Lecture notes

LECTURE NOTES

We can learn a lot how companies are using intranets as a key technology platform to support their business processes, as well as enterprise communications and collaboration

from the Real World Case of U.S. West Communications.
Take a few minutes to read it, and we will discuss it (See U.S. West Communications in section XI)
Intranet characteristics include:

1. An intranet is a network inside an organization that uses Internet technologies (such as web browsers and servers, TCP/IP network protocols, HTML hypermedia document publishing and databases, and so on) to provide an Internet-like environment within the enterprise for information sharing, communications, collaboration, and the support of business processes.

2. An intranet is protected by security measures such as passwords, encryption, and fire walls, and thus can be accessed by authorized users throughout the Internet.

3. A company’s intranet can also be accessed through the intranets of customers, suppliers, and other business partners via extranet links.

1. Marketing

2. Finance

3. Human Resources

4. Sales

5. Manufacturing

6. Training

7. Customer Information

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  Communications and Collaboration
  

Intranets can significantly improve communications and collaboration within an enterprise. Examples include:

1. Using an intranet browser and PC or NC workstation to send and receive E-mail, voicemail, paging, and faxes to communicate with others within your organization, and externally through the Internet and extranets.

2. Use intranet groupware features to improve team and project collaboration with services such as discussion groups, chat rooms, and audio and videoconferencing.

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  Web Publishing:
  

1. Company newsletters, technical drawings, and product catalogues can be published in a variety of ways including hypermedia and web pages, E-mail, net broadcasting, and as part of in-house business applications.

2. Intranet software browsers, servers, and search engines can help you easily navigate and locate the business information you need.
Business Operations and Management:
Intranets are being used as the platform for developing and deploying critical business applications to support business operations and managerial decision making across the internetworked enterprise. Employees within the company, or external business partners can access and run such applications using web browsers from anywhere on the network whenever needed. Examples include:

1. Many companies are developing customer applications like order processing, inventory control, sales management, and executive information systems that can be implemented on intranets, extranets, and the Internet.

2. Many applications are designed to interface with, and access, existing company databases and legacy systems. The software for such businesses uses (sometimes called applets or crossware) is then installed on intranet web servers.

3. Employees within a company, or external business partners, can access and run applications using web browsers from anywhere on the network whenever needed.

1. TCP/IP client/server networks

2. Hardware and software such as web browsers and server suites

3. HTML web publishing software

4. Network management and security programs

5. Hypermedia databases

Studies have shown that early adopters of intranets has provided them with impressive returns and high paybacks at low costs. Many corporate intranet users and consultants to the

global business community has been that companies should get going fast on pilot intranet projects, or quickly expand any current intranet initiatives.
Examples of Business Value:
The text outlines several examples of how top-rated companies have been able to derive cost savings or revenue benefits from their intranet applications. These include:

1. Provide better access to financial reports and improve productivity, speed, and control. Employees select from preformatted reports and create their own subscription lists.

2. Access to engineering documents and information. Reduces paper costs and increases speed of information transfer.

3. Global staffing tool for project teams. Able to find skilled staff and reduces time and effort to complete projects.

4. Group intranet supports manufacturing, engineering, and marketing. Allows for each document exchange and reduces paper costs.

5. Internal web site for sales and customer service. Reduces call volume and increases sales with greater salesforce involvement.

6. DataDoc Online. Reflects daily changes on video rentals, books, music, and software across 115 retail locations. Saves IS time and improves data accessibility and accuracy.

7. KeyCorp’s knowledge bank distributes job postings, information on best practices and training, marketing, and newsletters.

8. Knowledge management and corporate communications system facilitates collaboration on projects. Productivity increased via information exchange and streamlining workflow.

9. Marketing, planning, and operations. Shares business information for improved decision making, efficiency, and competitiveness.

10.Each area on the manufacturing has its own home page updated every 60 seconds. Improves process and quality.
Publication Cost Savings
Many companies are replacing the publication of paper documents, company newsletters, and employee manuals with electronic multimedia versions published on intranet web servers. Elimination of printing, mailing, and distribution costs is a major source of cost savings. Companies are also publishing:

1. Telephone directories

2. Human resource materials

3. Company policies

4. Job openings

5. Many other former paper-based communications

Developing information access and web publishing for an intranet is a lot easier than many traditional methods. Learning how to use a web browser for the company intranet is fast

and easy. Training and development costs for many intranet applications are low, especially for communication, collaboration, and information sharing. Electronic versions of training materials on intranet web sites can reduce the amount of costly classroom training in business.
Measuring Costs and Benefits:
Justifying the initial cost of investing in an intranet does not seem to be a problem for many organizations. In many instances, payback time is achieved within a relatively short period of time. The effectiveness of the intranet can often justify the cost of the project.

9-5 The Role of Extranets
Extranets are network links that use Internet technologies to interconnect the intranet of a business with the intranets of its customers, suppliers, or other business partners. Companies can:

1. Establish direct private network links between themselves, or create private secure Internet links between them called virtual private networks.

2. Use the unsecured Internet as the extranet link between its intranet and consumers and others, but rely on encryption of sensitive data and its own fire wall systems to provide adequate security.
The business value of extranets is derived from several factors:

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  The web browser technology of extranets makes customer and supplier access of intranet resources a lot easier and faster than previous business methods
  
• 
  Extranets enable a company to offer new kinds of interactive Web-enabled services to their business partners. Thus, extranets are another way that a business can build and strengthen strategic relationships with its customers and suppliers.
  
