Intranet for growing e-commerce business

[Oman]

One of the most important principles that I've found in traditional brick'n mortar business is that it's important to keep everyone in your business focused on the goals and objectives of the business. The best tool for doing this is to have an ongoing dialog about issues and problems. If folks aren't able to come together to talk, individuals will get their own agenda. Lunches are great. Small group meetings...anything to keep the conversation going and focused on the product.

As my e-commerce business grows, I'm bringing in talent from many different parts of the country; tech support in Houston, order fulfilment in Ohio, technical writers in Florida, etc. As the chief medical officer, I'm mobile. Although each of us have a single task, we're all still working for the same company. So how do I go about bringing us together without the ability to have the occasional lunch or meeting?

One example I've seen used to do this is Facebook. I work as a doctor and use an electronic medical record (EMR). The maker of my EMR used Facebook as an intranet when they have issues or down time. Pretty cool the way they've used Facebook.

Anyone familiar with other products (intranet) that are used to create a community for small businesses? When I say community, I'd like my employees to be able to share a conversation about the business. By doing so, my hope would be to give them a sense of inclusion and a better focus on company goals and objectives.

Has anyone tackled this problem in the past? Any out-of-the-box solutions that anyone is familiar with?

Jeff

[mikeewart]

You have to be kidding. Your EMR reverts to using FaceBook when they have issuse? What about HIPA? Am I missing something?

[bmiller011]

You have to be kidding. Your EMR reverts to using FaceBook when they have issuse? What about HIPA? Am I missing something?

I was thinking the same thing. However, Facebook does offer privacy settings that would prevent others from seeing this information but you wouldn't be able to be friends with anyone outside your organization. It is against Facebook policy to create "fake" Facebook accounts but that would be another way to do it. Even still, Facebook would have access to the information...

You would have to worry about Facebook making privacy changes and not telling you like what happened in 2009.

We use a CRM system that we built in house. It works very well and can track an initial lead all the way thru project completion and also ongoing support. We also have a forum set up in the CRM for internal communication.

[mikeewart]

I agree with bmiller about using your own CRM. You have control of it from A-Z. We have several clients that go that route with internal stuff.

His Facebook solution is something that my daughter and her peers use . They set up Facebook group pages (or whatever they refer to them as) for particular classes so that they can collaborate but only those in the group can see the info. It's one thing to use that for a class project but totally something else when you are talking about business data, regardless if it is ERM related, financial or any other sensitive / proprietary data.

This is not just a FB issue but any of the social media or collaberitization sites. Anytime that you do not have total control of your unencrypted data, there is a risk of it being used inappropriately.

Putting my tinfoil hat on, I would say the same for the various email providers like gmail, yahoo, etc. Then there is the Amazon cloud, etc.

Bottom line is if you do not control the server, you have no real control over the data.

[ep2012]

I actually wondered about this years ago, but from a different perspective. What happens when you are so small you can't afford to fly people to a resort for a Christmas Office party?

How do you create a party online?

I may be missing it somewhere online, but I think this is a great idea if it could somehow be done. That's what I can't figure out since you can't all sit down for a nice meal, dancing, drinks, etc. unless you somehow gave them money to buy their own food & you all videoed in at the same time & ate & talked together LOL

Back when I was trying to figure this out, Skype wasn't as popular & laptops didn't all have built in webcams, but I'm not even sure how many videos can be pulled into one chat room. Never used that before.

Ideas?


Michelle

[Oman]

No, no, no guys...sensitive, HIPPA data is not displayed on Facebook. Facebook is simply used to manage the number of contact requests to tech support. For example, although it happens infrequently, the EMR can go down. So here's many thousands of docs with waiting rooms full of patients trying to get an answer to the system status. Rather than answering each individual request for support, Facbook was used to report system status as individual regions came back up. Also, providers could report specifics to the EHR company to give them feedback as to how the fix was progressing.

I've read a bit about enterprise solutions used build an intranet, but we're not trying to bring together hundreds of employees, just a dozen or so folks. The the cost of enterprise solutions is prohibitive. I'll do a little homework on CRM's. Not familiar with them.

I first got the bug to build an intranet after listening to a podcast by one of the founders of MySQL. They had a similar problem with integrating their work force in multiple countries, time zones, etc.

Michelle, you're thinking along my lines. For example, in this podcast about MySQL, the employees gave each other xmas gifts on-line. The employees knew each other enough through the intranet that they were able to give silly gifts. Several of the MySQL employees here in The States knew that one of the other employees who lived and worked in Kiev was looking for an apartment. They got on-line and gave her an apartment building as a fictional Christmas gift. Sure, it's an odd way to share, but it has to suffice when you cannot physically get together to share some eggnog.

So FB is just for group homework projects? I beg to differ. It can be much more than that. But FB is merely represents a starting point for business collaboration. I agree that it may have some short comings. What I'm searching for is the next step beyond FB.

So much of social media is all about broadcasting your social attributes to the world. Anybody can do that, and Lord knows that there's plenty of folks interested in coaching you how to do it. But what if we turn our focus on social media in-house. What tools can I use to build a social media network (intranet) in-house? I'm looking for a tool to build conversation, collaboration and you know, maybe even have a little Christmas party?

Jeff

[bmiller011]

A custom built CRM could do everything you are looking for. I am not sure of the capabilities of your tech staff, but we opted to build our own CRM after trying many of the CRMs that are available on the market. Our issue that we always ran into is the CRM gets in the way of the work. Just about any CRM you look at is bloated beyond belief. I believe this is because the developers are trying to create a one size fits all solution. They try to incorporate every option possible. Buy creating your own you are able to develop it exactly the way you want it.

What we did was had a couple brainstorming meetings with the staff that were going to use the CRM. Including the staff I think was absolutely key as they are the "end users" and by including them it gave them a level of ownership which made it easier for us to require them to use it. People just don't like to log their events. Most think it is a waist of time and don't see the benefit vs. time invested, however, once they use it for a while it becomes habit and they start realizing the rewards. We created a flowchart of the business which gave us the structure of the CRM. Once we had the flow of the business if you will it was really quite easy to build and implement the CRM.

[ep2012]

Wish I could build that. I'm still trying to find a replacement to Hyper Office which has 1 area I like & the rest I don't. Their software is terribly coded, but b/c of that one feature I have stayed with them for years.

Jeff if you find something, pls. let me know

Have a good one.


Michelle

[Oman]

Check out MS Sharepoint 2010. I think it's going to be the choice for us. Although an individual license is $4995, our service provider will host an individual copy for us on a shared server for $20-30/mo with full functionality.

Jeff

[Oman]

Whoa, check out this list...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...ative_software

Includes open source resources.

Jeff