Collaboration Wiki Case
Study
Challenge
This large biotech company
had over 500 scientists and engineers across the world who needed to
collaborate on new projects and products, including new innovative ideas that
might be patentable. They needed some group collaboration software that could
handle a secure database of confidential information, that required little
training.
Solution
CPO Consulting was
originally asked to develop a Microsoft Access database for new research and
development (R&D) ideas for a team of ~50 scientists. After listening to
the customer needs, CPO Consulting’s team recommended using a wiki instead as
an online collaboration tool for the “Idea Tracker”. Atlassian’s Confluence
wiki was chosen as the best wiki, and the project started small with just this
one sample wiki application.
Within a few months a larger R&D business unit
adopted it for all of their projects wiki, and CPO Consulting provided a
framework, spaces, and onsite Confluence training for using a wiki software for
collaboration. It employs a number of plugins, both third party and custom
plugins, to provide a rich number of collaborative communities. All research
material and research ideas are stored within this simple wiki software. Ideas
for new products are submitted, evaluated, voted on and tracked through to the
prototype phase of production. Now they are following some of the best
practices for wiki adoption for all of R&D to help drive scientific
collaboration across all sites.
Benefits
New ideas are being tracked
in the “Idea Trackers” with the businesses using the collaboration wiki as a
tool to help make the entire business process around Intellectual Property more
effective. The R&D teams are using the wiki to help run more effective
meetings, and are using it for their document management system wiki. Customer
interviews, photos, specifications, videos, project plans etc. are all stored
in the online wiki, resulting in fewer emails with large attachments. There is
more transparency and visibility across sites and businesses as this has been
adopted as the new enterprise project collaboration software.