Based in Voorhees, N.J., American Water is the largest publicly tradedwater and wastewater utility company in the United States. With 300 locationsin 30 states and parts of Canada, the company provides drinking water,wastewater and related services to approximately 15 million people underlocally managed operations.
When American Water began planning a collaboration project for its 7,000-plusemployees in 2010, one of the first decisions we made was to simplify the userexperience by eliminating the need to toggle among multiple applications to getwork done. The goal was to allow employees to access documents, maps, email,calendaring, company directories, instant messaging, Web conferencing and othertools from a single interface that would both encourage collaboration and savetime.
With our heavily email-based work culture, the IT team determined thatthe ideal approach would be to aggregate communication and collaboration toolswithin the email client so users would not have to change work habits. As aresult, we are in the process of rolling out a solution that will enable our employeesto access Microsoft SharePoint, IBM Sametime, WebEx, AT&T audioconferencing and Cisco unified communications functionality from a small windowembedded in the email inbox.
This ?single pane of glass? strategy is expected to streamline workefforts for projects ranging from water-main repairs to new business proposals.That?s because our users will be able to retrieve a document; call or IM acolleague about it; and/or initiate a chat, Web or audio conference for furtherdiscussion?all without leaving their email comfort zone.
In addition, the project promises to drive SharePoint adoption byreplacing frustrating multistep SharePoint navigation with a drag-and-dropprocess through the email window.
Over the years, that decentralized corporate structure had produced apatchwork of stand-alone communication tools, as well as hundreds ofinformation silos scattered in more than 1,000 IBM Lotus Domino databases. Withno ability to easily find and reuse existing content, incorporate edits, sharenew versions, or route a document through a workflow, knowledge sharing withinand across business units was extremely difficult.
That, in turn, was hampering efficient execution of our everydaybusiness activities. Responding to an audit or rate case from a public utilitycommission requires soliciting, merging and refining input from 20 or morestaff members under a tight deadline. Similar group efforts are required toassemble a request for proposal (RFP) to manage a new municipal drinking wateror wastewater system or to initiate, approve and manage capital projects. Thelack of tools to address these needs translated into duplicated effort andwasted time.
EnablingCentralized Access
One part of our plan to solve these problems was to enable documentsfrom throughout the company to be housed in a single repository for centralizedaccess. SharePoint was already used by hundreds of users and was therefore theobvious choice to provide core collaboration functions such as contentmanagement, document collaboration and enterprise search.
The next step was to determine which email platform to use to fulfillour vision of providing access to multiple tools from the inbox. We had usedLotus Notes for more than a decade, but there was no integration between IBMand Microsoft. We could have replaced Notes with Outlook to standardize on theMicrosoft stack, but we preferred to maximize investments in our existinginfrastructure and spare our employees the pain of migrating to a new emailenvironment unnecessarily.
To bring SharePoint into the Notes environment, however, we needed tofind a cross-platform IBM-Microsoft solution. In addition, the solution had tooffer built-in access management capabilities to ensure our ability to complywith the rigorous confidentiality requirements inherent in our business.
Eventually our search led to Harmon.ie for SharePoint, social emailsoftware that provides point-and-click access to SharePoint and other disparatecommunication and collaboration tools from an email sidebar in either Outlookor Lotus Notes. Harmon.ie for SharePoint, Lotus Notes Edition, makes itpossible to deliver an integrated user experience across Lotus Notes andSharePoint despite the lack of integration between the two vendors? operatingsystems.
With that email sidebar, users will be able to drag and drop documentsfrom Notes or elsewhere on their desktops to the SharePoint repository, sharethem as document links, search and access SharePoint document libraries, and followdocument updates in real time in a Harmon.ie-created SharePoint activity streamto expedite project work. In addition, they will be able to instantly connectwith document writers and editors using the unified communications tools builtinto the same window.
Other abilities will range from accessing SharePoint profiles andsearching synchronized American Water directories to scheduling team and projectmeetings from merged Notes, SharePoint and Google calendars.
We piloted our unified email, communications and collaboration solutionto user desktops in mid-2011 as part of a migration to Windows 7, anddeployment is expected to be complete by late 2013. While it is too soon tomeasure results, one survey indicated 90 percent support for the one-stopstrategy.
In the next phase, our 2,000-plus mobile workers will be equipped withsimilar unified communication and collaboration capabilities. That will providethese employees with easy in-the-field access to system maps, water hydrantlocations and other business-critical information stored in SharePoint fromruggedized computers in their trucks.
The success of the project rests on the two cornerstoneslaid at the beginning: replacing multiple disjointed tools with a singleinterface that eliminates application switching, and enabling employees to stayin the email environment in which they are accustomed to working. From earlyindications, those decisions will facilitate SharePoint adoption, informationsharing, document co-authoring and other collaborative work for all AmericanWater employees. That, of course, is the goal.
Steve Brescia is manager of ITS enterprise architecture for AmericanWater.