• 
  Extranets enable and improve collaboration by a business with its customers and other business partners.
  
• 
  Extranets facilitate an online, interactive product development, marketing, and customer- focussed process that can bring better designed products to market faster.
  

 Coordinate - coordinating our individual work efforts and use of resources with each other

 Collaborate - working together cooperatively on joint projects and assignments

Teams, Workgroups, and Collaboration
There are many types of teams and workgroups, each with its own work styles, agendas, and computing needs.
Workgroup - can be defined as two or more people working together on the same task or assignment.
Team - can be defined as a collaborative workgroup, whose members are committed to collaboration, that is, working with each other in a cooperative way that transcends the coordination of individual work activities found in a typical workgroup.
Characteristics of teams and workgroups:

1. Teams and workgroups can be as formal and structured as a traditional business office or department. Or they can be less formal and structured like the members of process teams in a manufacturing environment.

2. Teams and workgroups can be as informal, unstructured, and temporary as an ad hoc task force or a project team whose members work for different organizations in different parts of the world.

3. Members of a team or workgroup don’t have to work in the same physical location. They can be members of a virtual team, that is, one whose members are united by the tasks on which they are collaborating, not by geography or membership in a larger organization.

The enterprise collaboration system is an information system. Therefore, it uses

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  Electronic communication
  
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  Electronic conferencing
  
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  Collaborative work management
  

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  The information overload
  
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  The torrent of unsolicited junk E-mail (called spamming)
  

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  Data and voice conferencing
  
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  Videoconferencing
  
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  Chat systems
  
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  Discussion forums
  
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  Electronic meeting systems
  

1. Networked PCS, known as desktop videoconferencing

2. Networked conference rooms or auditoriums in different locations, called teleconferencing.
Characteristics of videoconferencing:

1. Team and enterprise collaboration can be enhanced with a full range of interactive video, audio, document, and whiteboard communications among the online participants.

2. Desktop videoconferencing can now take place over the Internet, intranets, extranets, as well as public telephone and other networks.

3. Videoconferencing over the Internet, intranets, and extranets is proving to be an efficient, economical, and effective way of supporting communications and collaboration among physically displaced teams and workgroups.

4. Reduces travel time and money to attend meetings results in increased team productivity as well as cost and time savings.
Limitations of desktop videoconferencing:

1. Jerky motions of video images and the lack of nonverbal communications from “talking heads” displays of videoconference participants

1. Team and enterprise collaboration can be enhanced with a full range of interactive video, audio, document, and whiteboard communications among the online participants.

2. Sessions are held in real time, with major participants being televised while participants at remote sites may only take part with voice input of questions and responses.

3. Teleconferencing can also consist of using closed-circuit television to reach multiple small groups, instead of using television broadcasting to reach large groups at multiple sites.

4. Several major communications carriers offer teleconferencing services for such events as sales meetings, new product announcements, and employee education and training.
Limitations of teleconferencing:

1. Some organizations have found that teleconferencing may not be as effective as face-to-face meetings, especially when important participants are not trained in how to communicate using their systems.

2. Cost of providing teleconferencing services and facilities can be substantial and make teleconferencing not as cost effective as expected.


Discussion Forums
This category of collaboration tools includes Internet and intranet newsgroups, discussion groups, and discussion databases.
Characteristics of discussion forums:

1. Are an extension of the earlier concept of online bulletin board systems (BBS)m which allowed users to post messages and download data and program files form the online services, businesses, and individual BBS operators.

2. Are an outgrowth of the long time and widespread use of newsgroups to provide a forum for online text discussions by the members of special interest user groups on the Internet and the major online services.

3. Can be used by companies to create or encourage communities of interest or virtual communities.

4. Discussion forum groupware can keep track of the discussion contributions of each participant, organize them by a variety of key word discussion topics, and store them in a discussion database (threaded discussions, virtual discussion groups, discussion tracking, and discussion databases). This creates threads of discussion contributions on each topic over a period of time that can be tracked and retrieved from the discussion database for analysis.

5. Discussion forum groupware can be used to create a virtual discussion group where discussion forum groupware can create a virtual discussion group by weaving together the threads of contributions on the same topic by people, who had been participants in other online discussion groups.

1. You can converse and share ideas interactively by typing in your comments and seeing the responses on your display screen.

2. Chat is an important tool for enterprise collaboration on corporate intranets, especially where voice and videoconferencing have not been implemented. One advantage of chat is that it records and stores the dialogues of all participants, so that other team members can review them later.

3. Chat rooms are also being added to Internet and intranet web sites as another way to encourage participation and collaboration by customers or employees.

1. The characteristics of the group itself

3. The organizational context in which the group decision-making process takes place

4. The use of information technology such as electronic meeting systems

5. The communication and decision-making processes the group utilizes

Computer support makes:

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  Group communications easier
  
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  Protects the anonymity of participants
  
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  Provides a public recording of group communications (group memory).
  

This significantly improves the efficiency, creativity, and quality of communication, collaboration, and group decision making in business meetings.

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  Calendaring and scheduling tools
  
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  Task and project management
  
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  Workflow systems
  
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  Knowledge repositories
  

1. Project management groupware helps project teams work together and helps team members keep track of the many tasks and timelines involved. These tools produce project schedules, program reports, and automatic reminders of due dates for project tasks.

2. Task and project management groupware also produces charts to help plan and track projects. These charts include:

Gantt Chart

Critical Path Method (CPM)

Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)

1. Workflow systems involve helping knowledge workers collaborate to accomplish and manage structured work tasks within a knowledge-based business process.