Organizational Efficiencies
Posted on May 15, 2009
Some people appreciate the status quo. Lately it seems to be a case of status, whoa! Here comes another innovative application to increase our operational efficiencies. As quickly as one comes on the market, another one comes along behind promising to be the best. So the question is which application(s) can best fit the needs of the organization?
One collaboration application is pbwiki. The basic application is free, but there is a pricing structure for added functionality. Recently, we made the strategic and wise decision to use the free version of pbwiki to document policies and procedures. This document will enable our staff to better understand our business and to help us analyze best practices to operationalize our unit.
We launched the pbwiki initiative this March and invited everyone on our team to develop and upload content. One goal is to continue and enhance internal collaborations. So far, we have created the content outlines to ensure consistency. Although we originally planned to have content available to upload by April 30, we have since extended the deadline to May 31. During this one month extension, pbwiki changed its name to pbworks. (http://pbworks.com) Oh, how quickly things change.
Recently, I came across some information on Microsoft OneNote. According to Wikipedia (yes, the name is still Wikipedia, for now), Microsoft Office OneNote is “a software package for free-form information gathering, and multi-user collaboration.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_OneNote)
The OneNote application allows users to draft and share notes, bring in articles and links and comment on them, add dates and deadlines directly from their notes to their outlook calendar, and a myriad of other options. XLS staff are currently testing OneNote to see if its usability and functionality will be more useful than pbworks.
As we learn, experiment, and test, we would appreciate hearing from you. Have you used either of these applications or others like them? How did you use them? What do you see as the benefits and pitfalls of using them to become a more streamlined, efficient operation?
Peggy Nesbitt and Jessica Carter
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