Most businesses are driven by the visions of their founders. Whether these visions entail excelling in service delivery, adding value to clients or gaining the top-of-mind spot in their chosen market, they are all enabled by people. People are the foundation on which the success of every business is built. As refined as business models and processes may become, they cannot compete with the value that motivated teams and individuals are able to add to the bottom line. The market, after all, consists of people, which makes it logical to apply people to serving it.

Motivational thinking and the productivity that follows it is a field in itself, and not under discussion here. Rather, it's about empowerment. Empowerment through giving people tools and tool sets that enable them to be as effective and efficient as they can possibly be. When you give people tools that enable them to forget about manual labour and rather focus on the knowledge work at hand, you give the ability to enjoy the challenge, rather than the administration. Being truly challenged drives people to be better at what they do.

The bSOLVe team's focus is on enabling information work, specifically on enabling people to use information to make meaningful decisions. It's IT yes, but it's really more about what is actually done with information, as opposed to getting to that information in the first place. At bSOLVe, we believe in being driven by people. The tools and methodologies we apply are designed to empower people, to help them be better at what they do. It's not always an easy thing to do, but we enjoy the challenge. We're people driven, not technology driven. Are you?

Information is generally dispersed all over in the average organisation. Some of it is contained on individuals' PCs, some of it is hidden somewhere on a shared network folder, some of it is contained in individual mailboxes. This information is wasted if it cannot be accessed by everyone who could gain from it.

Centralising information is not an easy or simple task, granted. Not one IT vendor, service provider or consultant can claim to be able to do this. Information is just too widely spread and differentiated to make true centralisation even remotely possible.

What is possible however is centralising documents, tasks and contacts that should be available to everyone within the organisation. This general information is often found within the custody of a "go-to" person for the specific area of expertise. All organisations have these individuals, even though they're not always officially responsible within this area. There is someone who knows where all proposal templates are stored, possibly because they were once tasked with getting background information together for a large client, even though they officially function within the technical department. What if this person leaves the organisation? Where is all this information?

The solution to generally applicable information always being available is simple: The One-Stop Intranet Shop. Not Internet, but Intranet. Although the concept of the intranet is fairly dated and nothing new, it is surprising to see how few businesses use theirs effectively. In most cases, intranets are tangled webs of out-of-date pages built by IT many years ago. No one visits the intranet, because the latest information just isn't there.

bSOLVe believes in the concept of an up-to-date, functional, streamlined intranet used every day by individuals and teams throughout the organisation. Our goal is to eliminate "where's that client document again?!" questions. In our opinion, an ideal intranet must have the following characteristics:

• Simple structure - a few main areas, broken down by functional need.
• Flexibility - being able to add a new area, subarea or folder should never involve more than a few clicks. Not everyone should be able to make additions however; structure changes should be limited to individuals who understand the effects of complexity on ease-of-use.
• Easy searching - finding a specific document if its location is unknown shouldn't involve more than one or two clicks.
• User notification - when documents change, those involved should immediately be aware. This speeds up teamwork and reduces unnecessary back-and-forth time.
• Multiple entry points - an intranet which is only accessible via the browser frustrates people. Being able to get to information via a file-share-like interface to which shortcuts can be created makes access transparent and a no-brainer.
• Easy permission management -limiting access to certain areas and/or documents is inevitable, but should be quick to change. When someone needs access to a document, they need it immediately, otherwise the intranet's purpose is defeated.

Naturally, the above characteristics form part of SharePoint's feature set, but that's not why we've mentioned them. They form the core of what an effective intranet should offer, moving the concept closer to the ideal One-Stop Intranet Shop.

Working on a document between two or more people is often a cumbersome affair. Usually, it ends up with one person searching through their e-mail folders, trying to find the last (or not last, but correct) copy of the work in question. This last copy is then once again e-mailed to everyone with a polite "Please check if this is correct, I want to send it to the client ASAP!". Sometimes, there is a grunt of frustration when someone realises after it has been sent that it wasn't in fact the correct version, and that the correct version was instead sitting in a subfolder in their inbox. In all instances, all individuals involved have multiple copies of the document in their e-mail folder structure: a few received drafts in their inbox, and just as many sent drafts in their sent items. This is a nightmare to manage; but can be easily solved.

