Microsoft OneNote and Toshiba Customer Solution Case Study Web agency improves productivity and benefits from more effective collaborative working with Toshiba notebooks and OneNote Shared access to real-time information is essential to the success of our business. For research and conceptual work, brainstorming sessions, briefs for writers and graphic designers, internal team meetings and localisation, we need to be able to quickly pull information from many sources and various formats into one place where it can be easily accessed, reused and shared. Wendy Knepper, Co-director, WendPath Communications GmbH Country: Germany Sector: Technology marketing, web agency Company WendPath Communications is a small technology marketing and web agency founded in 2003 by partners Lee Koenig and Dr. Wendy Knepper. The agency focuses on marketing communications concepts, online content creation, web publishing and managing the localisation of texts for more than 15 languages. Business Situation For research and briefing document, business trips, meetings with clients, internal team meetings, brainstorming sessions and localisation, it is essential to be able to capture information quickly. This information must then be reused in creating other documents or shared with the team, clients and partners. WendPath Communications is a growing web agency and technology marketing firm. During the past two years, the company has grown from a partner-operated firm working with freelance writers to a small agency located in Berlin and working with partners and freelancers around the world. By the fall of 2005, the firm recognised the need for a personal and collaborative solution for quickly capturing and sharing all kinds of digital information with team members in the office as well as with the extended virtual team of partners and freelancers. The co-directors were already running OneNote on their Toshiba Tecra Notebooks. As such, they recognised the value of OneNote for research, knowledge working and personal to-do lists. In their experience, OneNote lent itself to more efficient mobile working and personal productivity. As frequent business travellers, whether visiting clients or working with partners in remote offices, they quickly recognised the added business value provided by access to real-time information captured in OneNote. Travel information, such as details about flights or hotels, could be stored in OneNote for quick reference. Solution The company decided to use OneNote for team meetings, briefing sessions and for personal tasks. Toshiba Tecra notebooks with OneNote enabled greater productivity for mobile working in the office, at client and partner sites, at home and on business trips. OneNote was also installed on desktop clients for greater personal productivity. Benefits Improved research and knowledge gathering More in-depth briefings with audio notes More effective brainstorming sessions Greater ease in capturing and sharing minutes from meetings Improved efficiency when localising content on websites Better organisation and teamwork by sharing to-do lists and essential information
Improving the creative process Moreover, the travelling time could also be used for more productive mobile working. For instance, Wendy Knepper found that the hours spent in the airport lounge waiting for a flight could be better employed doing online research. Connecting her Tecra to a hotspot, she would copy website links and other information into OneNote. Then, back in the office, she reuses this information when creating briefing documents for new texts or coming up with a document concept. In choosing to extend the OneNote experience to the entire team, the co-directors wanted to strengthen team communications. They also wanted to challenge individuals, including themselves, to put OneNote to the test and see if it could help make other research work more productive. While some of the results were easily foreseen, such as improved meeting productivity, other productivity gains, such as using OneNote for localising web content, were unanticipated. After two months of using OneNote in our company, it was clear to all of us that in virtually every step of the creative and production processes, OneNote and Toshiba offer personal and collaborative productivity enhancements for our team, observed Lee Koenig. A closer look at the creative and production processes easily demonstrates the value of OneNote. A good example of this is a monthly online newsletter that WendPath produces for an industry leader in the IT sector. The online newsletter is translated into more than 15 languages and localised via an online publishing system to more than 19 websites across Europe. WendPath is able to use OneNote in almost every phase of the project, from creative conception through to production, including: 1. Meeting with the client to create the table of contents for the newsletter 2. Sharing the newsletter contents with the team 3. Conducting online research and creating briefing documents for the content deliverables 4. Managing the production and editing of texts 5. Formatting the texts and online publication 6. Managing the review process for approving translations 7. Localising the approved translation text on the regional websites All of these steps require coordination as WendPath employees must work together as a team as well as with the client, freelance writers and a localisation partner. The end result is a monthly online newsletter that is sent out as an email campaign by the client to its customers.
