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Vmoso 2019 Overview

Vmoso 2019 brings together the sophistication of Vmoso’s platform for digital engagement with an intuitive new user interface, making Vmoso’s powerful communication and collaboration features accessible to everyone

In Vmoso 2019, all your communication is brought together into a consolidated activity stream. Whichever device you’re using, you still see the same content, making the whole conversation available, in the right order, wherever you are working from.

The activity stream brings together several different types of content

Chats are for private discussions between defined sets of participants, with threaded replies helping organize the discussion and keep the conversation on topic. The explicit read count helps everyone keep track of who’s seen what, and when they saw it.

Posts are for broadcasting to a wider audience, while still enabling replies, comments and threaded discussions.

Tasks bring structure to collaboration, giving assignees a clear definition of what they’re required to do, by what date. Task creators can easily track who’s completed their work, and who needs to be reminded.

Content includes file attachments, notes and bookmarks, and can be attached to other discussions, or viewed on its own.

You can choose to view the whole activity stream or use filters to let you focus on the information that’s important to you right now.

Spaces provide a structure for sharing content with a wider audience through hierarchical access control lists

These can be combined with custom zones to provide quick access to the content and discussions you use most frequently.

Vmoso’s unique AHA links enable each discussion to reference people, content and other conversations and comments, creating a sophisticated web of organizational knowledge.

Every time a document is referenced from a discussion, it’s added to the attachment list for easy access.

New participants are easy to add, and they can quickly get up to date on the discussion so far with all the comments in the right order. Everyone in the discussion knows when new people are added, ensuring privacy is maintained.

As discussions continue and links are created, a rich web of organizational knowledge starts to form. Vmoso’s knowledge maps make it easy to explore this store of collective knowledge, helping you find the information you need to do your job, and ensure business continuity as employees leave the company and are replaced.

Vmoso keeps track of file revisions, ensuring everyone’s working on the latest version. Permission-based sharing lets you control who can see the file, and who can update it. When a new revision is created, you can choose to update every discussion that’s using the file. The revision history is accessible to all, ensuring accountability for every change made.

Vmoso’s email integration means that you can add people to a discussion even if they’re not a registered Vmoso user. They can choose to join Vmoso, or participate through their email client.

Vmoso also integrates with enterprise systems and cloud storage for customer support, sales tracking and other applications, making information from these systems available to a wider audience.

Vmoso 2019 brings all your communication and collaboration together in one place, giving you instant access to the information you need from whichever device you are using.

AHA links create a sophisticated web of collective knowledge, enabling rapid access to content, and preservation of intellectual property.

Tasks, permission-based sharing and content revision histories ensure accountability

Vmoso 2019 is the centre of your digital transformation initiatives, enabling high value collaboration both inside and outside the organization, wherever in the world you are working today.

The Seven Stages of Personal Data Management

The value and importance of personal data is clearer than ever thanks to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and greater scrutiny of the way internet giants like Facebook, Google and Amazon use our personal data.

But the services to help individuals manage their own data remain very primitive. To understand how these are likely to evolve, it is informative to look at the history of banking, how financial services evolved, and the parallels between management of money and management of data.

Galaxy Health – Collaborative Process Management

Galaxy Health is a US healthcare insurance provider. Galaxy has chosen Vmoso to improve its membership acquisition and renewal rate as well as a number of collaborative business processes involving member enrollment and renewal, plan management, claim escalation and dispute resolution.

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With so many parties involved in these processes – employees, family members, employers, brokers, insurers and providers – they can generate a huge amount of time-consuming discussions. Galaxy are confident that by using Vmoso Collaborative Process Management they can improve the efficiency of these discussions, leading to a lower cost of service and happy customers.

It’s open enrollment time at Vision International. Sue is an employee at Vision, and she’s trying to work out the best plan for her family.

Her husband, Joe, works part time and look after the children, meaning the whole family is covered on Sue’s plan.

Sue and Joe like the plan from Galaxy Health but have a few questions. So Joe downloads the Galaxy app and joins the chat. Included in this chat is Galaxy’s chatbot which gives rapid answers to frequently asked questions, reducing the burden on Galaxy’s customer service team.

Joe wants to check that his primary physician is included in the plan.

This is something the chatbot can handle easily, quickly confirming that the doctor is indeed already covered under the plan by searching Galaxy’s database of providers.

Joe suffers with back pain, so also wants to check whether a chiropractor he sometimes uses is included in the plan.

