My technology needs had out grown my infrastructure and my ability to support what my users—okay what I—demanded. Office 365 came to the rescue. For far less than I spend on coffee each month, my household is now equipped with enterprise class email and collaboration tools.

• Family tree modeled in Managed Metadata – Done
• Appliance maintenance history calendar – Done
• Extranet site for collaborative planning of family reunion – Done
• Email and Calendar push to my Windows Phone – Done
• Integrating my TiVo via BCS – Maybe this summer

There are some things that I just can’t do with Office 365. I won’t be using PerformancePoint anytime soon to analyze the sleeping, eating and diaper patters of my new born daughter. Even though I would love to do that, Office 365 doesn’t support several Enterprise features like PerformancePoint, RecordsCenter or PowerPivot. Despite that limitation is a tremendously valuable tool. The best part is that I can access it from anywhere and I don’t have to spend Saturday nights applying the latest updates to my home server.

While my example here is likely extreme for most households, they are run-of-the-mill for many businesses.

• Company structure modeled in Managed Metadata
• Company payroll and holiday calendar
• Extranet for managing supplier relationships
• Enterprise email and calendaring using tools employees know
• Surface data out of your internal systems using BCS

It is easy to see how my domestic use of SharePoint can easily map to the management of your business. Office 365 has removed the barrier to entry for enterprise class communication tools for small to mid-sized business. You can be up and running in a very short amount of time and we would love to help you get there.

About Allyis

Allyis provides technology consulting and services that help businesses improve performance and meet their unique objectives. Whether designing and developing an employee intranet, helping you increase the reach and impact of your digital marketing campaigns, or providing the talent you need for your projects, Allyis leverages people and technology to help you achieve your unique business goals.

As an example, let’s talk about a specific scenario where SharePoint can have a major impact: contract management. The challenges of contract management for a sales-driven organization (and hence the problems SharePoint could help solve) include the following:

• Contracts usually need to be approved by at least one person, and there needs to be an easily referenced record of approval.
• Contracts and supporting documentation need to be retained and easily discovered later for internal reference as well as for external audits.
• There is a huge cost (both in terms of expense and opportunity cost) of having your sales team spend a lot of time creating, managing, and searching for this documentation.

For all of the reasons above, email is a terrible solution to this problem. What is needed is a business process that enforces documentation standards, captures all of the key information needed to understand the contract, manages the approval workflow, and makes everything easy to find days, months, or even years later. Here are some ways that SharePoint can enable that business process:

• Documentation standards, enforced by document templates, created directly within a centralized document library
• Workflows that move decisions and information out of email, enable managers to review and approve contracts, and provide access to supporting documentation, including estimates, relevant emails, and previous contracts or change orders
• Document Libraries that include simple but robust tagging based on document type and Views that enable people to see only the documents that are relevant to them based on role, time period, customer, or a number of other factors

Our own experience with a solution like this has enabled our sales people to spend roughly 5-10% more time doing what moves the business forward, not searching for old documentation in email or saved on their hard drives. It has also enabled us to reach consistency in our contract terms, leaving us at less risk in the event of an audit. Bottom line, we are spending less time on administrative tasks, while at the same time reducing financial risk and freeing up time to focus on growing the business.

That’s what business productivity means.

Original Price: $399
Your Price: $299

Use Promo Code AllyisCloud during registration to take advantage of this limited time offer!

REGISTER NOW!

Business Leaders, Technology Leaders and Technology Professionals – Announcing the Cloud Intelligence Conference on April 17, 2012!

Topics include SharePoint, Lync, Exchange, CRM, Hyper-V, App-V, System Center, Intune, Windows Azure, SQL Azure and more!

This is your personal invitation to the Cloud Intelligence Technology Conference, a one-day local event for Business Leaders (CEO, CFO, GM…), Technology Leaders (CIOs, CTOs, VPs, IT Directors, IT Managers…) and Technology Professionals (IT Manager/Architect, IT Administrator, Developer…) During this single day event, you’ll receive a high level overview of what Microsoft’s Cloud strategy is and how it can benefit you and your company. Come hear how companies are saving millions of dollars by utilizing Microsoft Cloud Technologies!

Event Details:
Washington State Convention Center
April 17, 2012
Register Now
More event information here.

CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, CTOs, VPs and other IT Management are finding value in attending our Preparing for the Cloud and Cloud Roadmap tracks.  IT Pros and Developers are becoming more educated with sessions on Platform as a Service, Software as a Service and Private Cloud.

About the 5 Tracks and 20 Sessions:
Join your peers at Washington State Convention Center on April 17, 2012 so you can gain a full understanding of what the Microsoft Cloud has to offer!

Tracks include:

• Cloud Roadmaps and Overviews
• Sessions mostly dedicated to CEO, CFO, CIO, CTO, VP, Director and Management Level audience
• Preparing for the Cloud
• Sessions mostly dedicated to CIO, CTO, VP, Director and Management Level audience
• Software as a Service
• Sessions dedicated to showcasing Microsoft’s software available online
• Platform as a Service
• Sessions dedicated to showcasing development in Microsoft’s cloud
• Private Cloud/Virtualization
• Sessions dedicated to showcasing how Microsoft visualization products can help save your company money immediately!

Testimonials from the 2011 Seattle, WA Cloud Intelligence Conference:

• 99% of the attendees stated that they would recommend the conference to other IT Professionals
• 95% of the attendees stated that they were satisfied with the content and speakers at the conference.
• The one day format was perfect for IT pros with busy schedules. Nice local presentation not requiring overnight travel. Pretty decent overview descriptions to get the cloud concept into company discussions. 
• I’m working on the sourcing strategy trying to understand how cloud will disrupt (in a good way) our current outsource agreement planning. The conference help understand the basic concepts, models and current maturity.
• Like the different tracks to the sessions. The Cloud Roadmaps and Overviews truly provided basic and easy to understand information. I got a lot out since I have no previous knowledge regarding Cloud Technology. Thank you. 
• Thank you it was a great event, this is my second one and I loved it. 
• One word, great, I had a chance to network and meet other IT professionals.

I reminded our employees that the great culture we all enjoy was no accident; the founders had experienced less than positive work environments early in their careers and knew they could do better, and realized that by serving employees well they’d be serving clients, too.

We also presented our annual employee awards and each employee was given an opportunity to say something in acceptance of his/her award. It became very clear during these heartfelt and sincere speeches that employees recognized and appreciated that the founders had created a place to work where they could shine.

And what’s important to me is seeing proof that the focus to maintain a great workplace is being carried forward every day by employees and managers alike. Happy Birthday, Allyis!

Number 1:

In response to the question “What challenges are you facing, or would you face, in implementing a culture of communication?” was: “Past experience of damaged relationships between management and front line employees”.

Unfortunately I would have to say in my experience this is not uncommon. It is so easy to make mistakes or to speed through a process without thinking through its consequences from different perspectives.  It would seem that the path to damaging relationships is an easy one and it is a very narrow path to doing things “right”. Many times management just don’t have good past examples to follow, haven’t received training to understand the impact of poor communication, or appear to be driven only by what they are held accountable for – the numbers.  They might feel they don’t have the time to take the time – but in the long run it ends up costing them and the company time and lost productivity.  Often leadership thinks that the shortest distance between point A (our work) and B (company profit) is a straight line.  They forget the lesson that road crews learn the first day on the job – to follow the contour of the environment means faster and more successful completion (and a happier crew).  Only occasionally, after counting the cost, do they bore through a mountain to get to the other side. 

Among the hundreds of ways something can go wrong:  Leadership may have changed the way they thought and their decisions; kept too much information to themselves about what was to come or what/why something happened; might have made some hard decisions and not followed them with compassion and thoroughness of implementation, etc.

The question posed here is what to do about it once it happens – or worse, what to do if in fact it has become a pattern and what employees have come to expect from leadership. If this has happened to your organization to a large or hopefully minor degree, I think that it is best to think about taking the following 3 steps.

1)      Do your homework! Leadership that has damaged relationships in the past are likely not to be aware of the problem or impact of having done so.  HR needs to do their homework and move this from a touchy-feely topic to a business issue by answering and asking some very important questions.  What has happened, what was the impact on employees, what was the resulting impact on the business?  Putting the ‘cost’ of past damaged relationships into terms leadership cares most about is a critical first place to start.

