Intranet Management Software Blog

Business Cases, Collaboration Platforms and Innovation.

A  recent very good Cisco post on the next generation collaborative enterprise mentioned - amongst a great deal of interesting thoughts  on collaboration platforms and how they will change the way companies work - that ‘Priorities are set by clusters of experts that make decisions’. A comment on the post asked then asked the perfectly reasonable question : “how does the framework ensure these priorities are in line with the business goals?”

We getting similar thoughts from our customers, as we begin to show Innovate, the Claromentis 6.0 Innovation application. This relates to a previous post here where we were discussing the implications of collaboration platforms directly conflicting with the discipline of more controlled communication channels.

It seems to me that one possible way these different business structures can coexist is based on the difference between fostering creativity and enabling innovation. Or as Claromentis has described it the  ‘shout, collaborate, execute’ journey.

Creativity and Innovation are two very different things, and sometimes it seems to me that confusion in discussing the impact of Corporate Social Networking results from not being clear about which of these is actually being discussed.

In the well known quote from Theodore Levitt “Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.”

In essence creativity uses divergent thinking to create ideas that then feed into innovation. Innovation is the implementation of those ideas – putting them into action.

Collaboration platforms can really help to foster creativity by putting like minded people from different perspectives or locations in touch and so break down silos both internally and externally.

However when it comes to taking those creative ideas and executing to produce innovation – in a corporate space this will  in general terms require expenditure. Depending on the maturity of the company and the scale of the projects – these will generally need business cases – and these always set out the rational for where the project will generate value within a more traditional and documented vision of the business objectives.

So it seems to me that the next generation enterprise will be able to impose some control not by constraining the way collaboration platforms are used to innovate – but by managing the process that selects which ideas these platforms generate are turned into real projects.

The ideas and decisions made within fast moving collaboration platforms can be prioritised and set within more formal and longer term management goals – and indeed over time help to change these goals - by the continued discipline of business cases being required in practical terms to actually execute on an idea – to move from collaboration to the very much harder task of innovation.

Home collaboration, corporate social networking, innovation

During early phases of intranet deployment, we are frequently asked by our clients “what do I need to prepare or plan in advance to guarantee a successful of intranet deployment project”.

In our opinion, an intranet project is all about dialog. It’s a dialog between ‘us’ the software vendor with our expertise and know-how and ‘you’ who know the most about your business or organisation.

Step1. Setup a Goal

The first step is determining the goals of your Intranet project. Why do you want an intranet? Some typical reasons:

• Improving and providing a communication and collaboration tool.
• Our existing Intranet is old and dysfunctional.
• Distribute corporate news (electronic newsletter)
• Providing self service staff contact details which are always up-to-date
• Make our company policies and procedures available online
• Sharing documents online instead of using shared drives
• Enabling staff to work from home
• Better searching and easier way finding key documents

Step2. Define the scope & audience

Have you got an answer for these questions?

• Is it just an Intranet for staff or it is also an extranet for partners and contractors?
• Do you want to allow your staff access to the intranet even when they’re at home or client’s site?
• How about mobile access?
• Have you asked representative from each department on what they want to see or get on the Intranet?
• How people currently finding information, which you think should be on the intranet? What are their common pains?
• Would you like to store sensitive information on the Intranet such as payroll ?
• What about chat and commenting? How open is your company culture?

Step 3. Build a SiteMap

Build a sitemap, using your favorite tools such as Visio or simply hand drawn, create draft of Intranet sitemap, typically the main branch are represented by each department, you can see various examples below:

Example Sitemap with colour coded permission

Example of Intranet Site Map using colour to identify launch phase

Step 4. What are key application do you want to use?

This step is simply determining what are the main application do you want to use on the Intranet, Claromentis provide these following applications,  you can simply choose which one to use.

News and Blog– Share and distribute company news and blog
Documents – Document collaboration with version control
Publish – Page creator, a content management system
People – Self service personnel database
Calendar – Shared company calendar
Image Gallery – Corporate image database
Bookshelf – Online Policies & Procedures
Policy Manager – Managing lifecycle of the company policies
Holiday planner – manage corporate holiday and absence
Room booking – book a meeting room and office facilities
InfoCapture – Electronic e-forms builder and workflows
Project – Manage project online
CRM – Opportunity Management

Outside these applications we built many other bespoke applications to suit your need

Step 5. Understanding Permissions

Permission Group & Role

A scalable intranet should have a strong permission system, it also helps to distribute information easily. For example you may want to have area where only people in your department can produce or edit its content while everyone else simply just view.

This can be done easily by setting up permission, ie : Roles, Group and Sub-Groups.

To make our job easier when configuring your system, have you got a Company org-chart available?

Step 6. Create Homepage Wireframe

As you know the homepage is the first page everyone is going to see, it’s worth the extra effort to design this carefully after all it is a gateway to all other content within the Intranet. Look at several examples for inspiration and decide what you want to see on the homepage, my advice is to keep it clean and simple.