Improved meetings with the client and back-office communications OneNote was already used for client meetings to record notes and create minutes, both of which could be easily shared via email following the meeting. Lee Koenig had already observed that OneNote saved time as meeting notes could be captured and easily structured during the session. Moreover, capturing notes in electronic rather than handwritten form was particularly valuable when travelling, where there is an increased risk of misplacing or losing papers. Moreover, digital notes could be quickly shared via email with team members back in the office. Team members were instantly updated and could start preparing for upcoming projects, whether it meant selecting graphics or starting on research or briefing documents. This was a step that had not been taken in the past and it quickly proved to deliver improved efficiencies as information sharing took place in real-time, rather than being delayed. Productivity was enhanced by reducing the time between phases one (meeting with the client) and two (sharing the to do s with the WendPath team as a result of this meeting) of the project management. Research and creating briefing documents for content deliverables Before the pilot project, research and creating briefing documents for the various content deliverables was done using MS Word alone. Switching to OneNote for research and conceptual work on the briefing documents proved to have a number of advantages. As information can be placed anywhere on the page with OneNote, it allows for a more visual arrangement of ideas. The 30-second autosave functionality of OneNote means that the flow of ideas is not interrupted by the need to save the file. In addition, active website links can be stored in OneNote, and information that is cut and paste into OneNote includes the reference URL. Wendy Knepper also found that the audio record functionality was very helpful as she could simply tell OneNote about an inspired idea. For her, this proved to be faster than writing the concept down spontaneous information was no longer lost or diluted because of the time taken to record the concept. All of the information gathered in OneNote is then easily organised and copied into a MS Word briefing template, which is uploaded for the writer on the company extranet.
Managing the production and editing of texts Managing the production and editing of texts is done through electronic communications and through dialogue between individuals in the team. For the newsletter production, the process is relatively straightforward as there are few texts that need to be managed. For larger projects, where more texts are involved, OneNote proves to be quite useful as a project meeting and management tool. Using a Toshiba Tecra notebooks connected to a Toshiba P75 projector, Lee Koenig quickly captures the to do s for various documents during a round table meeting. This list can be easily viewed by the team, updated and circulated electronically via email or stored on the company server in a commonly-used OneNote folder. Note flags can also be added to organise the information further. Formatting texts and online publication The bulk of the production work for creating the online newsletter is based in HTML. The production team discovered that OneNote allows them to store recurring text blocks, HTML snippets in 15 different languages and images in one central area for easy access and reuse. Since OneNote pages can be easily added and categorised, the team also found it easy to add items on a continuing basis to the central OneNote information repository that was located on the server. Moreover, in peak production times, the team can create Outlook tasks from the to do s and assign tasks to one another or to freelance production assistants. Using OneNote to store recurring text blocks, HTML snippets in 15 different languages and images in one central area for easy access and reuse.
Managing the review process for approving translations Receiving 15 different language versions of texts and reviewing them with local marketing representatives require a lot of coordination. The localisation team discovered that OneNote s to-do list functionality and note flag summary let them create tracking lists. With these tracking lists, it is possible to easily see whether a country is behind on the review schedule. According to Lee Koenig: Productivity is a key aspect of our business. Just as I m completely convinced of the productivity benefits of using Toshiba notebooks, I m also convinced of the productivity gains achieved by using OneNote. Solution Technical Overview This small business network consists of a server running Microsoft Small Business Server. Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 provides e-mail services and WorkZone provides secure, extranet functionality. Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 is installed on all clients, including wireless-enabled Toshiba Tecra notebooks as well as desktop computers. OneNote information also allows for the easy integration of information into new documents created in frequently-used MS Office Suite products, such as PowerPoint and Word. Software and services Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 Microsoft Office Word 2003 Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003 Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 Miscrosoft Small Business Server Hardware Toshiba Tecra M3 Toshiba Tecra S2 Toshiba P75 LCD projector 2005. Toshiba Europe GmbH. While Toshiba has made every effort at the time of publication to ensure the accuracy of the information provided herein, product specifications, configurations, prices, system/component/options availability are all subject to change without notice. For the most up-to-date product information about your computer, or to stay current with the various computer software or hardware options, visit Toshiba s Web site at www.toshiba-europe.com.