2)      Show the impact on their goal(s). Presuming that HR themselves have developed a ‘trust’ relationship with leadership, explain the above with the leadership person that is most likely to hear, receive, and understand; and who is able to help you help them.  It is important that they see the consequences of what has happened which is most likely the impact on the level of “engagement” of the employees.  Refer to the following for statistics that confirm the cost of ‘dis-engaged’ employees. http://blog.allyis.com/lwhra Helping leadership see this may in fact be a prolonged process – but it is a worthy and necessary step to take.

3)      Develop a response. Once he/she/they acknowledge the error (or shall we say that there was “a better way” so as to not test a leader’s ego) and you have explained the consequence it had on employees – it is time to work with them to develop a response.  It is of course best if HR already has something in mind as a starting point.  Sometimes this could be as significant as public acknowledgement to the group of people that were impacted; covering what happened, the short fall of action taken by leadership, and the specific action that will take place to correct the situation.  (Note that I said ‘people’ instead of ‘employees’ because that is the healthiest perspective to take in developing a response). Often times there is nothing that can be done to correct it other than the admission of a new learning that took place, OR possibly a promise with conviction that there will be a change in leadership’s approach to similar situations in the future.

As a footnote to the discussion above – you might suggest that you/HR be involved early on in communications or in situations where trust of the employees may be at risk. 

Number 2:

In response to the question “What challenges are you facing, or would you face, in implementing a culture of communication?” was: “Support from senior management and openness to improve”.

I interpret this to mean that senior management does not see that a culture of communication is valuable enough to invest in or improve.  The second half of the statement seems to imply that either the senior management themselves are not open to improving or that they are not open to improving the culture.  Regardless of which of these interpretations are accurate, I think our suggestion to this situation is not unlike the above.

1)      HR needs to do their homework.  Determine to get greater understanding of senior management’s ‘resistance’ to improve: Why isn’t senior management open in the ways they should be?  What has happened in the past?  What experience have they had that is relevant?  Also seek to understand the ‘opportunity for change’: Where has there been support in feeding the ‘culture of communication’ and what was the (hopefully favorable) result?  Who led that effort?  Who does senior management look up to and respect in the industry and what do they say about the subject? (You may want to use those individual’s books, articles, or quotes).

2)      Show the impact on their goal(s). Show what impact avoiding the ‘negative’ results and reaching a ‘positive’ outcome might have on their goals.  (Similar to step 2 above).

3)      Develop a response/action.  Develop an action plan along with your senior manager(s) with measures that will prove how worthwhile it was (the ROI).   

Number 3:

 In response to the question “What challenges are you facing, or would you face, in implementing a culture of communication?” was: “establishing trust with individuals who are wondering what new skill you have learned at a conference”. 

I am hopeful that this is said tongue in cheek.  However, if it is not, it seems to imply to me that those that in authority over HR at a minimum don’t believe the value of conferences, maybe don’t believe the value of external learning, or worse case, don’t trust HR.  The latter being a very difficult situation but also a worthy mission. Incredible challenges make for incredible successes.  Often times though, the success is just a collection of minor ‘wins’ or accomplishments.  Don’t lose perspective – don’t lose hope! Stay the course. 

My hope is that this individual walked away from the symposium with one thing that they can implement which will truly impact their company.  Building trust takes time and intentional actions.  The best way to build trust is to spend as much time as possible with leadership, sharing ideas, perspectives, possibilities, issues, goals, etc.  Find one topic that will impact the company greatly and keep ‘singing the tune’ (like employee engagement) every chance you get.  Become an expert so that you have a suggestion and rationale for every question and every situation that comes up.  Balance this tenacity with humility, patience, perseverance, and relationships with leadership – and sprinkle with new learnings in the HR world.  

I believe that each one of us is in our position and company not by accident and for a specific purpose.  If it isn’t you doing HR there, someone else would be.  Meaning that your role is to move the needle on the acceptance of HR as a business partner, an integral part of the ‘decision makers’, and to prove the role is worth investing in.  Not unlike the responses to the above two tweets, one thing that might be helpful is to prove the ROI for your training by showing your impact on what is likely your manager’s goal(s); the 3 “Cs”: Creation of Revenue, Control of Costs, and Conservation of Capital. Refer to the statistics at http://blog.allyis.com/lwhra for help understanding and sharing the very real connection between employee engagement, company goals, and the value of the HR role.

 - Mark Borys, Director of HR at Allyis