MyiOffice Corporation

MyiOffice Corporation: Check out our new website facelift: www.myioffice....

2011-08-03T11:45:00.000-05:00

MyiOffice Corporation: Check out our new website facelift: www.myioffice....: "Check out our new website facelift: www.myioffice.net"

MyiOffice Corporation

2011-08-03T11:44:00.000-05:00

MyiOffice Corporation

2011-08-03T11:43:00.003-05:00

Check out our new website facelift: www.myioffice.net

New International Client - Leader in Global CSR Movement

2011-03-22T15:19:00.001-05:00

V5 Now Online

2010-11-07T08:37:00.004-06:00

See slide show here: http://www.greenportal.org/images/myioffice_voa.swf

See www.MyiOffice.Net

The Virtual Workplace

2009-05-31T09:59:00.003-05:00

An Example Page...

State of Iowa Project

2009-02-21T16:26:00.005-06:00

The State of Iowa Economic Development wanted to reduce time it takes for legal & compliance work teams to find, share and store documents related to economic development grants, and also eliminate the need to print and mail documents for review by state officals, compliance auditors and public access requests.

We provided a virtual workplace that automates the creation of virtual binders that are stored in virtual workrooms. Data is exchanged via stored procedures. When a work team- member logs in, they arrive in a 3-D virtual workroom. They can click on a State map showing all 99 counties. Clicking or selecting a county opens a county's virtual workroom where binders for each county project are "stored" on virtual shelves.

Clicking on a virtual binder opens it up like a book in which tabbed pages open access to files, data, applications, documents, etc. that replicates the way physical binders are now assembled. There are working binders for confidential information, and public binders that can be shared as needed. All data is "pulled" via stored procedures from the State's data server only when acccessed by a user.

Work teams are now seeing how this system can be applied across many State agencies. The previous method of using email, shared drives and printed documents was time consuming requiring hours of manual effort. We have now been asked to assist the State in providing imaging hardware and software to automate the process of moving all paper documents into virtual binders and virtual workrooms.

The workrooms and binders are only part of a full scale virtual workplace where each team member has their own "virtual office" with all of the objects and artifacts of a physical office replicated into virtual funtionality. The system also includes video webconferencing so that team members can reduce travel and increase contact with the companies and officals they work with around the State

My Resume

2009-02-16T13:56:00.001-06:00

My Resume

A New Way To Look At The Business of Team Work

2009-01-03T07:59:00.018-06:00

We are in the business of managing team-based knowledge workers. Our business is based on three primary values:

Time Management
Cost Justification (Commercial Purpose)
Synchronization of Effort (Team Work)

The concept we have developed is best described as a "virtual workplace." The idea is based on the fact that knowledge work is not some place you travel to, it is what you do. It does not matter where you do it, as much as why and for what commercial purpose. And ultimately what matters most is to whom are you accountable. In team-based knowledge work, accountability is about commitment to shared commercial purpose and synchronization of effort.

Time Management

How we spend our time reflects what we value most. Both in our personal time and the time we devote to work. In team-based knowledge work, each individuals time and effort must be measured collaboratively. Project management tools are used for this purpose so that tasks are assigned with milestones and benchmarks to monitor progress.

I believe that "working" in the traditional office, the place most of us commute to daily, wastes a great deal of time. The commute alone is a time waste that also has a cost both in actual consumption of resources and in the time it takes to prepare and recover from the effort.

Many of us find ourselves commuting to sit in front of a computer. Some of us actually carry our computers with us on the commute - plugging it in, in the morning, unplugging it to take it home at the end of the day. In most organizations being part of a team requires commuting to a computer, even if the the work itself could be done by having the computer do the commuting, on the Internet.

In a traditional office showing up on time and leaving at the expected end of the day is a way to justify earning a paycheck. What you accomplish each day is seldom measured accurately. For most it is summarized at the end of the week when time sheets are filled in for payroll. The actual time spent doing real work is often a fraction of the time spent at the workplace. Which is why sitcoms like "The Office" and comics like Dilbert are so popular. The premise of most of the humor is lack of trust between workers and their bosses. Bosses want to see work getting done, workers want to be judged on the value of their work. Showing up is too often the only way to measure effort.