When the bSOLVe team implements SharePoint, one of the most important things we make those using their new system aware of is the mindset change that needs to be made from e-mailing a document to e-mailing a link to a document. In SharePoint, documents (even when they're only being worked on by one person) are stored in a central location, where SharePoint's version control functionality takes care of changes that would usually have taken place through back-and-forth e-mailing. Instead of making changes and e-mailing a document in progress to the next person, the document stays put on the SharePoint server. Each person simply opens a copy from SharePoint (with the option of checking it out to prevent others from making changes), works on it and saves it back to SharePoint when they're done. If the other people on the team have Alerts set up, they'll be notified that a change has been made, and the next person can proceed to edit the document. If not, the first person can as before simply fire off an e-mail with instructions. The difference is that, instead of attaching the document, they copy the link to the document into the e-mail. The receiving party then simply clicks on the link and opens up what they can be sure is the latest version directly from SharePoint. Doing this ensures that e-mail folders aren't cluttered with multiple copies of documents, and gives everyone peace-of-mind in being sure that they have the correct version on hand (or can get access to a previous correct version through the version control list).

As is the case with implementing most new systems, it's not functionality that affects how well people make the switch. Instead, it's about making a mindset change to a more effective way of doing things, getting rid of old habits in the process. Sending multiple copies of documents around is a common but very ineffective habit - a habit which having a storage monogamy mentality with SharePoint can easily help solve.

To the bSOLVe team, business relationships are like any other relationships. We believe that for parties to gain mutual benefit, there needs to be an underlying element of value present.

Too often, we've found that service providers sell products or solutions only because they know that their clients aren't aware of the alternatives. Usually, the reasoning is "we want the business, our goal is to drive sales". This by itself is perfectly fair, of course. Unfortunately, problems arise when the product (or service) turns out to not have been the best option for the intended job. Sadly, service providers often turn their backs and say "sorry, but it's not my job to make sure you're buying correctly". They then ramble on about how their role involves just actual provision, and that anything after that doesn’t concern them.

At bSOLVe, we've at times received incredulous looks when we’re not willing to sell something we could profit from (or at the least, we advise against it). We lose out immediately yes, but we like to believe that as a long-term approach, we're on the right track. It's quite logical really: if we sell you a tool that's not quite right for your requirements, you're going to get really annoyed using it. You're going to resent us for selling it to you – but most importantly, we'll both have wasted our time. This is quite clearly not a desirable outcome. The same reasoning goes for areas where we feel our skills wouldn't be sufficient to reach your goals. Usually, we'll politely decline, and do our best to point you to someone who does have the required skills. The benefit of this approach is that, when we do sell you a product or service, you can be sure that we know our stuff; and that we're sure that you're going to gain value from what we're offering.

More often than not, it takes some insight into a sometimes elusive bigger picture to explain to interested parties why building systems with a Microsoft-centric approach makes sense.

With an ever-increasing competitive drive from the Open Source movement, more and more businesspeople are asking "why is a Microsoft approach better?" It’s a legitimate question, if only because of the way software markets function.

In software, using a niche approach is often the only way for vendors to take on larger players. It's a simple case of resources and time, of course. Because of this, specialist providers arise to challenge (in their chosen areas) the established icons, who often tend to defend their stakes across multiple territories. In some cases, the niche players emerge with products that are better suited to the task at hand, simply because they're focusing their efforts so intensely. Proponents of Open Source generally campaign strongly for a niche approach, the effect of which is a proliferation of individual software applications, each suited well to the task it is built to tackle.

The effect of the above is that individual Microsoft products are often criticised for not being the "absolute best tool for the task at hand". Sometimes of course, they aren't. Mostly, however, they don't need to be. Why? Because Microsoft tools put together comprise tool sets, and at an even higher level, a platform.

