Now this is a BIG CLIENT!!!!!!!!
United States Air Force Chooses Livelink to Manage Outsourcing Operations and Meet Pentagon's Paperless Office Goal
Open Text Enables Air Force to Cut Time Managing Outsourcing by 71%
WATERLOO, Ontario--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 18, 1999-- Open Text Corporation (NASDAQ:OTEXF - news; TSE:OTC - news) today announced that the United States Air Force is utilizing Livelink to manage its Business Solutions Exchange (BSX), which involves uniting the people, process, and policies of Air Force service contracting in a single system and meeting the Pentagon's goal of a completely paper-free acquisition process by January 1, 2000. Prior to using Livelink, the Air Force was using a variety of client-server based systems, which couldn't manage this process across different geographic locations. With Livelink, the Air Force has shortened the time spent from identifying point of need to completing a performance requirement document (PRD) from seven months to eight weeks, which is approximately 70% less time spent.
''The US Air Force is using Livelink not only as a corporate depository and collaborative workspace, but also as a means to capture knowledge from the public and incorporate this knowledge into common
business processes,'' said Dan Latendre, Vice President, Product Marketing, Open Text Corporation. ''The Air Force's implementation is an excellent example of the evolution of collaborative knowledge
management -using Livelink to harness the tacit knowledge of the general public to improve business solutions, save time and reduce costs.''
The Air Force's implementation of Livelink is part of the Pentagon's requirement to simplify and modernize the Defense Department's acquisition process in the area of contract writing, administration,
finance and auditing. Since July 1998, the Air Force has been using Livelink on a variety of outsourcing projects. The first and largest project can be found at Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama. The goal of the Business Solutions Exchange process is to continually improve Air Force business practices. BSX goes to work as soon as a requirement is identified and a Business Strategy Team is formed. Livelink is used
throughout the lifecycle of the project from requirements definition to contract close-out, connecting a cross-functional team dispersed across a given base and the command. This implementation of Livelink is running on Windows NT Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Exchange and accessed through Microsoft Internet Explorer. A team, often composed of people from six different
locations in the US, is formed to create a performance requirement document (PRD) and uses Livelink as its central knowledge library to gather market research, establish an acquisition plan, baseline costs,
eliminate regulatory constraints, draft requirements, and gather feedback from customers and industry on the contract requirements.
The BSX team uses Livelink's workflow, tasks and version control to work together throughout the planning, execution, and supplier management phases. Teams use the public folders found at
www.bsx.org, to gather feedback from industry on ways to improve existing requirements documents. In addition, the public sites include process-oriented libraries of best practices that are available to other agencies whether or not they use the collaborative capabilities of Livelink. Using Livelink to manage and deploy its Business Solutions Exchange is only the beginning for the Air Force, with plans to expand efforts to dozens of other projects and create a model that can be used at Air Force bases around the globe in 1999.
''The USAF's implementation of Livelink is a great example of how a huge corporation can dramatically cut costs and improve processes by using technology to allow people to collaborate easily and efficiently,''said Donna Conner, Microsoft's worldwide knowledge management marketing manager. ''Working with partners, like Open Text, Microsoft is delivering knowledge management solutions that enable enterprises to obtain maximum value from their computer infrastructures.''
YEAH!
chris |
