Intranet Management Software Blog

Having involved with many projects in various scales, I can see that in general there are 3 types of projects:

1.  A project with no vision

A project with no vision is a bit like life without a purpose. The project exists for the sake of having the project itself. It is almost destined to be doomed even with enough resources to make it happen. There are too many IT projects failures, many of which are due to this problem. Of course no one wants to admit there is no vision, of course they can pretend they have a vision or basically borrow one from someone else - but normally they are just too abstract and meaningless.

2.    Project with vision but no execution

Good, now we are one step closer. We have clear vision for the project but the problem is we don’t know how to execute it. Having a vision without plan and execution is just like having a good idea with no outcomes.
We know how hard it is to execute good idea, and a good idea remains just a good idea until it has been executed.

3. Project with vision and execution

Right, I think we nailed it this time; we’ve got the clear vision and know exactly what needs to be done to execute it.  As we all know having a clear plan and the right resources to execute it is a great recipe to a successful project.

At the end of the day the outcome of successful project heavily depends on execution and control.  We all know things aren’t work according to the plan. Determination, passion and continuous control is perhaps worth more than the vision itself in the real world. The Japanese called this “Kaizen” (Continuous Improvement).

Services development vision, internal customer communications, intranet project manager

Background

I’ve been asked to create a blog to share our experience managing priorities in an intranet development roadmap.  Like any other software development we’re swamped with enhancement request raised by our clients, international partners well as internally.

Managing requests

By the time this blog is written I have to deal with 500 active requests which need reviewing, examining, clarification, discussion, prioritising, and the most important thing “execution”, in an extremely limited time.

Say if I am incredibly productive and I only have to spend 10 minutes for each tickets, it would take me more than 10 days just to reviewing this tickets without any further action such as examining or writing clarification request.

Dealing with priorities

Perhaps it would take a month before an execution of these tickets can be performed.
There are many technique you can use to help dealing with priorities, one of the most popular one is by calculating the “degree of importance”, where you have to weigh each request by creating a score card. Each card is measured from different aspect such as:

•    Number of clients who has requesting such feature
•    Development time & cost to develop
•    Impact on existing system
•    Potential future sales benefits
•    Current trend & Market analysis
•    Available budget and resources

The Dilemma

Before you know it, we might have to spend more time developing a robust system rather than dealing with the request itself. Sure if you are a large organisation you might have resources to deal or an existing system to deal with this dilemma.

If you are in a small organisation this may sounds like an impossible task. Statistically I might only have less than 5 seconds to deal with each ticket and use the precious time to actually “do-something”.

Blink

A book published by Malcolm Gladwell In 2005 “Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking” describes the popular idea of  “thin-slicing”: ability to gauge what is really important from a very narrow period of experience. In other words, spontaneous decisions are often as good as—or even better than—carefully planned and considered ones.

It may sounds bizarre and obviously the management won’t like this approach, but sometime in real life, if you are experienced enough you will develop strong intuition. Time is limited and you’ve got to do the “right thing” with all the limitation around you.

Claromentis Development Schedule

Reflecting this back with Claromentis development schedule, we have managed to produce what we called “Rapid development” when developing an intranet software. This means new features are efficiently developed, tested, user-tested, and deployed to the client faster than before at equal or better quality at the same time we’ve managed to implement strict budget control with limited time & resources in current economic downturn.

The idea is simple, quick and accurate decision, spend it efficiently where it should be.

Services development vision, internal customer communications, intranet roadmap

Choosing the right name for your intranet is probably one of the most exciting tasks for the Intranet Development Team. (By the time I am writing this I am still struggling to choose name for my baby, perhaps it’s not quite the same

I am seeing there are few interesting patterns based on what our clients decide at the end, here is some example:

1. Greek mythology

Intranet system named after a Greek gods and goddesses, or Greek influence  is definitely the most popular.
Athena - from the Greek goddess of wisdom, the arts, industry, justice and skill, It is the name of Intranet system at Nominet UK.
Atlas -  Atlas was made to bear the weight of the heavens, or was it the earth, this is what will become our own Intranet, and perhaps we’re hoping atlas can help us bear the weight of daily project work and pressure from clients.
Odyssey – An ancient Greek epic poem attributed to Homer. Is the name of intranet for Prometheus Real Estate Company, keep it in-line with Greek theme.
Eureka – (I have found it) exclamation used by ancient Greek scholar Archimedes, appropriate name for Care UK intranet, it certainly has scholar and research flavour to it. Care UK  is hoping their intranet will become  the source of finding information for the entire organisation where every member of staff can say ‘eureka!’.

