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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We are often asked how long a ‘typical’ intranet project takes to launch, and what factors can speed up the process.

Well of course firstly it is really hard to find a typical project, but we do know  that from choosing Claromentis to be your provider to deploying phase 1 has over the last 5 years taken an average of 7 weeks.

Software as a service can be deployed within one day, using standard designs and our own infrastructure, if the requirements are simple.

I believe our world record is one week and I will refrain from discussing some of the longer projects, always extended by the demands of assembling and validating content, and nothing to do with technology.

In terms of what factors can speed this up, here are some of the most important :

• Provide a style guide and general instructions but let our team provide the interface. We have an established process and are just so fast at working within Claromentis.
• Restrict your project team to a manageable number.
• Expedite your sign off procedures for approval of designs or if relevant development.
• Keep phase 1 to what is really important, and not a very long list of functionality that is really only there ‘because we can’. This provides a sense of business focus and urgency.
• Provide a project manager yourselves and take the project management service from Claromentis. Then focus on the critical path, especially early on – prepare for all tasks that are on that path at the expense, if necessary – of those that are not.
• Use telephone conferences and webinars over physical meetings whenever appropriate to do so, they help preserve the focus on what needs to be done and are much shorter.

Finally – if it makes sense for your business to consider our Intranet Software as a Service solution that is the factor that above all else speeds up delivery – mainly because we don’t have to deal with your infrastructure, IT and active directory – but also because the lack of upfront investment makes it a less political project for our customers internally – freeing up motivated staff to just get the job done!

Corporate News, General Intranet Posts intranet

We have talked a lot about the fact that there are so many ways to do things in Claromentis that sometimes new clients can get confused. What kind of format should this information be in? A document or a page? Should my intranet home page list of job vacancies be a small bespoke addition, an e-forms solution or a smart object looking at dynamic data on a forum?

Intranet choice

We are learning a lot about how to approach new clients – the truth is that in certain situations it is better just to implement what we think is best – rather than distract the project team with discussions about choosing between approaches that they really don’t yet understand – after all they are not yet a client. We would spend too long training them on each approach just so they can then chose one - it is better they stay focussed on the project objectives and let us just implement the most appropriate solution based on our extensive experience.

After all they can always change it later, or on a refresh project – by that time they will really understand how the relevant applications work, and can make a much more informed decision.

This paralysis through being presented with a choice is actually the most pronounced when we are at the design stage – so not the details of how to provide the functionality at all yet - but going through a mock up process on how the intranet home page should be designed to match objectives for the project as well as reinforce the company culture through branding and embracing intranet 2.0, for example.

There are important principles at stake here. One of the most relevant is the sense of ownership that a new client gets from being involved with the process, rather than just being presented with the answer. Participating in the creative process has significant implications for the sustained interest levels from the client project team – and this is fundamental for the longevity and ROI of the project.

So it seems we are in a dilemma. We often know the answer, but we should not tell them because they will then lose the sense of ownership that is fundamental for the ongoing project success.

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There are not many example Intranet designs available for review, perhaps because of the nature of the Intranet which is for internal consumption only.  There is no reason why Intranet can’t be functional as well as  attractive & pleasing to use, after all who wants to work all day on a badly designed system?

In the show case below we present 5 Intranet designs powered by Claromentis Intranet & Extranet Manager.

MySunPower - SunPower Intranet (USA)

MySunPower hompage is filled with 4 most recent company news. Main navigation is located on the left, while sidebar on the right provides easy access to company calendar, worldtime  & corporate portals such as Competitive Intelligence & Community Portal.  These are also great examples of bespoke development with the Claromentis API to add value to the information layer. CEO blogs are fed through the lower right box.

The Matrix - The Albany Group Intranet (UK)

The main area of Albany Intranet displays a greeting box, scrolling notice bar , latest news and what’s new box. On the right hand side there are shortcuts to various application, world time & calendar widgets. The design is clean, sharp and enhanced by glossy glass fx.

Eureka - CareUK Intranet (UK)

Clean and simple - Care UK intranet focuses on searching in the middle area. Users are encourage to search information while the most recent company news is displayed at the lower box. The sidebar provides a selection of jump links to other applications or areas within the intranet.

Basecamp - The North Face Intranet (USA)

Basecamp - Accessing The North Face Intranet you will be greeted by a welcome video. Latest blog posts  are displayed on the homepage and the illustration provides user with a shortcut to each individual departmental homepage.

Athena - Nominet Intranet (UK)

Athena - The nominet’s intranet uses “tile-design”, each individual tile is a window to further information. The design is very web 2.0-ish, it looks friendly and inviting. It is good example where an intranet can be beautful as well as functional. I am having too much fun navigating around beautiful icons and tile designs!

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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.

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Over the past few years there has been tremendous noise about the benefits of cloud computing, but in reality many businesses are still struggling with the idea.  From what I heard there are 3 main concerns:

Where is my data?

It’s a human nature that we still pretty much need physical contact. The idea that our data will be located among millions of others somewhere which we don’t know exactly is scary.  Some might still think our data is equivalent of piece of paper stored in unknown place with millions of other papers.

Security

We all heard the benefit that could computing in a managed infrastructure will guarantee security, from the latest patches of the OS up to cross-continental back-ups. Most organisations are still concern about security of cloud computing even though it is a safer than leaving it in your office and you find out the next day the office was flooded.

Change

One issue related to cloud computing is the concern of IT Downsizing. As more and more services related to IT become outsourced and centralized many IT jobs will become obsolete. Some says cloud computing will flourish in current economic situation but in the other hand businesses are facing difficult decisions.

Share your thoughts
Do you think cloud computing is suitable for your organisation? Share your thoughts and read more about claromentis model of software deployment.