When work is transparent, so that you actually see it performed it is easier to cost justify. The more complex the work, the more difficult it is to see it performed. This is why most knowledge work is measured by final output the "deliverable." Days, weeks and months can go by without anyone actually seeing how the work is progressing. (to be continued)

Beyond E-Mail

2008-04-09T08:39:00.001-05:00

Beyond E-Mail

Working In The 21st Century

The Future of Work Includes Telecommuting, Flex Time & Globally Dispersed Teams. They Need A "Place" To Work:

Web Networked (Virtual) Teams Require Fewer Hours
But Get More Work Done!
Reduce Costs, Go Green & Increase Productivity

Workplace Realities

In 2000	By 2010:
-- Oil $20/barrel -- Wheat $3/bushel	-- Oil $200/barrel -- Wheat $22/bushel
-- Domestic Economy Dominates	-- Global Economy Dominates
-- Climate Change Not An Issue	-- Carbon Credits Matter

What Changes Are Expected?

By 2010:

Commuting costs will be transferred to employers.

WiFi Technology Continues to Expand Globally

Internet Office Apps Proliferate.

Global Travel Costs Increase.

Economic Growth Moves to Developing Countries

Laptops outsell desktops as mobility rules

Net savvy young people will demand new work tools

How To Adapt The Workplace To The Changes Ahead.
How does a 20/hr work week sound to you?

Teamwork, across silos and geographic boundaries, is required to meet the challenges ahead. Web-based or virtual teams will increasingly be employed. The Global economy will continue to develop around a virtual workplace in which technology and Internet connectedness will be more important than rooms full of cubicles. However, managing web based teams may require even more discipline than traditional workplace teams. But the upside is working fewer hours while accomplishing greater productivity and more stakeholder value.

Web-based teams succeed only when each team member agrees to a daily discipline of participation. This not only assures that tasks are completed on time it also encourages online relationship building. As team members see others completing tasks and fulfilling commitments trust grows and the team bonds around their shared purpose.

Working with globally dispersed teams over 10 years, we have developed a platform, tools, process and methods to assist team formation and help teams become more productive. We have distilled the process of team building to 7 steps:

Select priority team (re: high value objective)

Identify team workflow requirements (existing process)

Do an audit of legacy team tools & applications

Define requirements for new tools & applications

Provide teams with a "place" to work online

Facilitate integration of legacy & new applications & tools

Facilitate online work flow through coaching and support

The Virtual Workplace is built around these 7 steps as a Composite Application Portal in which applications, tools, process templates, coaching and support are fully integrated.

Start With A Pilot As Proof of the Potential

A pilot is a full featured portal customized around a specific high value objective. Can be a project, a process, an application integration, or any objective that requires a high performance web networked team.

Virtual Teaming

2007-12-11T16:04:00.000-06:00

Composite Applications Portal
for Virtual Teams

From http://www.bioteams.com/2005/04/06/bioteaming_a_manifesto.html

What problems do Virtual Teams face?

Technology adoption - learning new technology tools, especially when these diverge greatly from familiar metaphors and interfaces.

Changing habits - adopting new ways of working, sharing and co-operating among project team members requires open-mindedness, patience and structure. It just doesn't happen automatically.

Accountability issues - remaining committed and responsible for assignments and responsibilities may require analysis and reframing of how people share information about their work and how they can introduce a systemic high-level of transparency in it.

Team mobilisation - the ability to maintain all of the team highly motivated and tightly involved is a critical factor is virtual team success.

Overfocus on Technology and Process instead of achievement of results.

Complexity - multiple enterprises, multiple working locations, busy manager/director/owners , mixed relationship histories, hidden agendas, technology illiteracy, etc.

Limited access - limited access to technology or the Internet infrastructure.

High mobility - working in many locations (including their cars!) and may only be able to meet physically once or twice a month.

Balance of power - traditional hierarchies or collaborative cooperation? How to shift from the old to the new?

Multicultural Issues - Business-related cultural issues.

2007-10-25T16:04:00.000-05:00

The Future of Work...

What changes will affect your workplace? See WIKI Colloborative Working Environments(CWE) for context related to:

Team Formation

Team-Based CRM

Team-Based PM

Team Learning

Networks of Teams

Download Collaborative Environments 2020 and The Future Workplace to see how others around the world anticipate significant changes in the way people work.
More

First V3 Portals Now Being Launched!

2007-09-30T11:59:00.000-05:00

This week marks the first deployment of V3 client portals. Each of these portals is now being launched on their own domains.

Shown is the Nations Financial Group Portal at http://ioffice.nationsfg.com

It features a custom Rolodex CRM and client's binders that provide up to the day portfolio review and sales presentations...also included are Project Management, Training and Client Presentation modules.