Microsoft builds all its applications to be interdependent modules that make up a larger whole. It's called integration, and even though modern Open Source applications also have to ability to communicate with each other, integration efforts take considerable effort; where their MS counterparts are designed from the ground up to form a productive whole.

Take the Office System (see what we think of Office 2007) as an example: Moving any element of your work (say a table with sales figures) between any of the individual applications (Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote etc) in Office involves literally two clicks. In some cases, things happen unnoticed in the background to make your work easier, so smoothly coordinated are the efforts between the applications. That's the basic level. Moving up, you can easily share documents and tasks between people you work with by using a SharePoint website, which you can easily publish to (and from) using any of the Office tools. Once your work is on SharePoint, it can be published out onto the internet if necessary. Integration with Exchange Server makes it possible to direct e-mail messages into areas where people can share them and take action based on management rules. If you work with someone who's knowledgeable in integration, it becomes possible to build compelling business applications: tracking correspondence with clients according to projects you've created, and monitoring which tasks employees are performing for each client, for example, is entirely possible. Possible because all the tools form a cohesive whole, what we like to call a "platform".

Building profitable business machinery on a platform is easier than trying to bring together a shed full of tools which were all designed by people with divergent goals and methodologies. Here at bSOLVe we realise the value of and will continue to use the Microsoft platform. We believe that, ultimately, we can create better machinery for our clients with this approach.

Taking a brief look at how most businesses handle e-mail storage can be an interesting experience.

E-mail is a critical enabler, with most companies in today's world unable to function without the little electronic envelopes they’ve become so accustomed to. Without e-mail, communication becomes restricted to the little blocks of time within which people are available for phone or physical conversations. Being such an important infrastructure element, one would expect executives to have rock-solid ways of safeguarding records in place. Surprisingly, this is often not the case...

Usually, adequate backup and disaster recovery procedures are in place to handle a total loss of the systems on which e-mail run. Systems can usually be brought back online relatively quickly, containing information from the most recent backup (which is usually a day or so old). In most cases, business interruption is there, but it's manageable. Problems arise, however, when one considers what information was actually backed up in the first place.

Because of issues with managing huge mailboxes, and the need to keep these mailboxes "contained" on Exchange Servers, most system administrators implement mailbox quotas to keep individuals from using excessive space on the server. Typically, most users have a specific mailbox capacity available, this mailbox being backed up through the usual procedures. Everything that can't fit into this mailbox is the individual's own responsibility – the result of which is that most employees tend to create PSTs (so-called "Personal Folders") to store everything that they can't store on the server. Usually, these PSTs are saved on a laptop or desktop PC hard drive, away from any centralised control. A sensible approach? Possibly, but only from the perspective of keeping individuals from building up huge mailboxes. The problem is that, more often than not, vital information is stored in PSTs. Correspondence with key clients, suppliers and such often finds its way into a PST file which travels to an executive's home and back every day without ever being backed up. The possibility of a very negative outcome arising from this doesn’t need to be pointed out.

The bottom line? PST filing is risky. It creates isolated pockets of potentially vital business information, pockets for which there are no protection. It exposes a business to massive risk, both operationally and legally, and is just simply not worth it.

The solution? Archive e-mail automatically, safely and securely with a product like mailMAC, which ensures that PSTs become risk-less convenience items. With mailMAC, all e-mail is stored centrally, regardless of whether individuals move or delete items out of their Exchange mailboxes to PSTs. The PST is simply a convenient double copy for reference in situations where connection to the network is not possible.

Stop filing. Start archiving, the risk is just not worth it.

