3Connect. An effective and easy way to collaborate, share and communicate within 3form.
3Connect. An effective and easy way to collaborate, share and communicate within 3form.
Samenvatting
3form Europe (part of the Hunter Douglas Group) is an independent establishment of 3form located in Schiedam, The Netherlands. This location, office and factory, provides all sales-support and production for Europe and Africa. 3form Europe has 55 employees. The employees of 3form are divided into seven departments; Externals Sales, Sales Support, Production, IT, Marketing, Architectual Support and HR. The largest and most important departments within 3form Europe are Externals Sales, Sales Support and Production. These departments are responsible for the sale and production of the 3form products. 80% of the 3form employees are working at one of these departments. Research. According to James Robertson of Step Two design, intranets are the internal webbased environments that provide staff with the tools and information they need to do their job. The current intranet of 3form Europe, originally meant for this purpose, is currently rarely used and no longer maintained. The 3form staff is using other solutions as alternatives of the intranet that are not effective. The research question of this thesis is therefore: ‘What is a proper solution for the 3form staff to communicate, share and collaborate effectively and easy with each other, on desktop computers and tablets, within the company?’ To answer this question desk research and field research are used. Contextual interviews with the 3form staff, shadowing and customer journey mapping is used to get information about the current solutions and the needs and expectations of the 3form staff. Different Staff members of all department are interviewed. Desk research and an interview with an expert are applied to gain insights of alternative solutions and to choose the best alternative. The use of different methods such as iterative design and usability testing ensure the best configuration and design of the chosen solution. Current solutions. Many solutions used by the 3form employees provide similar services. E-mail is the most used solution to share files at this moment. Next to e-mail, USB Flash Drive, Online file transfer and network drives are used to share files. There is no clear procedure or structure about sharing files provided by the company. The 3form staff chooses for solutions that are easy for them and consume the least amount of time. The two network drive makes that are used within the 3form office do not make it easier for the staff to share the most used files. Needs and expectations. The main requirements for the 3form staff are to access and find files easy from tablet and desktop. Easy managing and controlling these files is also a requirement. The existing functionalities of the current intranet: news and photos, are also important needs. Minor needs are the appeal of the new solution, involvement of all departments and less passwords to access all solutions for communications, sharing and collaborating. Alternatives and solution. Although there are main alternative solutions for communication sharing and collaboration, only three solutions come close to the needs of the 3form staff: Intranet + Cloud Storage, Google Apps for Business and Microsoft Office 365. Research and testing shows however that a traditional intranet combined with cloud is the best solution to satisfy the 3form staff and fulfill their needs compared to the other alternatives. An important factor here is the ability to adjust the solution on the long term. New intranet + Dropbox. The new solution for 3connect, is a custom intranet that consists of: Files, News, Contact Directory, Event Photos, Links and Birthday’s. The existing ‘My 3form’, an online tool for the sales is also integrated in the new intranet. The final and most recent files are available on the intranet. The installation of Dropbox on the server allows the users to access these files using Dropbox. The files can also be updated and maintained using Dropbox. The files in the Dropbox folder on the server are listed on the intranet through a PHP listing script. In this way the same files are available from a smartphone, tablet, personal computer via Mac Finder or Windows Explorer and the intranet on a ‘private’ or ‘foreign’ computer. There is always easy access to the files and the files are very easy to renew and update by employees without technical knowledge.
Organisatie | Hogeschool Utrecht |
Opleiding | Communication and Multi Media Design |
Afdeling | Communicatie |
Partner | 3form Europe, Schiedam |
Datum | 2013-06-01 |
Type | Bachelor |
Taal | Engels |