This time, the chatbot says no. But it guides Joe towards the process for requesting inclusion of additional providers.

By using a collaborative process to request additional providers, both Joe and Galaxy save time. Joe starts by entering the chiropractor’s details.

So by the time it reaches Galaxy’s customer advisors for review, all the necessary information has been collected.

Joe can see the status of his request and is notified when it’s approved, and has a record of the conditions attached.

Sue’s now ready to sign up for her Galaxy plan. Again, this is performed using a Vmoso collaborative process, which is integrated with document processing and digital signature systems to streamline this type of customer engagement; a document created by QuickSilver and maintained by DocuSign details specific coverages, terms and conditions under her plan.

When she runs into any trouble during this sign-up process, she clicks into the collaborative process’s chat tab, where its built-in chatbot is able to answer all her questions interactively, guiding her through to completion.

A few months later, and Joe has suffered a recurrence of his back trouble

He initiates the policy’s coverage validation process by requesting authorization for treatment from his chiropractor

As the chiropractor is not on the list of approved providers, this is not automatically approved, but assigned to Shirley in the Galaxy customer advisor team to review

Shirley tells Joe that unfortunately his treatment can’t be approved

But Joe has the details of the previous conversation where use of his chiropractor was authorised, so simply links to this.

Shirley acknowledges her mistake and approves the treatment

After a short course of treatment, Joe is feeling a lot better

But Sue’s surprised to receive an invoice from Joe’s chiropractor that she thought should have been covered in full by Galaxy.

So Sue starts a process to query the bill that involves both Galaxy and the chiropractor’s admin. She includes links to the authorization process, and the earlier agreement to add Joe’s chiropractor to the plan

Jamie in the Galaxy billing team assesses Sue’s query and looks back through the previous discussions. What Sue has failed to notice that the earlier approval did point out that only 90% of the chiropractor’s bill would be covered, and that Sue would be billed for the other 10%

Sue & Joe realise that they have overlooked this, and the billing query is resolved.

A year has gone by, and it’s now annual health insurance renewal time at Vision International.

Sue and her family have been very satisfied with their Galaxy Health plan, thanks especially to its mobile-centric high-touch engagement experience empowered by Vmoso.

So when Sue receives Galaxy’s renewal alert, she immediately starts the collaborative process to complete the renewal, which normally involves just a few simple confirmation steps.

However, by taking advantage of Vmoso’s Big Knowledge and its integration with artificial intelligence predictive reasoning capabilities, Galaxy can now analyze Sue and her family’s health profile and actual care received over the past year, compare that to a vast database of similar cases, and recommend the most cost-effective plan coverages for Sue to consider.

Sue chooses a new option, as recommended by Galaxy, which not only increases her coverage but also saves her several hundred dollars per year, making her an even more satisfied customer.

Galaxy’s use of Vmoso benefits everyone across its entire ecosystem, making it easier for customers to get the information they need quickly, and reducing the burden on Galaxy’s own customer advisors as well as its network of brokers and providers.

Using collaborative processes for plan selection, claim authorization and billing query processes ensures that everyone knows what needs to happen next and reduces miscommunication.

Preserving previous discussions as a “single source of truth” for future reference gives a full audit trail and ensures rapid resolution of any queries.

With Vmoso at the centre of their customer engagement, Galaxy has been able to achieve its business goals very successfully by improving membership acquisition, increasing customer satisfaction and reducing their cost of customer service.

Galaxy Sports

Galaxy Sports are planning the launch of a new range of “smart” running shoes that take advantage of emerging technologies such as Internet of Things sensors and artificial intelligence. At the centre of this, Galaxy has chosen Vmoso to organise communication and knowledge sharing between Galaxy and its suppliers, within Galaxy, and between Galaxy and its customers.

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Galaxy Sports is a manufacturer of sportswear, with running shoes representing its largest market. Galaxy’s product management team are planning the launch of a new range of “smart” running shoes that take advantage of emerging technologies such as Internet of Things sensors and artificial intelligence.

At the centre of this, Galaxy has chosen Vmoso to organise communication and knowledge sharing between Galaxy and its suppliers, within Galaxy, and between Galaxy and its customers.

A selected group of Galaxy customers have been selected to test a prototype of the new running shoe. To support the trial, a community for the early adopters has been created on Vmoso.

Here, Galaxy product managers can interact with the trial participants, analyse data received from the shoes’ sensors, and discuss appropriate actions.