For most IT service providers, getting technical comes naturally. Technical proficiency is what keeps things boiling behind the scenes, separating the professionals from the amateurs in an increasingly commoditised industry. When push comes to shove, the technically competent are usually left standing to deliver the goods, and rightly so. However, focusing too strongly on technical proficiency can often be to the detriment of an offering that was originally intended to be a solution to a business problem, and not a technical problem. The key word here is solution - a term which has been thrown around recklessly and rather fashionably over the last couple of years. Even though the bulk of the mania has thankfully died down, there are still a multitude of products and services offered to the market as solutions, without much thought or consideration towards the problems they're intended to solve…

Logically, for a solution to exist, there first needs to be a problem. Usually, problems aren't in short supply. Neither are those willing to solve them, fortunately. Unfortunately however, many of the willing step in to proclaim "solution!" without first pausing to understand the problem thoroughly. The end result is a solution to only part of the problem, or (worse) a solution which creates an entirely new set of problems.

How does one solve this problem (pun intended)? By stepping back and forgetting about offering a solution initially – rather, spend time trying to understand the problem first. How? Ask questions. When you think you understand the problem, pretend that you don’t, and ask more questions. Get as close to putting yourself into the shoes of those experiencing the problem as you possibly can. Only when you reach a stage of frustration with the problem should you be ready to start finding solutions.

Negative as it may sound, there seems to be a lack of dedication towards understanding problems in the IT industry. Is it because of a lack of dedication towards finding long-term solutions, as opposed to immediate fixes? Could it be that consumers expect providers to magically sense their problems without engagement and analysis? Possibly both? Either way, bSOLVe does not subscribe to a magical solution mindset – instead, we continually strive towards thoroughly understanding problems, only offering solutions after we’ve done thorough analysis. Expect us to ask more questions!

New generations of Microsoft releases are often viewed with mixed feelings, especially in areas where the company dominates. In the case of MS Office, the lead-up to Office 2007 (the 12th installment of the productivity suite) has had many a sceptical analyst ask “Do we really need another new version of Office if we’re only using 10% of the current installment’s features anyway?”. It’s a fair question, one which can quickly be answered by anyone who has used Office 2007 for more than a week or two.

In previous versions, Microsoft expanded feature sets continually to include functionality requested by customers. With its huge development capabilities, the software giant left most competitors behind in the dust on sheer feature weight. This has worked well up until recently, with two major negatives having cropped up:

• The Office team have begun to run out of commonly-used features (short of collaboration integration with other applications) to add to its most widely used apps (Word, Excel, Outlook).
• The market has started listening to Google’s "simple is better" mantra – if simply because of its massive brand and market reach.

Not to be outdone, Microsoft has risen to the challenge in an ingenious way. In short, they’ve forgone the “add as many features as we can” approach, instead saying “let’s make it easier for people to discover what’s already there”. To understand how this approach benefits you as a user, you need only take a 30 second look at the menu structure in Word. The countless numbers of menus and submenus are gone, and have been replaced with the seemingly less powerful ribbon interface. Seemingly less powerful, because all the functionality (and more) is there – just not buried several clicks and windows away.

The Office development team conducted extensive research on how people interface with the menu functions in Office, all with the goal of finding the quickest, easiest way to get things done; whether “getting things done” entails proof-reading a document, creating a formula, or assigning a task to someone else. The results are spectacular. Every once in a while I accidentally stumble across a very useful feature which is directly related to what I am busy doing. Upon proclaiming my discovery, one of the experts in our office usually points out that the particular functionality has been available in the last two generations of the software – I’d just never known it existed. That’s the beauty of Office 2007: you don’t need to be a power user to benefit. This characteristic is something which we believe will directly benefit businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Office 2007 enables all levels of users to get things done quicker, more effectively and easier than ever before. The jump from version 2003 to 2007 is a significant one, much more so than with any of the previous few releases. Add increasingly useful collaboration abilities (courtesy of integration with Office SharePoint Server 2007) into the mix, and you’ve got a potent recipe for productivity.

Is it going to be worth the upgrade? Yes.

* Note: Office 2007 is currently in Beta 2 stage, due for release towards the end of 2006.

