Business

At Sambastream, we are trying to build the Future Workplace.

What does that mean?

The Future Workplace, is a term we coined to describe our ideal workplace. If you are a project manager trying to manage your local team, international teams, intergalatic teams whilst managing "a complex set of stakeholders". You know what we are talking about.

(April 13, 2010 - Photo by Oli Scarff/Getty Images Europe)

Today David Cameron was discussing flexible working at a Celebrating Women's Organisation at Southwark. There is a benefit to both Employees and Business Owners to support flexible working. It enables Employees to balance their work and lives, whether the Employee is a carer for family members, or whether it is for the flexibility to spend time on other commitments. For Business Owners, their is a benefit to support remote working as it enables their companies to retain staff or access a talent pool of professional employess at a lower cost based on part-time hours.

SambaJAM aims to support such opportunities, enabling employees and business owners to work securely and productively whether in the same office or from remote locations, such as working from home.


SambaJAM provides a structured way for businesses to manage their employees and their work, whether it is a financial controller's excel spreadsheet, a solicitor's legal document or an editor's final draft. SambaJAM enables you to create flexible work areas online to share documents and view auditing trails and activity feeds that provide you with the confidence and transparency that your remote workers are deliverying.

If flexible working is important to you, why not try out SambaJAM. Visit our product site at www.sambajam.com or contact us at www.sambajam.com/contact

Yesterday the big news was the UK economy grew a WHOLE 0.1% last quarter! This means the official end of the worst recession in peace time history, although there are many warnings that we're not completely out of the woods yet.

So does that mean we'll be returning to business as usual? Of course not! Recessions bring change, and while businesses will hopefully start to grow again, some long term trends have been accelerated by the recession and will start to become very obvious from 2010 onwards:

• Remote working - Offices have become increasingly mobile over the past decade, but with businesses looking to save operating costs on office space during the recession, even more businesses are starting to encourage home working for their staff. Forrester predicts that in the next 5 years, 43% of staff will be telecommuting regularly.

With the cold weather thawing now, the first few weeks of this month saw the UK snowed under for several days with up to 20% of the work force staying at home during the "snow days". The Centre for Economics and Business Research (cebr) predicted that this cost the British Economy approximately £900 million for each snow day we suffered.

The lost productivity from snow days leads to problems for both you and your staff:

• Drop in revenue - If you can't work or deliver services to your customers on snow days, you could stand to see your revenue drop significantly on those days

For years, we've been working in the Enterprise Content Management (ECM) space delivering large document management systems and collaboration portals for banks, global companies and NGOs. All of them used huge and complex systems such as FileNet, Documentum and (less huge but still complex) Microsoft SharePoint. And for years we never understood why it was so hard to manage documents using their clunky web interfaces.

For example, in SharePoint, a great product in manay regards which is why its become Microsoft's fastest growing product ever and used by loads of companies around the world for collaboration and document management, you get something that looks like this to manage your documents:

Its essentially a list of documents on a web page, if you click the arrow next to each document, you get a list of options you can do on that document, clicking one of the options opens a new window with a clunky form to edit or fill in. And SharePoint is one of the easier ones to deal with!

If you look at many of the start-ups in this space you’d think all of them would be taking advantage of the latest in web2.0/AJAX technology to improve on this web-page list concept, but you’d be mistaken. Just take a look, while the lists look nicer, they all still provide the same thing, a list of documents on a web-page which clicking on takes you to another page with all the document properties and forms to edit them, not really much of an improvement.

So when we came to design the document library for SambaJAM we looked for inspiration from what is undeniably the best tool to manage your documents - your desktop! By using the latest in web2.0/AJAX technology we set out to create a very intuitive, familiar experience for our end users to manage documents in their web browser. Some of the key features that were important to us during the design:

• Thumbnailing: Just like your desktop, isn't it much nicer to actually see visually the files your looking at. You may not remember the file name, but you may remember the front page had a bright orange logo. We've ensured all our documents are thumbnailed so you can easily browse through documents. However, if you do just want to go back to a list of documents (detailed view) you can simply switch views and do that too!
  
  

  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
• Drag and drop Documents: With many users and document controllers spending a lot of their time simply organising the documents everyone else has uploaded into the correct folders so they're properly organised and easy to find, we decided the easiest way to move documents around was simply to select the ones you wanted to move, and drag them to the folder you wanted to move them too. Not only that, but like Windows, you can also drag documents and files into the folder tree on the left hand menu.
  
