Company Net adds Gold Microsoft CRM Competency to Gold Sharepoint Competency



Company Net becomes the first company in Europe to achieve Gold in both Customer Relationship Management and Portals and Collaboration.

Company Net, the specialist provider for SharePoint and Dynamics CRM business solutions, today announced that it has been awarded the highest level of Microsoft Partner Network accreditation, the Gold Customer Relationship Management Competency, to add to the Gold  Portals and Collaboration Competency announced previously.

Company Net joins an elite group of less than a dozen organisations worldwide to be awarded Gold Competency in both Customer Relationship Management, and Portals and Collaboration.  This underlines its position as a global leader in combined Dynamics CRM and SharePoint solutions.

Microsoft Partner: Gold for Sharepoint and CRM

With the release of Dynamics CRM 2011, and its close integration with SharePoint 2010, Company Net is in a unique position to offer its clients the highest levels of technical skills and experience to build effective and innovative business solutions, maximising the complimentary capabilities of both Dynamics CRM and SharePoint.

Derrick McCourt, Regional Director Microsoft, Scotland & Wales commented:

“We are delighted to recognise this achievement and welcome Company Net onto the New Gold Standard within the Microsoft Partner Network.

Company Net’s SharePoint and CRM skills are now formally recognised at the highest level of customer satisfaction, project delivery and technical competence that Microsoft require. We would like to congratulate them on this excellent achievement and on their continued commitment to the Microsoft Platform.”

That’s not Sharepoint, is it?

Hymans Robertson, which provides advisory and management services to the occupational pensions market, has just gone live with a new public website for its Clubvita subsidiary.

And it looks great.

Hymans Robertson Clubvita Website

Gartner Predicts Bright Future for Sharepoint as Unified Content Management Platform

Following recent research by Gartner, organisations looking for a unified enterprise and web platform effectively have only four realistic vendor choices: Microsoft, Oracle, Open Text and IBM.

Gartner Enterprise Content Management Magic Quadrant (October 2009)

Gartner Web Content Management Magic Quadrant (August 2010)

With Open Text’s market share diminishing, IBM’s continued focus on enterprise scale organisations and Oracle’s lack of favour with those who have invested in a Microsoft infrastructure, the future looks bright for SharePoint.

You Know You’re Getting Old When …

• … the World Cup starts, and you can’t slope off from work early to watch the opening match because you’ve got too many “responsibilities”.
• … you’re carrying around so many keys that you can’t actually fit them into your  pocket.

Keys

• … you’re spending £150 a week on food to feed a ravenous and ever growing family.
• … you go and watch Scotland play cricket, and all the players are considerably younger than you are.  Even Graham Hamilton, the battle-worn skipper, a seasoned veteran who is greying at the temples, looking slightly haggard and carrying a few spare pounds.

Gavin Hamilton

You Don’t Have to Drive Saab to Work Here …

At Company Net, we don’t do company cars.  But if we did, the standard issue would surely be a Saab.  

In an earlier post I had claimed never to have driven a Saab.  How quickly some things change.  I’ve now taken consignment of my new car – a Saab 9-3, replacing my old wheels which were written off after fire damage:  

My Saab

 

This takes the Saab count at Company Net to something like 20% of the workforce.  It must surely be something to do with the reliable engineering and quality of the workmanship.  

On a daily basis the staff car park now resembles a Saab owners’ jamboree: 

Saab Owners' Jamboree

 

Company Net Staff Car Park

Sharepoint Social – Raising a Glass to Enterprise 2.0

We at Company Net are currently engaged by one of a number of clients the drinks industry to design a global Corporate Portal for them on Sharepoint 2007. After extensive consultation with a wide cross-section of staff over recent weeks, one of the major themes to emerge was the importance of social element of the corporate portal – in particular: 

• allowing staff to use the native Wiki functionality of Sharepoint 2007, to form a structured Knowledge-base;
• providing blogging functionality to share experience, expertise and good practice; and
• MySite functionality to join up staff across the organisation – allowing them to profile themselves in a way which has never been possible before.

We were blown away by the enthusiasm and vision of the staff consulted.  They were quick to realise the benefits of the Sharepoint toolset, and identify areas where they could make use of these to improve communication and information-sharing throughout the business – despite the obvious cultural shift which this brings.

Sharepoint Social Computing

Those cultural considerations are well explored in Richard Dennison’s excellent blog article.  This documents some of the challenges experienced by BT in implementing Enterprise 2.0 tools for BT – and how they overcame them.   

Whilst BT did not use Sharepoint for its project, there are plenty of good news stories about those who have.  Check out  Social Computing with Sharepoint, which sets out the successes of the likes of Electronic Arts and Accenture in their implementations of Enterprise 2.0 functionality using Sharepoint 2007.

