Intranet Management Software Blog

I find it interesting that since I started working at Claromentis – an intranet solution provider, I have mainly been working on bespoke applications for clients. The variety of specifications I have seen for these different applications from client to client really highlights the versatility of Claromentis as an intranet and its ability as a framework to grow and adapt to a company’s requirements.

Desk booking for me was a great example of this. The “Hot Desk” system is usually employed by large companies who want to maximise the use of their desks.  Essentially employees will work from which ever desk is available on the day rather than have their own personal desk. When employees might work at different times and for different lengths of time this minimizes desk redundancy.

What better way to enhance this system than provide the ability to book desks in advance?  This is precisely what the Desk Booking application does. This in turn allows a company to measure desk occupancy making sure they are getting their monies worth from their office space.

The application also allows managers to maintain a database of desks and their features, as well as providing the ability to assign fixed desks, browse an availability calendar, provide floor plans with desk locations and much more. Another great bespoke project that really highlights good use of Claromentis as a framework.

Home bespoke development

The functionality of the solution set in Claromentis intranet framework are so large now that we often spend considerable time during projects, and especially at inception – in choosing from various options in order to meet a business need.

Since the Claromentis business framework also includes a complete intranet API, we also need to consider whether a bespoke application to meet the client need is the best solution, as opposed to the superficially ‘easier’ route of configuring an existing application to meet the requirement.

This is particularly the case with e-forms, which for many simpler business needs can indeed be configured to meet a requirement as initially expressed to us.  This is basically because many small applications are based on collecting data, moving along a process and notifying participants of significant events that need their attention – exactly the space Process Manager occupies.

When we are making these decisions we are in general terms trying to balance 3 disparate needs :

• Project risk – configuring and localizing an application is a relatively simple and certainly time limited process that does not involve scope creep, whereas developing a bespoke intranet application takes time and resources.
• Budgets – applications need to be licensed, this might be commercially inappropriate for the number of users that need access.
• Flexibility as a solution for future requirements – we have learnt that there is always a phase 2, and after using the solution in phase 1 the client may well drastically change the application requirements – it is so much easier to evolve a bespoke application.

Technology selection factors

What we are finding is that we are emphasizing flexibility more and more as we continue to engage with intranet clients around the world. And because we can now give so many examples and speak with the confidence that comes from working in this space for 10 years now, we are noticing that clients are increasingly listening to us.

The result is that they do take slightly longer to get to phase 1, they take more risk, and generally may spend slightly more to get to the first release  – but the platform for their success is built on the solid foundation of an intranet application that was built from the ground up to meet the need, and can grow without constraints to continue to serve the client well.

If, as is so often the case – phase 2 is considerably different to the initial requirements – the client in the end saves money as well as getting exactly what they need – since the changed specifications do not require us to start again.

In the fast moving web based intranet world where there are almost no technological limits, building for possible feedback and change requests is basically too important to ignore.

So in the longer term it seems that time and time again actually focusing on flexibility can minimize budget and project risk, rather than increase them. Another great lesson.

E-form Services, Home, Products bespoke development, e-forms, intranet software

We have had so many discussions recently about how to establish legitimate boundaries for modern intranet software.

At a recent vision setting meeting at Claromentis we did decide that we would never produce accountancy software – but the only reason seemed to be because Nigel thinks its boring and no-one else in the room understood much about it. Hardly a valid rule for deciding when business functionality should be excluded form our product set looking out beyond Claromentis 6.0

If you think about it, as well as the API for bespoke applications, we now have major application sets for:

Information management across every imaginable file type through to online
Collaboration and Innovation
Sales Management
Project Management
Image Management
MarComms
Across the board Quality Management solutions

As we move into a world where it seems the browser can deliver just about anything to the desktop and client software is dying faster than newspapers, it seems that at Claromentis the only rules we can find for a product line in our intranet system is :

It makes a difference to a business
It is aesthetically beautiful and highly usable
It leverages the permission system

Can anyone come up with a better rule for helping us not to deliver accountancy software as part of an intranet? Seriously – where should we stop? How can we say – “but that is just not what an intranet should do”?

Home, framework-bus bespoke development, intranet software

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.

Home, Prod-Intranet, framework-web bespoke development, intranet software

I am thrilled that two developers will be joining our UK office to provide support in our bespoke work for our customers around the world. Their tasks are not only bespoke applications but also e-form plug ins to assist with more complex form based work flows and processes.

The exciting parallel development is that we are scheduling long term visits from our core outsourced team into our UK team as well. This will produce a healthy cross fertilization of best practices and closer cooperation, with the UK team also helping with tighter core product specifications to go back to the core team.

At the same time we are decoupling some of our core intranet applications to allow them to be developed more rapidly than the 3 or 4 releases per year of Claromentis core code. At least one of these applications, Sales Manager, will be taken over by UK developers to increase the efficiency of customer feedback for this important application.

While this is all great – I would be really interested in hearing from anyone who has been through a similar process of combining in house developers with offshore development of complex products.

Services bespoke development, intranet development