  

  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
• Context Menus: Like your desktop, you can get access to all the actions you're allowed to perform on a document simply by clicking your right mouse button. All of the actions will bring up a popup form instead of re-directing you to another page so you can quickly do what you need to do and return back to the folder you're working on.
  
  

  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
• Tagging: Sometimes, documents don’t also make sense organised into specific folders. That’s where tagging comes in, you can tag different types of documents like ‘proposals’ or ‘reports’ with specific tags and using the tag tree menu on the left hand menu, easily show all the ‘proposals’ or ‘reports’ in the document library regardless of which folder they’re in.
  
  

  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
• Filters: Sometimes you just want to see the latest modified documents, the documents other people are currently working on or just the ones you're currently working on. By using the filter menu you can quickly filter all the documents to what you want to see.
  
  

  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
• Online Previews: Sometimes you just want to read a document, or quickly open it to see if its what you're looking for before you download it. Sometimes you can’t download it because the document was written in Microsoft Office 2007 and you only have Office 2003. That’s where online previews come in. By double clicking a document, you can open another tab in your space to view the document (so you can still easily flick back to your folders if needed) and read the document online. If you upload rich media such as audio (and in future Video) you can also listen/watch those online as well!
  
  

  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
• Versioning: The only way to ensure you're all working off the same version, and that no one's changes are lost is version control. We allow you to easily check-in and check-out documents to make your changes so every time you save a new copy, the previous versions are still accessible and can be rolled back to at anytime if someone made a mistake.
  
  

  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
• Commenting: Easily write comments against your documents instead of emailing your comments back and forth!
  
  

  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
• Uploading: Nearly every system I've ever seen requires you to go to a separate page to upload your files, and generally its one file at a time, during which you can't get on with anything else. We've decided that if you're uploading loads of files, especially large files which take time to upload, you should be able to simply queue them up, and then minimise the window to the footer so you can continue with your work and get notified when the uploads are finished. When I first used SambaJAM I uploaded several hundred files, and it had absolutely no impact on the rest of my work, I simply minimised it and got on with other things on SambaJAM!
  
  

  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
• Online Editing: We've integrated with Zoho so you can create and edit your word documents, spreadsheets and presentations online without leaving your web browser! Not only does this save you having to download the file and re-upload just to make a quick change, in the future you'll be able to collaboratively edit the document with your colleagues in real time!
  
  

  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
• Workflows: Workflows allow you to send documents for review or assign quick tasks like 'Update the logo on the front page' to other users without using email. By initiating a workflow for your document, you not only generate tasks for the people you want involved to see in their Tasks inbox on their Dashboard, you can also see the progress of how far along the review process the document is.
  
  

  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
• Microsoft Windows, Office and Email Integration: I'm getting ahead of myself here but we don't believe you should actually have to log into SambaJAM to create and edit documents stored there. Wouldn't it be great if you could edit your documents in Microsoft Office and using its built in functionality, save it back to SambaJAM directly? Or map SambaJAM as a network drive to manage your documents in Windows explorer? Or map SambaJAM as an email account in Outlook so you can simply drag email attachments into SambaJAM? Or simply email a document into SambaJAM without logging in? That’s a few of the things that will be coming in later on so watch this space!

And not only ALL of the above, but all your documents are stored on an Enterprise Content Management system used by Fortune 500 companies around the world so you get enterprise class security, scalability, customisation and all the other features you'd expect from a system of this type!

Pretty awesome eh? In-fact something I heard the other day that made me laugh, but I should put as a disclaimer:

IF YOU'RE ALLERGIC TO AWESOMENESS - PLEASE DO NOT USE SAMBAJAM!!!

You have been warned... ;)

In an effort to provide more value to our customers, we will be publishing a series of white papers to share the years of experiance we have accumulated around Document Management, Online Collaboration and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

The first white paper - An Introduction to Document Management, is a nice introduction for those who have little or no knowledge in this area on what it is, and how it helps organisations.

To view this paper, and all the others we will be publishing - just click on the 'White Papers' link above or go here.

If you have any suggestions for white papers you would like to see, please leave a comment below and we'll try our best to provide a useful white paper that addresses core topics and issues people have in the above areas.

