, web 2.0

Our bespoke team are currently working on a major project to deliver a bespoke portal for brokers to gain information on the progress of their work with our client.

This is a screen shot from our project files showing the progress of the extranet secure portal during the early stages of this project.

Solutions

Sharing a great example of one of our customer’s intranet systems, combined with the extranet view when a user from a major client logs in.

What we see here is important :

• Exactly the same system
• Exactly the same URL
• Visual Interface assigned according to the user – in this case according to extranet membership
• Permissions control the data that is viewed within the interface

What this means is that the same system is on the one side a corporate intranet and information system, and on the other side a project collaboration based view for a client providing a project status including live web cams, latest design files, version controlled documents, KPIs and Health and Safety statistics..

It is great to see how Claromentis is such a powerful framework that each user logging onto the same intranet and extranet system will not only receive a completely different interface, menu system and access to applications but also see completely different data within that interface.

It is actually quite hard to understand that this is exactly the same system!

Intranet-Extranet, Prod-Intranet, Solutions