Document management project update meeting today - several presentations about where we are, and some of the pilots we're running. This is a project that many people have sweated blood over - we've had tremendous problems getting the system to work as we want it to, and in getting live pilots off the ground. It has emphasised how important it is to get your business processes right before trying to model them in systems and workflow. I fear we still haven't got it right in some places. Still too much reliance on paper and signatures. But, progress is being made, and we are cautiously optimistic....
One of the problems we are still struggling with is the overlapping functionality of software - we have recently decided to implement Clearspace from Jive software as part of our Innovative Communications project. This is primarily a Web 2.0 social networking suite of software including blogs, wikis (confusingly called documents), forums and groups. It also has some (limited) document management functionality. Livelink (our document management software), also has groups, discussion forums and some collaborative functions. So - which bits of which software do we implement, and how do we ensure that whatever we do, everything is integrated, and our users are clear about what bits of which software to use for what??
3 comments:
No answers, I'm afraid. But I'll be very interested to see what you do. I work with MOLE extensively, and have been bugging the MOLE-people for years to introduce some sort of collaborative document function. (This year I'm going to use Google Docs, but if Clearspace comes through with the good I'll happily switch.)
(Thanks for your blog, by the way -- I was directed to it only yesterday and for this very reason, so I really appreciate the updates!)
Hi Michael - thanks for the comment. Part of the implementation plan for Clearspace is the development of a powerlink to MOLE - we'll try and keep you informed.
Chris:
I am very interested to see what you think of our approach at Connectbeam.
We see many companies in similar situation to yours. Various Enterprise 2.0 applications brought in over different periods of time and have to now co-exist.
We took the approach of leaving the applications intact as is, but consolidating the user generated activity stream into a single repository for company wide consumption.
I would greatly welcome your thoughts.
Thank you.
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