(note these are private portals so only registered subscribers have access)

The Taber Asset Management portal is also launched this week. It also has a custom Rolodex CRM in which Craig is parsing all of the data from their existing ACT CRM system for transfer to the iPG Rolodex.

The Taber Portal is at http://www.taberasset.net (Also private to Taber subscribers)

In addition to a custom Rolodex CRM, project management and training modules, Taber portals feature custom binders for client portfolio review and sales presentations.

Watch this space for the announcement of DMHEC, ISU OBP and kMatrix portals. We also are launching Fastek and Marratech UK portals in October...

Our initial goal is to sell and launch 5 portals a month .... each with their own custom CRM Rolodex and binders

Finally! Consensus Now Building for The Virtual Workplace

2007-09-13T13:31:00.000-05:00

In the last few days several articles have appeared in technology magazines in which the changes we have been suggesting in previous posts are on the minds of strategic corporate thinkers:

See Re-Imagining Management from CIO.

Then check out this from Tech Republic on High Performance Teaming.

And this: Tech Republic Teams Blog.

And finally this from CISCO CEO today on Colloboration Technology.

Thank you, thank you! - I could not have said it better myself.

Beyond Email – Will A New Web Conferencing Hybrid Change the Way People Work?

2007-09-06T09:16:00.000-05:00

Email has been evolving since its birth as a network messaging system way back in the 1960’s.[1] Today most people rely on it as a primary communication tool. It is not going away. It has many uses. But advancing Internet technology is opening the way for new tools that just might change how people work together in what some say is the future of work.

The virtual workplace is fast becoming a reality where globally dispersed teams work online in Secure Virtual Office’s (SVO’s) and Collaborative Working Environments (CWE) [2]. It started with web conferencing where online meetings are conducted via audio-video whiteboard events. But web conferencing events by themselves do not provide the workflow tools that sustain productive team work. According to a May 2007 report by Stanford, California based research firm Frost & Sullivan, “The worldwide web conferencing market is expected to grow significantly as the market migrates from point products and online meetings to an integrated suite of collaborative communications. “ It is the integrated suite of collaborative communications and workflow tools that forms the architecture of the virtual workplace. But technology by itself is not enough.

“While the benefits of Web conferencing and its impact on ROI are visible and tangible, it is critical to not ignore the human element," notes the Frost & Sullivan analyst. “The success of Web conferencing and its adoption as a grassroots communication tool hinges on changing established work behaviors." It is one thing for people to work with computer based tools online; it is an entirely different thing for people to work with each other using online tools. Team work offline is hard enough. Team work online will require organizations to change they way they work.

What kind of changes will this mean? In the hybrid SVO, teams are formed around facilitated process models where new workflow tools can be introduced in context with collaborative objectives. In these systems, business coaches provide assistance to team members so that people learn on demand how to use the right tool at the appropriate time. Examples of online teams include,

· Team-based learning
· Project teams
· Cross organizational teamwork
· Globally dispersed teams
· Strategic pilots for organizational change management
· Research teams
· Marketing teams
· Customer/team interaction
· Product development teams

Technology companies like Cisco, IBM, H-P, Microsoft, and SAP are all trying to introduce new technology tools that will help with the transition. But few companies are able to provide technology tools tightly integrated with business coaching and facilitation services.
One such company is Cedar Rapids, Iowa based iPrismGlobal, www.iPrismGlobal.com. It was formed by people experienced with both the technology and the human dynamics of team based online collaboration. iPrismGlobal version 3.0 includes infrastructure partner Fastek International and Sweden based Marratech. It is built around technology from iPrismGlobal which includes an integrated suite of online workflow tools contained in a 3-D “virtual workplace,” the iOffice™.

This virtual workplace has objects and artifacts online that mirror their offline counterparts. For example, files are created, shared and stored in online books or iBinders™ that are stored on shelves in online workrooms. This sense of “place” with familiar objects helps reduce technology hurdles that have made online team work an elusive objective.
For more information email: sales@iprismglobal.com

____________________________________________________
[1] See WIKIpedia search email.
[2] Ibid: search Collaborative Working Environment

Will Externally-Oriented or ‘X’ Teams Determine The Future of Work?

