Benefits of Using Lotus Notes
Lotus Notes is the world's leading software solution that combines messaging, groupware and the internet. Together they have an impact on the way you do business that is far greater than the sum of their parts. Lotus Notes/Domino gives you the full-function power to create custom applications for improving the quality of your everyday business processes, by leveraging your current investments in technology, integrating the best messaging solution and making a seamless connection to your customers.
Lotus Notes is Tracking and Document Management. The structure of Notes allows it to track, route and manage documents better than any other software in the world. Applications that lend themselves to Notes applications are any applications that involve tracking, routing, approval and document management and organization. Simple applications that can be implemented quickly and can reap big benefits include the following:
Company Forms Bin: Create electronic versions of your company forms and enable workflow and approval routing to quickly eliminate the piles of paper in the office. Additionally, by automating these forms, employees can update their employee records, for example, with automatic notification of Human Resources when changes are made. One of the favorite forms used is the service request form, used by employees to report a hardware or software problem or to request an upgrade. The form is analyzed and assigned a resource depending upon the type of issue. Employees can track the progress on the report by monitoring the updates made by the assigned resource and be notified automatically upon resolution. Other forms often automated using Notes include purchase requisitions, Travel Advance requests, Travel Expense reports, Vacation Requests, Business Card Requests, Charitable Matching Contributions, Direct Deposit Authorization and Vacation Requests.
The Travel Expense report is a great example of how Notes can provide time savings and cost benefits to any organization. The travel expense report can be created and edited by the employee over a period of time and not submitted to review until marked completed. Expenses can be entered by day, by client, by project, and can be linked to scanned receipts. Using Domino messaging, the completed Expense report can be routed for approval, even through the internet to parties outside the organization. Upon approval, the expense report can be transferred to the company's accounts payable system for check processing.
Commerce: More and more companies are providing a facility for its customers to submit orders for sales via the web. These orders are submitted and transferred into a legacy system for processing. The customer can also access the status of the order from the web, accessing the status from these legacy systems. Other data integration applications allow outside sales reps or customers to track the availability of inventory in the inventory systems.
Customer Service Applications: Many companies are using Notes/Domino in a customer service function, allowing customers to submit requests via the web and monitoring the requests throughout the resolution process. These requests are sorted and mailed to the appropriate person to respond based upon the type of request. The range of high value customer service applications vary, including Help Desk, incident or problem tracking, FAQs, Automatic fax-back and e-mail replies, statistics reporting, best practices and technical document repositories. These applications leverage Domino's strengths in tracking, document management and communication support.
Lotus Notes Templates
Out-of-the-box Lotus Notes/Domino comes with the leading mail solution and a number of highly productive template applications. These applications are ready to use templates to allow you to start using Notes and reaping the benefits immediately. These templates include the Document Library, and the Discussion template, more fully described below.
Document Library
A Document Library application is an electronic filing cabinet that stores reference documents for access by a workgroup. The database might contain anything from technical specifications to marketing materials and financial statements. The Document Library comes with workflow and approval routing and mail notification to allow a document to be worked on in parallel or in sequence by a workgroup, tracking a history of each editors changes along the way.
Discussions
A workgroup can use this database to share their thoughts and ideas. Almost any group that has information to share among its members can use a discussion database. An engineering group can discuss the products they are designing. An advertising agency can discuss the ad campaigns they are developing. A special interest group can share ideas and opinions on their common interests. Discussions databases are better than using mail because discussions are threaded, meaning that all related topics and responses are grouped together in chronological order. With email users frequently have to scan through all their mail messages to find the related comments.
You can think of a discussion database as an informal meeting place, where the members of a workgroup can share ideas and comments. Like a physical meeting, each member of the workgroup listens to what others have to say and can voice his/her own opinions. However, unlike a physical meeting, the participants do not have to be in the same room at the same time to share information. People can participate when it is convenient for them to do so. And because it is easy for them to share information, they will do so.
Rapid Custom Application Development
The development environment of Lotus Notes/Domino, with its foundation in client/server messaging and its tight integration with the web, allows for rapid application for custom solutions. ....
Kolaco specializes in custom application development building solutions specific to your needs. Often the cost of building a custom solution is less than the total costs associated with customizing a third party product.
Third Party Products
Alternatively, there are a number of third party products that have been certified by Lotus to "Run with Notes!" These products are available from Lotus Business Partners and usually involve a site license fee and a per user fee. Additionally, these third party products often require additional customization to meet your specific business needs.
Applications that do not lend themselves to Notes are transaction systems with transaction based reporting requirements, like finance and accounting systems.
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