It’s no surprise that, in October 2009, Gartner placed Microsoft as Visionaries and Leaders in its Magic Quadrant for the ‘Social Computing’ category:

Gartner Magic Quadrant - Social Computing - October 2009

Gartner’s defines the ‘Social Computing’ category as follows: 

“We view this market as consisting of products that focus on team collaboration, communities and social interaction. The buyers in this market are looking for persistent virtual environments, in which participants can create, organize and share information, as well as interact with each other.”

Looking ahead to Sharepoint 2010, it’s clear that Microsoft are looking to develop the vision further and maintain their position as visionaries.  There’s a great blog article on the “New Social Computing Features” of Sharepoint 2010 on Microsoft UK’s Sharepoint Team’s blog.  One particular area of focus for Sharepoint 2010 has been developing the social potential of the MySite functionality, as well as further enhancing the existing blogging and wiki features.

Company Net is now Tweeting

Company Net on Twitter: http://twitter.com/CompanyNetLtd.

Fun with Microsoft Tag

I’ve been having some fun with Microsoft Tag. 

 

Microsoft describes Microsoft Tag as “a breakthrough technology that transforms everyday things in the real world into live links to online information and entertainment.  From your mobile phone, simply snap or scan a Tag image anywhere you see it – in editorials, advertisements, product packaging, signs and storefronts – and gain instant access to Websites, videos, reviews, schedules, contact information, social networks, discounts, promotions and more!”

 

Or put another way, Microsoft’s snappy tagline (excuse the pun) describes Tag as - “Linking real life with the digital world.”

 

I’ve created a couple of tags below to illustrate the principle.  It works better when the tag appears in a non-digital environment (a poster, a business card, a magazine advert, etc) and links you into a digital environment (a web page, the contacts section of your mobile phone, etc).  But hopefully it gives you a flavour.

 

One is a tag for my LinkedIn site:

Microsoft Tag: My LinkedIn Site

 

The other is a tag to this very blog:

 

Microsoft Tag: Howie's Blog

You’ll need to install Microsoft Tag application onto your mobile phone, which you can do quickly and easily by following the instructions at http://www.microsoft.com/tag/content/download/.  Then you point your phone at the tag and it recognises it and executes the appropriate action.

We (at Company Net) will be putting vCard tags on our new business cards.   Recipients with Microsoft Tag installed on their phone will be able to scan the tag on the card with their phone, and this will automatically transmit our contact details to their phone.  A small application of the technology perhaps, but the potential applications are limitless. 

A few of them are showcased on the Microsoft Tag site. 

Company Net Completes MBO

I’m very pleased to announce that Company Net has just completed a Management Buy Out – and just as delighted to announce that, with three of my fellow colleagues, I have been able to take the opportunity to invest personally in the company and become a shareholder.

Company Net

This is a significant watershed in Company Net’s history, in that for the first time since 1998 we have no external ownership and can focus entirely on our own destiny as a company.

We look forward to exciting times ahead!

Design Considerations for a Public-Facing Sharepoint Site

I can recommend a great Live Meeting (first delivered on 2nd December 2009), entitled “Design Considerations for a Public Facing Site (in Sharepoint)“.  Delivered by Lori Neff, it lasts for one hour exactly and covers a lot of ground.

Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server 2007

If you’ve got a reasonably high-level technical understanding of Sharepoint, and you’re looking to get some insights into how you can use Sharepoint to deliver your graphically-rich, public-facing web site (or Intranet/Extranet), then this is for you.

Lori covers:

• Graphical design considerations (in particular, working with a specialist design agency)
• Considerations for architecting your solution
• Considerations for deployment
• Planning site architecture
• Customisation
• CSS
• Master pages
• Page Layouts
• Accessibility
• Search Engine Optimisation

A few interesting other nuggets fall out of the presentation too.  For example, it’s been well trailed that Sharepoint 2010 will provide much greater cross-browser support, for Firefox in particular. However, it hasn’t been quite so widely publicised that Sharepoint 2010 will not support version 6 of Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer browser.

It seems a reasonable stance for Microsoft to take, given that IE6 was released in 2001 (where has the time gone?), and there have been two major releases subsequently. 

However, according to Bloom Media’s statistics (published September 2009), IE6 still represents 14% of the browser share.  And with online petitions such as SaveIE6 it would seem that the slow demise of the aging browser may drag on for a few years yet.

For those of you about to embark on designing public-facing Sharepoint 2010 sites – beware!

SharePoint 2010 Public Beta now Available for Download

The excitement surround Microsoft Sharepoint 2010 continues to build. 

Sharepoint 2010

Following hot on the heels of last month’s Sharepoint Conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft today announced that the Public Beta release for Sharepoint 2010 is now available for download.

Company Net is Top for Sharepoint

We’re delighted that Company Net’s new web-site was accepted by the Top Sharepoint site today.  You can read more about Company Net’s submission on the Company Net blog.

Top Sharepoint

Top Sharepoint is a great showcase of what is possible with Sharepoint. I’d encourage you to take a look and also place your vote or leave your comment on what you think of Company Net’s new Sharepoint site.