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An Intranet specialist Toby Ward has recently published his webinar about the future of Intranet (so called Intranet 2.0), highlighting how web 2.0 and social media is changing the corporate intranet. Interesting…

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This article below is written by  Rob Reith our Country Director in Australia which I found it intereting although in some deployments Claromentis can indeed co-exist with Microsoft SharePoint.

Claromentis over SharePoint

While there are many reasons why a company would want to select Claromentis over SharePoint, we have produced this handout to highlight the critical differences between the Claromentis and SharePoint Knowledge Management solutions. In the context of this handout, a Knowledge Management Software system covers the following functionality;

-    Intranet software;
-    Extranet software;
-    Content Management software;
-    Document Management software;
-    Customer Relationship Management software;
-    Project Management software; and
-    Electronic Forms software.

Work with the owners of Claromentis

Did you know that when you are dealing with Claromentis, you deal with the owners of the business? As part of the original team to build Claromentis, our clients have direct access to the owners and developers of Claromentis. This allows clients to have a direct say into the development roadmap. This is in contrast to SharePoint resellers who have no vested interest in the software and are unlikely to be able to contact Microsoft for urgent changes.

Work with the owners of Claromentis, and be confident that your voice will be heard at the top

Work with the Knowledge Management Specialists

Did you know that Claromentis only works in the field of Knowledge Management? We live and breathe knowledge management and are active in knowledge management conferences and forums. This is in contrast with many SharePoint resellers, who offer a wide range of software solutions, and will not have the degree of specialty as Claromentis.

Work with the Knowledge Management specialists and get better results

Work with more features

Did you know that over and above the Document Management, Intranet, Extranet and Content Management features, Claromentis also offers Project Management and Customer Relationship functionality where SharePoint does not offer either?

Work with the Knowledge Management software that offers more

Work with flexible technology

Did you know that Claromentis runs on Windows or Linux giving you flexibility whereas SharePoint runs on only their own proprietary server and code? This means you have complete control over your IT environment and ensures your Total Cost of Ownership remains low.

Work with software that puts you in complete control

Work with better Electronic Forms Management

Did you know that Claromentis offers an International Standards Organisation (ISO) compatible and integrated electronic forms module where with SharePoint it is optional? In our experience, forms are critical for any size company, and that’s why we include them out of the box.

Work with the company that understands business

Work with integrated Search

Did you know that while Claromentis offers a fully integrated and advanced searching feature, SharePoint charge separately for their search engine?  Image 1.11 shows the complexity of the SharePoint solution (notice the multiple components that have different licensing conditions) which can cause budgeting and resourcing issues as your organisation grows.

Work with a company that keeps it simple and scalable

SharePoint Pricing Structure

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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 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.

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We all love intranets (at least in Claromentis). Intranets don’t just allow you to manage and organize your precious data in your corporation, but it also encourages your users to get involved in the workplace; if it is used correctly. In this article, I am going to list the 7 common mistakes that an intrananet administrator shouldn’t do. I hope this helps you optimize your intranet and make it work more efficiently for both you and your users.

Keep It Simple, Yet Efficient

We all are busy, aren’t we? Nobody wants to come to an office and see a load of irrelevant documents nagging them and announcements that they have no interest with. You wouldn’t want them to spend tens of minutes looking at a single page and assume them to find their way around.

It could be pretty painful for the end user if you keep your intranet’s user interface cluttered. Try to have a clean and well structured user interfaces; both on your internal pages and public pages.

Use Intranet Permissions, Groups and Roles

Most of our users have been enjoying the comfort and luxury of the extensive intranet permissions system of Claromentis. By using this powerful yet innovative feature of Claromentis Intranet Software, you can filter your documents, files, pages, announcements, news and almost everything else for your target audience. Our software allows you to keep your intranet elements well efficiently organized and gives your workforce a clean and well-thought environment to work on. By preventing them seeing the unnecessary elements of an intranet, they will be more likely to be focused on the actual work itself.

Do Not Assume Your Users Are Computer Literate

Try to be precise on your descriptions and guidelines, particularly if you are trying to explain a part of your intranet. Don’t assume them that clicking on the “Submit” button after filling all of the information is obvious. Write it down and make it clear every single step they should follow. If you are not lucky enough by not having a user friendly intranet software, well, change your provider if it is still not too late or push your service provider to provide you a better interface.

Encourage Your Users to Communicate

Most of the intranet software suites provide a functionality to enable your users to communicate each other, one way or another. Be it an instant messaging, e-mailing or forums; encourage your users to communicate each other. This will not only reduce the workload of your support team but your users will also pick things up quicker by trying themselves. If you have a collaborative intranet solution, then use the many of the features provided. Allow users to comment on your news, allow them to write blogs, certainly use forums for both personal and corporate matters.

Use Short, Precise Surveys

Every week or so, create a survey and try collecting an information from your users. With the advantage of a permission based intranet, you can have different surveys for different audiences all within the same intranet. Sometimes try to ask something about a national event or something out of a business matter. Don’t have long and boring surveys as most of the users will not bother filling the information correctly, if not at all.

Keep Your Language Simple and Easy to Understand

If your organization is big and have many levels of knowledge between the different areas of your intranet, try to keep your writing language simple and easy to understand. Use short and grammatically correct sentences. This especially applies to your news, announcements and e-mails sent to masses. If you are going to write about a very specific topic which will be interesting for only some of your departments, assign reading permissions to people who belong only those departments.

Try to be Innovative

It has always been encouraging for us to see some innovative uses of our intranet software by some of our clients. Don’t be afraid of expressing your ideas to your manager or your intranet software provider. In most cases, there is always a way to achieve what you are after and it is usually easier than you think.

What are your ways and best practises for improving your corporate intranet’s user experience? Share it with your comments.

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