Claromentis Intranet Software Blog

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 runs naming competition to find out who came up with the best idea within your company.

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It is great when you join up a process and see seamless integration in software solutions to really support you across the whole process.

We use our own intranet software to deal with website leads and sales management of opportunities that result from them. Whereas previously we used Process Manager to manage the leads and Sales Manager to manage opportunities once meaningful interactions had occurred and an account manager needed to be involved - we had no clean implementation to produce a truly integrated approach. Recently two developments have really boosted our sales efficiency :

•    We started to use Process Manager SLAs to act as auto responders, which meant people who had shown interest in our software were sent personal emails and useful data sheets via 3 emails

•    If an interaction takes place we developed a Process Manager Plug-in to provide a one click process to generate a CRM company, contact and opportunity record in Sales Manager.

The net result has been a very significant increase in discussions with potential customers, and a really efficient enquiry handling process for our own business.

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We have many clients who enthusiastically embrace blogs and new media, which of course is engaging and excellent.

However with these clients I have seen a tendency to launch similar departmental intranet home pages, each of which has a video introduction to the department from the relevant VP or member of the management team, and the blog – along with of course rich and relevant departmental information – documents, self service, general contextual information and e-forms.

These can be very powerful templates – but what worries me is that talking head video from the VP is only interesting the first, or at best second, time you hear it. Therafter it can be very irritating, however relevant the message.

What I like is a component that checks if a user has seen that video, and if so switches it out for another relevant content or RSS feed that fits well with the design.

Intranets should be multimedia and rich – but they absolutely must be fresh!

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We make Claromentis Intranet Software available on a range of devices, according to our customers needs. However the truth is I have often wondered just how practical this is.

Then recently I found myself in the car park of a potential new client, having completely forgotten the names if the main contacts I was meeting with. We had arranged the meeting in somewhat of a rush and over the phone, so emails didn’t help me.

Within a few minutes I had logged onto our intranet on my i-phone, found the opportunity in Claromentis Sales Manager – and had everything I needed.

Sometimes it really is useful to have your intranet accessible from any modern device!

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We are really sure now that we are making the whole process of selecting a design for  a new Claromentis Intranet just too difficult for the typical company that joins us. For a certain type of company, with the relevant skills and indeed ambitions the existing process is fine – but not for many!

Precisely because Claromentis can easily be given a design that can be completely bespoke – exactly what you would like it to be – we have  encouraged clients to think hard about what they would like the design to be.

But actually it seems that most new companies would prefer that we just tell them!

So we going now through an exciting process to develop questionnaires and models that will allow us to present the new intranet customer with a great design at the first pass – and then just let them comment on it and make minor changes.

What are the positives :

1.    The client gets an intranet with a great and relevant design, fit for purpose, in very little time.

2.    We know from experience most customers refresh their designs in year two or three anyway, after the experience of actually using it.

3.    The client can focus on content, functionality, training and deployment issues – which is probably the best use of their time.

The truth is that we now know this is the best for all concerned – but we still find it difficult to move away from a completely bespoke and individual design for each client – because that is such a strength of Claromentis.

I am reminded of the fact that in previous engagements with intranet clients over the years we should say that certain clients just did things “because we can” – perhaps this is seeing our own process in exactly the same way. Just because we can deploy a completely individual intranet design for every customer does not actually mean that we should!

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I was reading an article this week about an event back in the good old days when computers were brand new and we all got excited by a little blinking cursor that said c:/> or something similar.

This article was about a couple of guys who won a computer back then and had no idea what to do with it. A friend duly showed up, and gave them a demo of the latest word processing – which at that time was not far short of all it was good for.

However the demo fell flat – the reason being these guys had never even used a typewriter – and so couldn’t see any use for such an easy to use, simple to correct, spell-checking replacement for a machine they didn’t own in the first place.

This got me thinking about our own situation with potential new clients. They seem to fall into some familiar camps:

1.    We don’t currently have any intranet at all ( unbelievably we still get a lot of these – really a lot ).

2.    Somebody wrote one themselves, but really it needs replacing – or – a slight variation – the person who wrote it has left and we have no idea how to maintain it.

3.    We have a product but we all hate it.

Of course we treat all of these with equal interest – but in reality there are some big differences in our engagements with these different types of new customers.

In general I would say that those in the first camp – Group 1 - will start off Googling away and come up with a list of what they expect we will be able to provide, because someone out there has written articles or summaries about what in their view is really essential from an intranet provider. I tend to refer to this as an “outward focussed” approach – in the sense that they look out to see what is possible, and then probably find a few suppliers and ask them to tender against this somewhat arbitrary list of ‘features’ that has little to do with the business they are in, improving their innovation or driving their business forwards.

Group 2 vary a lot – often they are not sure if what the employee created really is “an intranet” in the first place, or if it should be taken seriously – but at least they have some experience of using something.

Group 3 are interesting – their frustrations probably relate to legacy software that uses old approaches like i-frames, or isn’t being improved, or where the vendor has gone bust – but at least they have real ideas about “what a better solution should do for them”. Notice the “for them” – they do have real ideas about what their own company needs, not just a checklist of arbitrary functionality. I refer to this as an “inward focus”

Paradoxically “inward focus” in this sense sounds somewhat negative, as if they lack vision – but of course this is not the case at all, and in many business senses a company that is always spending some time looking to analyze itself and improve has a great  attitude.

The truth is that for us engaging with all of these types of new customers is interesting and varied. The world of intranet software is a large one and we do our best to explain it as honestly and professionally to all companies that ask about our products and services - whether they ever saw that blinking green cursor or not!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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We seem to have hit some round numbers.

We have been trading for 10 years, we now have around a million lines of source code and just this Sunday we reached the ten thousandth request in our customer support portal.

Good or Bad? - I think the first two are easy – trading for 10 years has given us an enormous amount of customers, lessons and perspectives – a million lines of core code is just what it takes to deliver a modern collaboration framework with the breadth of functionality of Claromentis.

I also am convinced that to have 10,000 conversations around our software with a very animated community is a hugely positive milestone.

Our challenge is to manage them all, allocate the appropriate resources and ensure that issues are resolved and enhancement requests analysed so that the intranet software moves on for the continued good of the user community.

What is interesting is just how many ’round numbers’ of technical staff do we need to accomplish this?

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