OR/MS Today, August 1997 Sharing, Coordinating Internal Information with the Web

By ManMohan S. Sodhi It's a vision thing. Having read about how the Internet enables communication all over the globe, you are bold enough to think that it may just be possible for information to flow even inside your company using the Web and the company Intranet. I will only encourage this vision. But forget all the buzzwords &endash; Java, ActiveX, PQIRS (I made that last one up) &endash; and focus instead on useful things. Here is a list of some areas to target: Broadcasts Within the Company Is information broadcast regularly in your company over e-mail or even dead white trees? Most of this information is probably useless to you, but there is always some information that is useful to someone. Why not request that this information be put on the Web instead? It is quite easy to convert word processed files into the so-called HTML format (the main language of the Web) and most word processors &endash; WordPerfect, Microsoft Word and others &endash; can do so. Likewise, is there information that you have to make available to far-flung groups using a mix of fax, e-mail and paper? Why not use the Web on your Intranet? This is not always possible as someone from a global U.S.-based company recently e-mailed me; although his e-mail system is global, it is rather ancient and he had to use the fax to preserve formatting. The Web is restricted to senior management, who either do not know how to use it or probably use it only to track their stock investments! Still, it is nice to have a vision of using the Web for sharing information globally within your company. And not only can you make word processed files available over the Web, you can provide limited access (views) of your databases for others in your company to get standard reports that you would normally create every so often. Sharing with your neighbor Conflict between departments is probably more common inside (human) companies than within the better documented chimpanzee communities that Jane Goodall studies. One company with which I once dealt had a problem of sharing information between the Finance and the Accounting departments. Both departments had databases on the same computer, but would not allow access to each other. Information was shared by a single page memo sent to the other department every Monday! Had there been an internal Web at that time, the two departments could have provided each other limited access to their databases using the Web. (You can link a Web page to a database, and my understanding is that newer versions of popular databases are easier to connect to Web pages.) Likewise, you can make standard reports and even ad hoc query directly accessible through a Web page that anyone within the company can access. Project Management Project management is arguably the oldest profession in the world, and if you are a project manager, you know what I mean. If you are part of a team working on a geographically dispersed project, or have to make project status reports to management or clients who are in a different part of the world, you should consider Web-enabled project management tools. One such tool is Primavera's Project Planner (P3) 2.0 (Web address http://www.primavera.com) for large projects with thousands of tasks and resource assignments, and Scitor's Project Scheduler 7 (http://www.scitor.com) for smaller projects. Both products export views and reports directly as HTML pages. Internal Support Just as the Web can be used for supporting customers, you can support internal clients using the Web on your Intranet as well. A sophisticated example would be the Web-based "travel agent" that my employer, Sabre, now provides for employees to make their business-related travel arrangements for flying, hotel and car rental. One would not expect less from the leader in electronic travel reservation systems. But there are similar applications you can invent because information entered through a Web-based application can be stored in a database and is consequently more useful than information provided over the phone or as plain text sent via e-mail. Conclusion Unlike my earlier articles which focused on the world outside the company, this article looks within. My February and April 1997 articles discussed virtual electronic communities and how a Web site is useful for creating a virtual electronic community of customers and fellow professionals outside your company. And, in the June 1997 article, I wrote about Web hosting and how to create your own Web site. In this article, I have addressed a rather basic issue of sharing information within your company rather than virtual communities, say of dispersed OR professionals, within the company. Internal virtual communities are still too far a goal from where most companies are today. But sharing information using the Web is a good start, and even small steps along the lines suggested above can go a long way. After that, you may not need a grand vision; you can just get your work done more effectively! Dr. ManMohan S. Sodhi is Senior Consultant at Sabre Technology Solutions. He is the founder of the OR news group, sci.op-research, and helped design and create INFORMS Online. He can be reached at [email protected]