A couple of OnePoint case studies

We have just got a couple of case studies published around our use of OnePoint, a combination of OneNote & SharePoint, and the value we are seeing from it.

The first will be published in Drug Discovery Today and you can read the pre-print here.

‘OnePoint’ – combining OneNote and SharePoint to facilitate knowledge transfer

The identification and development of novel drugs requires a multidisciplinary team of individuals whose membership changes during the lifecycle of a project. Incomplete knowledge transfer across this team can be a barrier to effective decision-making and efficient drug discovery. We have deployed a new infrastructure supporting information storage and distribution within small teams using Microsoft's SharePoint™ server technology in conjunction with the desktop application OneNote™. This delivers a user-friendly collaborative workspace that is fast, flexible and carries a low training burden. Demand from drug project teams for this ‘solution’ has now resulted in site-wide deployment to over 500 people across research.

The second case study, available here, was done in collaboration with Microsoft. In this case Microsoft also produced a video, see below, which really brings OnePoint to life (need Silverlight installed to view).

Pfizer Boosts Efficiency by 15 Percent with Easy to Use, Shared Note-Taking Program

For the past 150 years, Pfizer has pioneered the development of some of the industry’s most innovative pharmaceutical products. In 2007, Pfizer applied this “out of the box” thinking to a pilot program designed to enhance efficiency and knowledge management across project teams, and potentially speed time-to-market for new products. The pilot brought together the simple, intuitive user interface of the Microsoft® Office OneNote® 2007 note-taking program with the robust document management technology of Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007. As a result, pilot participants reported a significant decrease in the number of e-mail messages they send each day, and one group reported a 15 percent increase in efficiency. Overall, the 600 participants reported a 2 percent time savings per week, which represents a cost savings of approximately U.S.$2.25 million.

OnePoint: Revolutionising team collaboration

OneNote is widely recognised as a gold standard personal knowledge management tool. It is an application with an intuitive user-friendly interface that readily enables a user to aggregate information together from multiple sources and arrange it in a familiar notebook format. One of the less well known features of OneNote is the capacity to create shared notebooks. We have combined OneNote 2007 with SharePoint 2007 to create an excellent team knowledge management tool, which we refer to as 'OnePoint'. This implementation provides an intuitive user-friendly interface onto a SharePoint document library with automatically managed online/offline capability. In addition to this the ability to add hyperlinks, text and pictures alongside these document files adds significant value to a team - users doesn't always have to open a document to find information. OnePoint has enabled project teams to move seamlessly into working in a collaborative fashion resulting in increased engagement and cohesion. An added bonus, probably related to the facile fashion in which information can be collated, is that we are seeing teams aggregate not just the data/information they are using but also including the context, rational and decisions they are making on it. OnePoint is not only revolutionising team collaboration, but also reducing email traffic, eliminating information silos and being demanded by users of all technical ability!

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Update: I have been asked to take down the slide deck associated with this post. Hopefully I will be able to re-post it in the near future.

Update: After a bit of "anonymising" I'm free to re-post the slides to slideshare, enjoy.

OnePoint! - Combining OneNote and SharePoint

OneNote - An electronic version of my paper notebook where I can drag and drop documents onto a page and annotate. A great user interface that seamlessly allows integration and management of your emails and MS Office files with free text annotations.

SharePoint - A good project level content management system (lets be honest the wiki and blog functions are not there yet) with a classically non-intuitive Microsoft user interface.

OneNote + SharePoint - An excellent collaborative electronic project notebook. All the power of SharePoints online content management system with fantastically user friendly electronic notebook interface.

There can only be one name for this combination - OnePoint