UBS Intranet homepage wireframe

Colchester NHS Intranet wireframe

Step 7. Budget & Resources

How many users will be using the Intranet? Many Intranet software vendors  price their products by number of users.

Hardware, who is going to provide you with the hardware?  If you don’t have any we’re happy to source this for you or you can take the SaaS model.

Have you got an internal project team?  Usually we recommend a project sponsor, an internal project manager as the main contact, a technical contact, and a rep from marketing or communication as a minimum team - smaller companies might have fewer people involved.

Step 8. Timeline

Plan your project timeline carefully.  Each company is different - an Intranet can be deployed from 2 weeks up to a year, these are some key points worth considering which may cause delays:

• Sourcing hardware
• Getting access through your office network
• Finalising design
• Updating user list
• Content population
• Content migration.

Like everything else in life, execution is quick, preparation is the key so do your homework!

Step 9. Future plans (keep evolving!)

I’ve seen many intranet projects loose momentum after the initial launch phase. A successful intranet is something that grows over time, start simple and add new features gradually. Learn from  user feedback and implement user requests wherever feasible.

Small improvements can make a huge different - it’s like the breath of fresh air. Keep the original team and meet regularly for project reviews and brainstorming of new ideas.

Here are some ideas to think about once you have your initila intranet.

• Is there any business processes which can be done electronically?
• Such as overtime request, time cards, new hire.
• Is there a database, which is currently in Excel, and you think it will be much better if it is an online application?
• Any existing system, which can be better integrated with the Intranet?
• Thinking of deploying corporate micro-blogging? Online videos?

Step 10. Do it now!

This final step is the most important of all. You can make all the planning you need but without execution it is still a plan. Get the ball rolling now, gather your team, email them now, start researching or simply drop us a line to discuss your requirement, or book an online demo!

Good luck with your Intranet project!

Home Claromentis, collaboration, Design, extranet, intranet, intranet consultancy, intranet development, intranet project manager

As one of the greatest socialites the world has ever seen Oscar Wilde once said that “there is only one thing worse than being talked about – and that is not being talked about”.

A tidy few years later Seth Godin said you should turn a sales funnel upside down, and create instead a megaphone for people to talk about you – eventually creating sales people from customers.

Since then a lot of sites and online techniques have sprung up or evolved to help us do just that.

The modern world is now full of communication channels and collaboration software that promise a plethora of networked interactions. The basic idea is that this should allow some kind of sense and wisdom to eventually float to the top, much to the satisfaction of the mere mortal looking for useful stuff.

New techniques have become verbs, verbs have become absorbed into the daily vernacular of the nimble fingered - and within just a few years new activities have become so fundamental to peoples lives that not understanding that you can “create an ecosystem out of tweeting about your blogs” now marks you down as some kind of a luddite – even though Twitter was only established in 2006.

However Seth Godin also said that “functionality is the new marketing”  [ source : ‘small is the new big’ ] which I personally took to mean that you do actually need a great something or other to create genuine waves to get  you talked about. And that’s what I personally find a little  frustrating about some of the current ways to network and promote your stuff. They basically are often empty of innovation, and seem to be trying their best to enable people who have nothing to say to be talked about.

It seems as soon as the world finds a way to enable great functionality to float to the top for you and I to find easily – someone else will hire a bunch of cheats to get their stuff there instead of yours. “Rank it by incoming links?” – pay people to create incoming links. “Build great networks?” – form sites where all sense of effort and value based networking is lost and instead allow people to spam everyone all over again.

It takes a huge amount of effort and skill to actually create something that really is functional enough that it should be shouted about. People who do that will be hard working, creative, often burnt out and generally fascinating – and they probably wont have time to nurture any kind of an ecosystem out of anything , even though they are actually creating something that other people will indeed shout about – because it is actually great and that’s what counts.

Oscar Wilde also said that “Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast” and on this one I am with him completely.  If you are working that hard to actually create something that might become great you need to find the time each day to just stand up, clear your head, learn from your bruising mistakes and start again – perhaps we should have a quiet reflective coffee and leave tweeting about our blogs to others – chances are that they will enjoy it and do a very much better job than I ever would.

Home collaboration, Social Networking

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

Solutions Case Study, collaboration, commercial, document management, e-forms, intranet consultancy, online collaboration, user interface

A lot of the focus of intranets, and the vision of Claromentis 6.0 – is, as we have posted before, around the ease of progressing an initial idea to some kind of collaborative effort and then onto execution of that idea against measurable objectives ( “Shout -> Collaborate -> Execute” ) as Claromentis 6.0 has chosen to describe this process.

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.