2. Net-isation

Putting ‘net’ at the end of a choosen word seems quite popular, it’s a hint to network, transmission, exchange information.  Here is some popular example  Infonet, datanet, skynet.

Or you can simply attach the company name with ‘net’ such as intranet for Hanover housing is called the h-net.

3. Synonyms & Popular Culture

Intranet is a virtual place where information is stored; recently many companies are pushing collaboration and application through their intranet. Given this nature these are of popular word to represent the Intranet itself:

he Matrix - Albany Group named their Intranet “The Matrix”  apart from influence from popular sci-fi movie, in cyber culture matrix also means the Internet and other networks that flow into it are altogether.

Nexus - One of the most popular name for the Intranet adopted by many clients. It comes from the Latin “nectere” meaning “to bind.”. The Intranet is a collaboration hub.

Dimensions - Babcock Infrastructure Services named their intranet “Dimensions” Perhaps their vision is to make a multi-dimensional working space.

Basecamp – is the name of The North Face intranet where they visualise their intranet is the a basecamp of outdoor lifes.

4. “My”

Adding “my” in front of company name emphasise on the sense of belonging and ownership. There are several companies who named their intranet with MY+Company name, such as  MySunPower  or  MyGFI.

5. Play with words & accronyms

Tiggle – is a clever acronym from “Tussauds Intranet Global Gateway Linking Everyone” – an Intranet name for Tussauds Group.

Inflo – Interesting play on word. It sounded like “Info”, Inflo is the name of the Intranet/Extranet system of Prefered Brands where they do flooring franchise business.

I am hoping this post will inspire many companies who are thinking about choosing name of the Intranet, why not run a naming competition to find out who comes up with the best idea within your company.

Home humor, internal customer communications, intranet, intranet 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

10. Run Survey / Poll

It’s quick and easy to do, launch regular survey to get user’s feedback on almost any subjects, for a change try to create survey outside corporate agenda, pick casual topic related to everyday life, political debate, sustainability issue, or entertainments here are some ideas:

• Cool movie of the month
• Casual Friday? (yes no)
• Choose company smart phone? (iPhone or Blackberry)
• How do you travel to work?
• How’s your weekend?
• What do you think of Gordon Brown?

Survey and poll are easy to deploy

9. RSS feed

Embedding relevant RSS feed to departmental page is one of the easiest ways to get fresh news delivered to your page. RSS news from HSE (Health & Safety Executive can be added to the corporate Health & Safety Page, or an RSS from popular design blog is perfectly suitable for Creative department homepage for instance. It’s not only help member of your department aware of what’s going on out there it also help staff from other department know more about what you’re doing.

The North Face Intranet homepage with RSS and Video cast

8. Enable commenting

Everyone likes commenting. Sometime reading people’s comments in a blog is more interesting than the actual post itself. We want to hear what people say at the same we like to be heard. Staff’s comments can be invaluable to the improvement of the business and organisation as a whole. In Claromentis commenting can be enabled for documents, news, and publish pages.

News article with comments

7. Classifieds (Craigslist)

Have you ever noticing communal pin board next to the kitchen is full of classifieds, from selling used car, sharing apartments to cheap concert tickets. Having an electronic version of classifieds right in the corporate intranet can help users coming back to the system.  If you still like the pin board, you can print it out of your intranet and post it there!

Classifieds

6. Treasure Hunt

Yes a treasure hunt. Simply hide content within the corporate intranet and run a competition to find it. One of our clients had tried this and it was a success. It’s definitely a fun and exciting way to get users familiarising with the intranet without a boring training.

Prize winner for the intranet treasure hunt

5. Business Dashboard

Businesses are surrounded with data; but they are sharing one common problem. They are not visual enough to draw our attention.  Claromentis dashboard application allows you to generate data visualisation in a form of graph / chart from any data source as long as they are accessible. This can be business statistics, KPI (Key Performance Index), weekly sales figures, real-time number of visitors, stock chart, and much more.

TSG Intranet with business dashboard

4. Up-to-date Content

The essence of a corporate Intranet is storing and finding information, if users can’t find information they want accurately & effortlessly, it almost guarantee that they won’t coming back. The reality is always harder than theory but you can’t underestimate the importance of having the most up-to-date information on the Intranet.

"Content is King"

3. Develop Persona while improving usability

Check your stats & analytics, ask users and identify 3 main areas which are frequently visited on the Intranet. Create attractive shortcuts to access these areas and you are developing persona at the same time improving usability of your corporate intranet.

IPO Intranet homepage with 6 big buttons

2. Implement built-in apps

Claromentis offers business-ready built-in applications which can be implemented straight within a corporate Intranet. These applications include room booking, image gallery, holiday & vacation planner, group calendars, forums and course planner.

