InterDoc - Linking information to performance - Enterprise Information Architecture

SharePoint in-a-box^©

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Better Decisions, Faster, Lower Risk

• Guides users through business processes that require team collaboration and process compliance
• Consolidates SharePoint 2007 functions into a stage / gate presentation
• Uses pre-packaged, in-a-box & client configured process templates
• Relevant for case management, project / program management, and a wide variety of other high-impact business processes

Knowledge Workers have Limited Collaborative Process Support

Knowledge workers engaged in many critical, high-impact business processes often have no information systems designed to help them work together more effectively.

Traditional workflow systems are designed to speed the flow of work from one inbox to another where the tasks are processed in isolation from other participants. Key processes that require creative team collaboration have free-flowing collaboration and dynamic work patterns that do not mesh with those traditional workflow systems.

The lack of information support systems linking members of your creative teams to your processes forces them to become "human middleware." Email, web conferencing, spreadsheets and project scheduling tools are cobbled together to support ad hoc coordination of their work in order to keep their projects moving forward.

Document Management systems, such as SharePoint, organize and manage documents, discussions, meetings, and people, but does not provide overall business process support. It is up to the user to know where to find the necessary content, what to do with it, when and with whom.

Support your "team workflow" with Process Driven Collaboration

Process Automation for SharePoint 2007® solutions support document and data-centric business processes that require team collaboration, process guidance, document creation and data access and collection. This is done by presenting a user interface that guides individuals and teams through the stages and tasks of the business process, by providing a rich collaborative environment and appropriate content when, and as required.

Team-based, collaborative business processes that require process compliance include case management, project / program management and a wide variety of other high impact business processes including:

• Regulatory Case Management
• Project Management
• New Product Development
• Marketing Programs
• Acquisition Management
• Grants Management
• RFP Responses
• etc.

Our Features Support Collaborative Team-Work

Process Driven Collaboration on SharePoint provides features that address the needs of both managers and knowledge workers engaged in collaborative processes:

• A management "Dashboard" gives instant visibility status for all process instances, cases or projects
• The process workspace presents everything needed (both process and content) in one place
  • The complete process is presented, divided into Stages and tasks. It is not possible to move to the next stage, or get through the gate, unless all mandatory tasks are completed, thereby enforcing process compliance
  • The Resources tab provides reference material such as process guidelines and templates.
  • Our Documents maintains work-in-progress, completed material and shared documents.
    
• Process work is released by Stage and task (in parallel or serial depending upon task precedence)
  Task types currently include:
  • Action Task - go perform some work
  • Document Task - complete the referenced or attached document template
  • Data Task - complete the attached from
  • Review Task - provide comments on the attached or referenced document or form
• Process templates can be modified "on the fly" to let teams adapt to unique scenarios by defining additional needed tasks
• New process templates can be easily created by simply completing the Form Wizard in SharePoint. Configurable process templates enforce the use of your "best practice" processes across the organization.

Supporting Your Knowledge Workers Pays Huge Dividends

Improving support for high-value knowledge processes offers far-reaching benefits:

• Better decisions - people are freed to focus more time and energy on creating results rather than trying to figure out where they are in the process and what to do next
• Saving time - eliminating the uncertainty about what needs to be done next and where to find content shortens process cycles and keeps projects on schedule
• Saving money - clear expectations reduces need for meetings and travel
• Reducing risk - ensuring that decisions are made explicit avoids many costly miscalculations based on unchallenged assumptions
• Improving consistency - similar engagements will follow similar processes with more predictable results
• Assuring compliance - recording decision rationale deters litigation and helps meets regulatory requirements
• Improving quality - analyzing results leads to better process

Office & SharePoint 2007

The recently released Office 2007 is Microsoft's most ambitious development effort to date to upgrade and integrate its wide range of productivity products into a comprehensive knowledge management platform.

The Enterprise version of Office 2007 includes the standard Office desktop applications (all of which have dramatically improved interfaces), InfoPath forms and Outlook, as well as Office servers for SharePoint, Forms, Project, Project Portfolio and Groove.

Three Critical Success Factors

Office 2007 meets the three critical factors that lead to a successful collaborative business process solution:

User Acceptance
Clearly the Office desktop applications and SharePoint provide the most familiar authoring and collaboration user interfaces of any business application in the world. Using these applications as the front end for your business solutions will ensure a high degree of user acceptance.

Meeting Business Requirements
Office 2007 is not just an application, or series of applications, its also a development platform. The combination of integrated, supported and comprehensive functionality enables the development of solutions that will more closely and more cost-effectively match your collaborative business process needs than any other development platform.

Long Term Content Management
SharePoint provides document management infrastructure to manage all of the business process content, over its life-cycle within a central repository for the process, department or corporation. SharePoint applications can also be integrated with other document and records management systems such as Livelink, Hummingbird and Documentum.