Home collaboration, intranet software, teams

Claromentis Intranet & Extranet manager provides several ways to collaborate and share information within an organisation. We have application called ‘Documents’ (Document Management System), ‘Publish’ (Content Management System) ‘Wiki’, and our new member of the family ‘Bookshelf’ (online policies & procedures).

In early phase of intranet deployment we frequently being asked by our clients, “Which tool is the best to share and collaborate a piece of information or should we  just stick with an existing company shared drive?”.

There isn’t one solution to all problems

The good starting point is to be aware of the pros, cons and applicability of individual tool available.  Unfortunately as an Information Architect we always says “There isn’t one solution to all problems”. The idea is by having the right solution (with right technology) to a specific problem, we can make everyone’s lives easier.
Let’s start with…

Shared Drive

Typically before an organisation deploys an intranet they have existing growing unmanageable shared drive(s). Shared drive is relatively easy to setup but it suffers from these issues:

• No version control - You ended up having similar files with version number scripted at the back of the file name for example:  “MyPresentation_ver2.doc” not to mention the frustration of someone overwriting the file you’re currently working on.
• Searching – Does everyone feel that it is easier to search information on the internet than on the share drive?
• Limited Access - When you’re not in the office, say on the road or working from home,  you either have to use slow & complicated VPN software or not having access to the company files at all.
• Security – There is no easy way to setup permission on a shared drive, typically it opens to everyone or if you have permission it’s so complicated to set up and configure.
• Audit - You can’t easily check who did what, when and where.
• Duplication – since a single physical file cannot exist in two places at once, you ended up with duplication everywhere.

Documents – Document Management System

Claromentis document management system is designed to address all of the common issues with company Share Drive. The heart of it is the application called ‘Documetns’ It provides built-in version control, searching & indexing, permission layer, easy access, and many enterprise features.

What are the Cons?

• It is not suitable for managing extremely large files. (Larger than 30Mb)
• Files are kept in native format, which means users need to have the application to open / view and edit the file.  For instance not all users within organisation have AutoCAD software needed to open a *.DWG file.
• Speed to upload and download the file stored in Documents are limited to the speed of your network / internet connection
• Extra steps may be required to edit a file. Typically you have to download it (temporary), make changes and upload them back in, although we have several solutions to make this relatively painless such as webdav.

Publish – Content Management System

Using publish, users with no web publishing skills can collaborate & create web pages easily.

• Better access - Information displayed as web pages are widely accessible. Users don’t have to download the file or installing software to view. They can simply read them online.
• Information Hub - everything can be connected in publish page, link to documents, link to other pages, or links to external website. For example you can create a health & safety page which may have link to ‘health & safety assessment guide.PDF’ which is store in Documents as well as link to HSE websites.
• Mash-ups – Publish allows you can embed rich media such as online videos, podcast, web widgets and much more.
• Enterprise features– Publish has everything you need to manage online content, from built-in version control, security & permission, reminder, audit trails, multi lingual and much more.

It may sound like a good idea to convert all documents into publish pages, but there are several points to consider:

• There is not much point converting complicated document such as spreadsheet into a publish page, you probably better of store them in Documents and just link it from a publish page.
• Content for publish page should be relatively short, concise and to the point. Remember the information is designed to be read on the screen just like web pages.

Wiki

A wiki is designed to enable everyone with fast and volatile collaboration. Claromentis integrates with Media WIKI, one of the most popular open-source wiki software. Wiki focuses on fast and real-time collaboration by minimising complexity in content creation. There are several issues to remember here:

• Wiki tend to have open access for everyone - You have to keep sensitive and proprietary data off the wiki.  Avoid posting sensitive data such as financials.
• Wiki syntax to learn, Wiki may focuses on simplicity but there is whole new syntax to learn. Wiki is typically very popular within IT department but what’s popular in one department may not be suitable others.

Bookshelf

Bookshelf is the application behind Claromentis Quality Manager; it is the latest addition to the information layer suite. Bookshelf is designed specifically for managing Company Policies & Procedures. It allows online procedures creation making sure that there is one version of the truth across entire organisation.

• Bookshelf allows company procedures and policies to be maintained online allowing true collaboration of subject matter expert.
• Once the policies or procedures are created online, it can then be read online or exported in various format such as MS Word and PDF.

Summary

These are just a few of the tools available in Claromentis Framework. There isn’t one perfect solution to all problems but at least you can choose ‘the best kit for the job’.

Any comments and feeback welcomed.

Solutions collaboration, document management, intranet consultancy, intranet software, online collaboration, Prod-Intranet, quality management software

Built-in content management module (codename: Publish) in Claromentis is used in several products such as Intranet & Extranet Manager, Document Manager and Enterprise Content Manager.  In version 5.6 we are going to introduce brand new multilingual content management capabilities.

Old days:  Folder solution

Until now web-page contents on the Intranet are limited to one language, although our interface supports complete localization, which means you can have Claromentis interface in Japanese but the content you’re looking at are in English.

