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Pushing Productivity

New products from innovative companies Ikimbo and knoa are aimed at reducing costs and increasing output.

Efficiency. Productivity. Cost savings. Every organization strives to achieve these goals on its way to profitability. But not every organization meets this challenge. There are two major hurdles. One is employee turnover. The other is the complicated schedules of workers who may have several communications devices, yet might still be unavailable for decision-making at unexpected crucial moments.

Enter two companies with different, yet equally intriguing technologies ready for deployment: Ikimbo and knoa. Ikimbo has developed Omniprise-a platform for instant, secure communication. knoa has introduced a software suite of the same name that provides intuitive application training. You could say that knoa helps to increase the productivity of people while Omniprise helps to boost the efficiencies of the processes they use.

Ikimbo: Taking Instant Messaging to New Heights

Take a busy executive, load her up with multiple communications devices, and then try to reach her in an emergency. It’s possible that she, her equally equipped next in command, and her associate on the project at another firm, won’t be accessible. As a result, a problem that needed to, and could have been, solved in minutes may languish for several hours or more as the appropriate people are tracked down, able to talk and share necessary documents, and then, finally, make a decision. So much for the competitive edge.

Ikimbo CEO Edwin Miller, and his colleagues, created a solution that stands instant messaging (1M) on its head. “What we’re doing is putting humans, applications and machines together to shorten transaction times,” says Miller.  An XML-based platform that streamlines communications channels in an enterprise, “Omniprise is integrated with existing enterprise applications like ERP, CRM and MRP,” Miller explains. “You can take our servers and invite anyone into a given group, whether in the company or outside. The application can be set up on any device. If I get e-mail, I click on the link and the installation takes place. IfI’m checked as a mobile user, I’d install it on my Palm or my RIM BlackBerry device.”

Using IM and conferencing, file sharing and transfer, presence detection, wireless access and indexing, archiving and retrieval of real-time content, Omniprise makes inter- and intra-company communication instant and secure, and provides historical records.

This, says Gene Monacelli, national Management Solutions & Services leader of the telecommunications practice of Deloitte & Touche’s Technology, Media & Telecommunications (TMT) Group, is especially important in the area of supply chain management. “Today, most systems that monitor supply chain activities monitor them within a company’s enterprise and send out alerts,” he says. “It’s not interactive in nature. With Ikimbo’s Omniprise, there’s a real opportunity to monitor events within an ‘extraprise’ as they move across multiple companies’ supply chain processes. When an exception occurs, it can facilitate a resolution interactively with the responsible parties in real time. And this works not only person-to-person, but also personto-machine and machine-to-machine.”

Creating a Communication Chain

Naresh Lakhanpal, national director of products and services of Deloitte & Touche’s TMT Group, has embraced Omniprise as a solution for a variety of reasons. “It goes beyond the firewall, but is secure. The technology works well with existing applications in an enterprise because it’s accessindependent and allows organizations to communicate quickly,” he explains.

“Look at the human capital issues, also,” he adds. “Before Sept. 11, few companies thought about how to continue business if something disastrous happens. This technology allows it.”

Q4 2002 Annual Report

Pushing Productivity

Deloitte & Touche itself did a limited trial with 20 people to see how it could be used. “The beauty of Omniprise is that it’s viral,” Lakhanpal says. “In one week we had nearly 200 people up on Omniprise. It took off more quickly than we expected because it’s very easy and intuitive to use and people like it. It gives you a view of where people are, but users can control when and how they want to be available.”

Lockheed Martin is being introduced to Omniprise through a limited pilot of 50 corporate decision makers. “We’re looking at functionality for both wired and wireless,” says Burlie Brunson, vice president of program development. “We want the ability to identify teams working closely together that have 1M requirements, whether in the office or on the road.”

Brunson sees Omniprise not only as an in-house solution for Lockheed Martin, but also as an application the company would incorporate into solutions for its customers, including the U.S. Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, the Federal Aviation Association and NASA. And, he says, there are opportunities for using the human-to-machine communications, and even machine-to-machine. For example, in processing invoices where a signature is missing, Omniprise could automate notification and get an authorization sent in response. “Because Omniprise keeps a log, there’s a record to substantiate that the authority was there for a decision,” he says.

“Omniprise is all about collaboration and speed,” says Lakhanpal. “Actually, it follows the evolution of the Internet, which allows collaboration with no regard to distance at a low price point.”

knoa:  Connecting People to Technology New software. For most people, it’s excruciating to learn how to use it. And, more likely than not, they’ll never integrate but a fraction of the tools it provides. When you put that into a corporate situation replete with employee turnover, productivity becomes an issue.