2007-08-30T07:22:00.000-05:00

Forming Global “X” Teams

Building high performance innovative teams that transcend the silos and boundaries of a traditional workplace requires a wide ranging “external focus” that is difficult to achieve. In their new book addressing this issue, Bresman from INSEAD and Ancora from MIT outline a process similar to the above in which high-performance global teams are formed around an external focus to capture knowledge and intelligence to meet increasingly competitive organizational needs:

“By being externally focused, X-teams are far better able to identify forces both outside in the world and within their own organization that can affect their success. They’re better able to identify emerging needs and opportunities they can exploit. They’re better able to build connections to management and to other groups within and outside their company to ensure their work is innovative and valuable to sustain organizational success.” Read More

download MP3 audio

This fits with the purpose of a Collaborative Working Environment where teams form around shared knowledge and have access to wide ranging resources within a platform that takes full advantage of ICT and the legacy applications, human expertise and data that form the core value of any organization.

Reference:
Bresman, Henrik & Ancona, Debroah, ‘X-Teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate, and Succeed,’ Harvard Business School Press, 2007

Change Inevitable With Increasing Global Competitiveness

2007-08-18T08:15:00.001-05:00

The EU White paper in the previous post well describes the inevitable changes in organizational culture that will occur over the coming years. It is a global phenomenon that will affect public and private organizations in all sectors. Our struggle has been to balance the technology innovation required for a productive virtual workplace with the transformational behavioural changes needed to make it work.

To address this problem we have created an online course "What Is Your 2020 Vision" that we customize for each group. Here is the PPT introduction for it.

The course takes a group of 5-6 people through the forming stage of online teaming by asking each member to share a personal and organizational vision for the future. It introduces tools for collaborative communications in the process.

The course then introduces 4 high value applications within the virtual workplace:

Group productivity enhancement
Team-Based CRM
Team-Based Project Management
Forming networks of teams

The course requires approximately 4 hours of synchronous web conferencing plus 16 hours of asynchronous interaction with the instructor and fellow team members. At the end of the course each team member will have been introduced to tools, process and methods for online collaborative teaming. The objective is that the team will then be self sufficient going forward; and be able to start up new teams toward building an enterprise wide highly productive process network.

EU Whitepaper Mirrors iPG Positioning

2007-08-12T10:28:00.000-05:00

Please, please, please read This European Union Whitepaper on Collaborative working environments...it, better than anything I have written, states clearly the strategic positioning Prism has undertaken since our inception in 1998.

Related see this WIKI article on Collaborative Working as it is the source of the above. And see this recent Business Week article on the Future of Work. Especially see this article on mulitnational collaboration.

Also, here is our new iPrismGlobal website to be launched September 1st. Note we still have lots of placeholders as it is the build site, but if you read through the content it will give a good overview of how we are positioned for the future.

iPrismGlobal Blog

2007-07-29T08:23:00.000-05:00

In September 2007, iPrismGlobal will launch version 3 of its acclaimed collaborative portal for high performance teaming online. The iPrismGlobal Virtual Workplace is a Secure Virtual Office (SVO) integrating real time collaborative Web Conferencing with a suite of high performance workflow tools, data integration applications and process specific online coaching services. It is based on best practice models for online teamwork. It has been developed through hands on case studies working with high performance teams in Europe and North America.

The Virtual Workplace began as a project for the European Foundation for Management Development sponsored by IBM in 1999 and has evolved from case studies with globally dispersed teams to become a model for collaborative workflow and productive online teamwork.

Purpose
Reduce business travel. Increase virtual face time with clients, partners, agents, team members and associates. Provide anytime/anywhere access to people, tools, events, documents and other business back office needs.

• Project Teams
• Team-based learning
• Cross organizational teamwork
• Globally dispersed teams
• Strategic pilots for organizational change management
• Research teams
• Marketing teams
• Customer/team interaction
• Product development teams

Reference
Brown, John Seely & Hagel, John III 2005, “The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization.” Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard Business School Press.
Findley, Charles A. 1988. Collaborative Networked Learning: On-line Facilitation and Software Support, Digital Equipment Corporation. Burlington, Massachusetts.
Friedman, Thomas. 2005. The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century. NY, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Levy, Frank & Murnane, Richard J. 2005. ‘’The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market.’’ Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press.
Malone, Thomas. 2004.The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard Business School Press.
Peters, Thomas J. 2006. Re-Imagine!: Business Excellence in a Disruptive Age. New York: Dorling Kindersley Adult.
Pink, Daniel. 2005. “A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age,” New York: Penguin