According to Alfresco, even though 95% of Fortune 1000 companies have some form of Enterprise Content Management (ECM)/collaboration, less than 10% of the user's in those organisations actually use these technologies on a daily basis.

After having spent the last 4 years delivering these type of systems for clients, I think the main reason this statistic is justified is for the following 3 reasons:

• Cost: Lets face it, ECM/Collaboration doesn't come cheap for large organisations. With most systems charging a CAL (per seat) license, it becomes prohibitively expensive in some cases to roll these systems out to the entire enterprise. So while 95% of Fortune 1000 companies may have some form of ECM/collaboration system, only 10% of users have licenses to use it!
• Complexity: Most enterprise software is complex, not just in terms of what it does, but how it looks and is experienced. The worst offender in my books is IBM, they design software that not only looks ugly, but is way too complicated for most end users to simply start using. When you give user's this type of software, users will always fall back to the lowest common denominator, in most cases - email.
• Change Management: For a lot of projects I've been on, change management is an after thought, not a priority. Organisations spend so much money to develop and roll out the system, but considerably less time communicating with end users and training them to use and understand the benefits the new system.

So how can vendors like ours increase adoption of our products and systems in large organisations to increase ROIs and the success of the end product? For each of these problems I've listed our take on the solution:

• Cost: Most of the current solutions are on-premise systems. This requires a lot of up-front capital expenditure to setup and install all the parts needed to run the new system, and most likely an army of expensive consultants to help with the task. After a 6-12 month period, the system is finally ready for go-live, during this time very few people have actually used or even seen the system. We believe off-premise, or Software-as-a-Service, is the solution to this problem. With no up-front capital expenditure and no waiting period, end users can start using the system in hours or days, not months, and the cost of maintaining and supporting the system long term is reduced.
• Complexity: Most enterprise software vendors are years behind the type of web 2.0 interfaces and features that user's can get for free outside work. Another advantage of Software-as-a-Service is with its quick release cycles, the product is constantly being updated with the latest ideas and features for users so that their system isn't out of date and can constantly improve its usability to end users. Smaller start-ups also have an advantage here, we don't need to lock in requirements and technology 2-3 years ahead of release to ensure a massive team of developers can work together effectively, we can respond and adapt our technology as the landscape changes. All in all, by using the latest "web 2.0" technology, we can make very usable and "enjoyable" software for end users.
• Change Management: Vendors need to do more to help in this area instead of relying solely on the customer or a consultancy to do this. Whether its offering a package with expert change management support for your product, or simply having all the pre-prepared materials/methodology for customers to easily understand and perform this important task, there is a lot more that could be done in this area. While we haven't decided which route we will be taking, we definitely will offer some type of support to ensure effective change management - and more importantly - high adoption of our product!

If 90% of your organisation isn't using the new collaboration system you've bought effectively, not only is that a waste of money, that is also a major barrier to getting effective collaboration across your enterprise. This is just a few of our ideas on addressing the adoption issue. If you have any more please leave them below.

Our Service

At SambaStream we live and breath Content Management and Collaboration technology. Our team has a wealth of experience across a number of sectors and types of projects. SambaStream Professional Services are available to assist clients in the planning and delivery of Web Solutions for Content Management, Content Publishing and Collaboration.

It is with great pleasure today we finally get our site up online! Small steps towards something much bigger! For my first blog, I'd simply like to introduce you to our team and what we do. We hope to use this blog to keep everyone updated on our progress but also to tell our story of how we all left a global IT consultancy and started SambaStream. Hopefully along the way we'll learn some good lessons that we can share with you as we come across them!

Our story so far:

The three of us have all worked for one of the world's largest IT consultancies, helping large enterprises, NGOs, and governments around the world develop portals and content management systems. Through this experience we've had in-depth exposure to a lot of the issues that people come across when trying to use content management systems (which most people understand as online document management and collaboration) and most importantly, noticed that the backbone of the economy, small and medium size businesses, can't afford access to these critical technologies to help them collaborate and share knowledge effectively themselves!

Out of this need, and also from our desire to start our own business and have a positive impact on our field of expertise, we have left (or are in the process of leaving) the large IT consultancy to get started developing online applications for small and medium enterprises that are affordable, intuitive to use, and address the core needs of these businesses.