We have managed to get around this situation by setting up different folder in Publish, one for each language, for instance we can have folder named “English” for English content and “Japanese” for Japanese content. It make sense right? not quite…

Complexity and Problems

Wait until you have to combine with Departments for example you may have set your folder structure by Departments for example “Marketing”, you may have a page called “Branding” under Marketing.

Imagine the complexity that you may forced to have 2 marketing folder one for each language. It’s hard enough to look after one folder now you have 2 in separate location, not to mention about a company with offices worldwide deploying more than 5 languages.

Multilingual content in 5.6

In Claromentis 5.6 we are going to introduce built-in multilingual support in Publish. It is so simple to setup, in fact you don’t need to setup anything,

Language Bar

You’ll see language bar displayed when you editing a page to add new content in new language just click “add language” and existing content will be automatically copied ready to be translated.

Know your language

Content based on your preferred language set in “my settings” will be automatically displayed.  For example you may have set your language to “Spanish”, if there is no “Spanish” content of the page you want to see you will be automatically presented with “default language” which in most cases will be “English”.

Unified URL

Say you speak English; you can send a URL of a content page in English to your employees in Japan, when they open it, they will relevant page in Japanese.
Example screenshot below and feel free to give us feedback

Prod-Content 5.6, Claromentis, collaboration, internal customer communications, technology

As collaboration environments for employees intranets have moved forwards incredibly rapidly - from clunky attempts to put information on a web based platform to beautiful permission based systems with complete customisation and version control.

Recently the trend has noticeably moved from the information layer to execution. More clients are interested in Process and Project Manager – they assume the information layer can be effectively implemented and are looking for ways to leverage that up to date information in the execution plans of the business.

This is a trend that we are excited to play our own part in leading. Intranets should not just be about accurate information – they should be about an integrated platform where accurate and appropriate information is available to ensure that the business can move forwards with confidence.

Prod-Intranet collaboration, intranet software

The vast majority of our clients are using Claromentis primarily as an Intranet, not as an Extranet. Why?

Lets take it as a temporary assumption that our clients are indeed moving forwards from the old fashioned and well established agenda of “accurate content and an appropriate information layer for every user”, towards looking for additional value creation through increased innovation.

I still have my concerns that fundamentally our clients are missing the innovation agenda. If they are embracing it – as I have commented before for example “Extranet Based Supply Chain Innovation” – they are really only going to find it by collaborating across business silos – an intranet is of course ideal for this - or by reaching out to partners with expertise that can help to create improved products or service and delivery.

External collaboration

Using information frameworks like ours you would to use our extranet areas if collaborating with partners is of interest to you.

The fact that so few currently do enable extranet access would seem to me to tell us that many UK SME companies are not actually focussed on innovation – or if they are - they are not using collaboration software to achieve it.

My worry is that our assumption is wrong – most clients are actually still looking for an accurate, permissioned information layer, accessible anywhere, and not yet trying to use our software to encourage supply or customer side joint ventures to truly innovate.

My hope is that with the upcoming web 2.0 intranet that is Claromentis 6.0, and the ongoing developments of our Project Manager product to help project execution – we can finally help to change this. Collaborative ventures with partners must surely hold at least as much value creation potential through innovation as sharing best practices and talent between internal departments.

Prod-Intranet collaboration, extranet, ROI, value

I am still far from convinced that many companies in the SME sector really have a prioritized and executive level sponsored agenda to go after collaboration and the business benefits it can bring – but I am completely convinced that very few assess the costs of collaborative projects.

collaboration

I am becoming a great fan of the Harvard Business Review – and an article this month reviewed the case for walking away from collaborative projects – or rather establishing a framework for assessing their ROI against non-collaborative alternatives.

The essential idea is that companies need to think about the alignment of business value and collaborative projects - many areas of collaboration turn out to be expensive, have political agendas and simply do not deliver an adequate ROI in line with the business needs - compared with the lost opportunity of a simpler project requiring no sophisticated collaboration.

What I found striking about this is :

• In all the meetings I have had with clients and potential clients deciding whether to invest in Claromentis collaboration platforms over the last five years this has never, as far as I can recall – been directly raised. If it has been a topic it is us that have started the debate, not the customer.

• I still do not find that companies here in the UK are looking for intranet and extranet collaboration solutions founded on what I would view as the correct agendas. They are looking at information management challenges – which should really be the foundation and not the ultimate goal.

After so many years of being involved in this space there just seems to be a huge disconnect between what the real world at the SME level is doing – and what the IT and business press is talking about.

I do feel that the nature of Claromentis 6.0 will provide a massive opportunity for this to change for the better – a framework that is accessible to SME companies and that absolutely facilitates the transformation from ideas to collaboration to execution is long overdue.

Solutions collaboration