Enhance Microsoft Office with Business Add-on Tools
By Philipp Harper
reprinted with permission from the Microsoft Small Business Center

A new breed of solutions called Office Business Applications helps extend the usability of your desktop and line-of-business applications.

• For many companies, the ROI in enterprise software isn't what it could be.
   
• Office Business Applications create synergy by connecting Microsoft Office to business applications.
   
• The impact of OBAs on the bottom line is significant and immediate.

Return on investment is everything. But for too many small and midsize businesses, the ROI for line-of-business software is far less than what it ought to be.

Here's the problem. Line-of-business systems support the fundamental operations of the business, from customer relationship and supply chain management to financials and human resources. Yet these business applications are often disconnected from the processes and communications that support operations.

A Gartner research, "The Knowledge Worker Investment Paradox," found in 2002 that in most companies anywhere from 50 percent to 75 percent of the information that employees need to do their jobs comes from other workers. Meanwhile, 80 percent of an organization's digitized resources are locked away in individual hard drives or personal files, and thus are unavailable for sharing.

A new class of solutions called Office Business Applications can help organizations bridge this information gap. Developed by Microsoft ISVs and corporate developers, OBAs allow businesses to integrate their line-of-business solutions with the 2007 Microsoft Office system and add company-specific features to Office applications and documents.

Extending Microsoft Office Outlook
ActionThis, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner based in New Zealand, offers a good example of how you can add new features to Microsoft Office 2007 to respond to line-of-business needs.

Its team-management solution, which is available on a secure Web site maintained by ActionThis and which comes in free and premium versions, leverages Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 to help business leaders delegate and manage tasks from initiation to completion. The result is that teams do more work faster, according to CEO Ed Robinson.

For example, if a manager wanted a member of the sales team to send a quote to a customer, he would first create an action item in Microsoft Outlook and send it to the sales representative. (Action items look like regular Outlook e-mail messages but with a few extra task fields, making them intuitive to use.) Then the sales rep could break the assignment into subtasks for further delegation or return it to the manager with questions attached. The manager could follow the progress of the sales rep via automatic status reports that indicate whether the task has been ignored or is overdue. Then finally, the manager could sign off on the project when it has been completed.

An "execution assistance" feature includes alerts with related one-click actions, customizable inbox reports, and simple task delegation. Such features help overcome procrastination and ambiguity, which Robinson calls "the two biggest obstacles to improving productivity."

ActionThis was designed for teams with five to 20 people, but it can be scaled up or down. "We have companies onboard with several hundred employees that are loving the product," Robinson says. ActionThis users typically see a 5 percent reduction in project costs, he adds.

Microsoft Office Excel
Office Business Assignments can also be used to connect Microsoft Office 2007 with line-of-business applications. That's what EMC2, a Microsoft Gold Certified partner based in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, has done with a smart client that can automatically import and export data between Microsoft Office Excel and business applications.

Moving data from line-of-business solutions to an Excel workbook for analysis and then back again makes sense, says Alan Josephson, a senior Microsoft practice consultant for EMC2.  "Excel runs businesses," he says. "People use Excel for everything."

• Quicker data transfers. In the case of the employee-benefits firm, Josephson says, moving actuarial data from the line-of-business applications to Excel workbooks can be completed in just hours, whereas previously it took months.
   
• Improved data security. Because information is moved automatically and handled by fewer workers, there is less danger of data corruption.

The platform on which it all rests
The 2007 Microsoft Office system includes platform capabilities called OBA Services. If you plan to do any in-house development, talk to your IT manager or technology partner about these capabilities. They include:

• A Windows Workflow Foundation that enables automated workflow processes to prevent documents from becoming lost in the shuffle of multiple users.
   
• A powerful search engine portal that helps users find relevant information across the organization.
   
• A Business Data Catalog (BDC) that enables Office applications to reference read-only data from line-of-business systems.
   
• An extensible user interface that allows developers to add the features users need to do their jobs more efficiently.
   
• Open XML formats that make it easy to generate automated documents and to share documents across platforms and between applications.
   
• The Web site and Security Framework that employs user and role-based security to control access to sensitive data.

That's the platform. Use it to integrate the line-of-business applications with the Microsoft Office solutions that serve as the operational backbone of your business. You'll find you get more done in less time with fewer resources. And that means a stronger bottom line.