Remember when, as a kid, you opened your first box of Lego blocks? Well, using SharePoint is quite similar really, sans the cellophane wrapping of course…

We've been looking for a good analogy to describe what SharePoint is really about, and Lego fits perfectly. Why is SharePoint like Lego? Because:

• SharePoint arrives as a set of components spread on your desk, ready to be built up.
• SharePoint in its standard form includes a few basic examples of how it could be used.
• The basic examples aren't even close to what's possible if you apply your imagination just a little bit.
• SharePoint is extremely easy to use in built-up form.
• SharePoint is effectively almost infinitely customisable.

It's like someone asked me recently: "OK, so you mean that with SharePoint you can build yourself a racing car, a fortress, a spaceship, a boat, or even a warrior?"

Exactly.

Where does bSOLVe fit into the picture? Well, we like to think of ourselves as the older brother who showed you just what you could accomplish with a few building blocks, a clear purpose, and just a little bit of imagination.

In addition to our custom implementation and development services, bSOLVe is now offering SharePoint To-Go, a pre-planned format for smaller projects - with the goal of delivering as much benefit as possible within a quantified budget.

Looking to create a robust, centralised location for document storage, collaboration and business process automation? Look no further than SharePoint.

We recently launched mailMAC, an archiving system which enables businesses to comply with regulations for storing e-mail records. With an increasing percentage of correspondence taking place via e-mail channels, safe and secure storage of e-mail has over the past few years become a major pain-point for IT managers. With this new product, bSOLVe aims to address compliance issues head on, while at the same time giving IT administrators a tool to manage both storage and retrieval of the huge volumes of e-mail the average business generates these days.

Simon Hepburn (who heads our business development) notes that having an efficient system in place for archiving e-mail holds more than one benefit: “Even though compliance with legislation for the retention of e-mail records is a high priority, one shouldn’t overlook the operational benefits of archiving. For example, mailMAC (Mail Message Archiving and Compliance) offers a manager the ability to track down e-mail that an ex-employee sent 18 months ago, but also gives employees an easily accessible interface with which to search for their own mail from several periods back”.

The tangible business benefits of archiving is what organisations should focus on when considering an implementation solution; rather than just the compliance side of the coin. Too often, we see businesses being scared into buying into systems because of legal requirements. Not because they feel that the system really benefits their bottom line, but because a consultant pulled a ‘you have to’ rabbit out of the hat to get a sale, regardless of whether there is real value. Not partial to scare tactics, we have built a solid track-record with our clients, focusing on cutting through the clutter to deliver only when there is real value at stake. Because we have development of custom messaging and workflow applications, we place very strong focus on seeing software as only one component of the whole solution to the problem. In this case, we’re providing IT administrators and managers with a powerful tool, enabling them to centralise backups, reduce storage requirements and free users from having to struggle with the typical scenario of having scattered PST files on their PCs. How this tool is used is up to the business, but we believe that correctly applied it can potentially reduce a whole lot of common headaches, while at the same time giving administrators the ability to put a compliance stamp on things.

From a technical perspective, mailMAC is the answer to many system administrators’ prayers. It archives all e-mail passing through Microsoft’s Exchange Server, which is used by most businesses. Because security and integrity is a major concern, users cannot bypass the system: even if a user deletes an e-mail out of their inbox, it is still archived. In addition, the system securely encrypts and verifies the authenticity of all records stored, lending solid credibility to retrieved e-mails as legal evidence. From a storage management perspective, mailMAC automatically manages databases by applying rotation schedules as set by system administrators – when a database is filled up with e-mail, a new one is automatically created to store the latest mail; administrators have full control over how long archived mail is kept immediately accessible for. This accessibility is enabled through a user friendly browser-based interface, which can be made available to all employees if required. We recommend going the accessible route, giving employees the power to search through their own mail. The benefits of this approach are clear, most importantly saving administrators the chore of having to restore old backup tapes just so one user can find a critical mail deleted 6 months ago. Search capabilities can also be configured to enable managers to search through mails of those that report to them, for instances like disciplinary hearings. We recommend that all mailMAC clients ensure that thorough electronic policies are put in place to cover legal bases.