Image Gallery application - Care UK Intranet

1. Business processes

Having your business process built right into the corporate intranet is the number on the list. It transforms corporate intranet into something much more than just communication & collaboration platform. The intranet becomes an indispensible business application where day-to-day business processes sit on top of information layer in a single integrated system. Claromentis provides several products such as Process Manager, Sales Manager and Project Manager all can be implemented directly within your Intranet.

Claromentis Project Manager

Have you tried one of these within your corporate Intranet ? Please share your experience.

Solutions Design, internal customer communications, intranet, intranet consultancy, intranet development, user interface

As we are all know discover.claromentis.com is our customer support portal. We’re currently planning to redesign the site. The idea is focus on simplicity and ease of use.
These are some new features:

1.       New Logo (cleaner and simpler)
2.       Customer logo will be displayed
3.       Permission based menu system and with extensive publish template
4.       Emphasise on 3 main areas: HELPDESK | WIKI | FORUM (feel free to change this)
5.       Dashboard to show basic stats such as “Monthly status”
6.       Future homepage component to display : “No of ticket need attentions”.. etc
7.       Seamless experience when navigating on Claromentis WIKI pages

Feedback welcomed

Services Design, internal customer communications, internet intern program, user interface

Recently we were discussing about development of  an Intranet system for a large organisation and capture how it seen from different roles involved in the projects:

My classic problem is how you translate this requests into software:

Solutions humor, internal customer communications, intranet consultancy, intranet software discussions, user interface

Delivering a successful Intranet or large IT project is not easy. Based on our experience they hugely depend on these 4 cornerstones:

Sponsor

Sponsor is usually coming from executive level with strong vision to transform the business. It is important to keep the sponsor up-to-date with every stage of the project, from planning, development and deployment. Her or his influence and active participation can make such a huge different. Need a practical example? Organise brief speech during the launch, record his/her video, and write in the executive blog or press releases just to name a few.

Champions

Champions, power users or cohort is a collection of individuals who represent their departments or business unit. They get early administration training and it is their job to introduce the new system and train other users. Just like in any other team building exercise it is important to choose the right member of the team. These are certain quality worth considering: bright, creative, helpful, good with computers. Champion group is acting like a fuel during the early adoption.

Vendor

Choosing a software vendor for a large IT project is like choosing a life partner. er.. maybe I am exaggerate a little, but there is some truth in it. Ending up with the wrong vendor can be frustrating and greatly impact your business. Sometime it’s not just about the product but look for extras and advice they could bring to the table. Do they have enough experience? Are they easy to get hold of? How’s the after-sales service? Are you tighten into a proprietary technology with no future?

User

Understand what the end users wants and translate them into the product is a winning formula. Get out from your cubicle and talk to all users from every corner of the department especially the one who sit nice and quietly in the corner. Ask them do they get the benefit? Keep an eye on usability issues, sometime they just not knowing the thing they are looking for is there. Monitor the changes; avoid common mistakes, keep them happy, ultimately they are the reason why we’re having this project.

Services Claromentis, internal customer communications, intranet, intranet consultancy, intranet software discussions

It is a shocking reality, many major corporations still running their entire business on Excel.  Let’s admit it,  Excel is being used on almost anything,  from managing company database, claiming our expenses, accident reporting or perhaps ordering lunch ? Don’t get me wrong Excel is a powerful tool but it gets over-used in business.

Recently one of our clients, a major out-door clothing brand is taking a leap from a tired, out-of-control spreadsheets to a complete web application. We developed a store audit application where a tech rep who visited retail stores can write, and sending an audit report directly to the central database through a web form.  Appropriate finance managers will get notification allowing them to complete the financial details. Data submitted are audited, stored in central database, accessible through corporate Intranet, ready to be extracted by appropriate managers for monthly or quarterly reporting with a simple click.

Now try to get that on Excel !

Products Add new tag, e-forms, internal customer communications, online collaboration, Prod-Intranet, software

Over the years we have really not been good enough at communicating with our existing customers.

With the accelerated R&D we are putting into our framework, we are all working hard to improve this. We are just sending our first ever email newsletter to customers, it has only been 10 years since we started.

It is just such a powerful and – I am afraid to say – inevitably complex – framework that we need to get a regular message out to our customers about our plans, new release functionality and the ongoing improvements in our code.

Yes all customers have access to our support portal at Discover Claromentis – but in my view the occasional, well designed, none-technical email has its place in this need to keep engaged with our customers.

After all, its only one mail every 4-8 weeks, that can’t be too annoying?

You can read our first effort here Claromentis Intranet Software Developments.

Services internal customer communications