Galaxy have also engaged a professional physiotherapist, Marion, to participate in the trial and engage with the early adopters.

Marion is also involved in the other initiative linked to the new product launch, Galaxy’s “Smart Physio”. This is an artificial intelligence powered agent which delivers personalized recommendations to each member of the trial via private Vmoso channels, based on the data collected from the sensors in their shoes, and aggregated data from the wider trial community. Marion uses her domain expertise to help train the Smart Physio’s recommendations.

Vmoso also hosts all the communication and collaboration between Galaxy and Sportex, the main supplier of the shoes’ materials. This includes both freeform, unstructured communication for general discussion, and more structured business processes for tracking and accountability of formal change requests.

Todd is a loyal Galaxy customer, so was invited to become a member of the early adopter community. He’s been using the prototype shoes for his daily run every day this week, and his feet are suffering from blisters in a way they never did with his previous Galaxy shoes.
He reports this problem to the community, and finds that he’s not the only one suffering in this way.

Nancy in the Galaxy product management team is obviously concerned by these reports. But thanks to the tracking devices in the shoes, she’s able to get a much clearer picture of what’s going on.
She has been receiving daily reports in Vmoso of aggregated data from the trial users, but she can now dig into the detailed data for the runners who’ve reported the problem.

It quickly becomes apparent that the sensors are reporting a higher than expected temperature inside the shoe for all the runners suffering from blisters.

Sportex have actually provided two different versions of the shoe made with different textiles, and Nancy sees that all the shoes exhibiting higher temperatures are using textile variant A.

Nancy gets in contact with her Sportex contact, Howard, about this. Howard suggests that Nancy makes a formal request to stop manufacturing the variant A shoes, and switch to variant B.

Nancy initiates a change request process in Vmoso to do this. Before reaching Sportex, this needs to be approved by Nancy’s manager, Amber.

But before Amber agrees to this, she asks Nancy to find out more about how the runners using variant B are getting on.

The data looks good, but Nancy wants to get feedback from the runners themselves.

The replies she gets are surprising – several of the runners report that their shoes are already showing significant signs of wear. It looks like variant B doesn’t suffer from the overheating problem, but is a lot less resilient than variant A.

Nancy recommends to Amber that she declines the previous request. Instead, she initiates a new process to request Sportex work to address the overheating problem in variant A.

A couple of weeks later, Sportex and Galaxy have an updated prototype for the runners to try. Todd has been using the new shoe for a couple of days and has suffered no recurrence of the blisters.
Nancy is keeping a close watch on the sensor data and sees that the overheating problem does appear to have been resolved.

The more Todd uses the shoes, the more data is collected from the sensors, and Galaxy’s Smart Physio is able to start making recommendations.

Marion has been training the Smart Physio to recognise patterns relating to running style. She notes that some of the group of early adopters have a running style where the heel of the leading foot hits the ground first, combined with a wide stride pattern. This can lead to shin splits and heel damage, so Marion trains the Smart Physio to recognise this, and the recommended corrective action.

Automated analysis of the daily data from Todd’s shoes shows that he’s guilty of this style of running, even though he’s never associated it with some of the pain he feels after running. The Smart Physio makes recommendations, and shows Todd a video of how to correct the running style.

That makes sense to Todd, but he worries that when he’s out running, it would be really easy for him to slip back into old habits. So he asks the Smart Physio to warn him if he’s doing it. As Todd runs, the Smart Physio makes an audible notification when he slips back into his old running style.

As the end of the run, Todd asks how he did – the Smart Physio is able to show how Todd started well, but as he tired, the old pattern came back. It suggests that Todd considers shorter runs until he’s adapted his running style, and offers to recommend a personalised training pattern for Todd over the next week.

With Vmoso at the centre of Galaxy’s communication and collaboration, the launch of the new range of shoes is a huge success.

Bringing together product managers, suppliers, customers, data from smart sensors and artificial intelligence-powered agents around one digital transformation hub means that product development issues are reported, analyzed and acted upon rapidly, increasing product quality and reducing the time to market.

Engaging with customers both person-to-person and via AI creates a compelling customer experience, leading to greater brand loyalty and repeat sales.

Vmoso and GDPR

With the introduction of GDPR just months away, it’s important that the systems you use for communication receive the same level of data protection scrutiny as your systems of record. Vmoso brings together internal and external communication, integrated to your systems of record, helping you meet your data protection obligations.

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The General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR is a new set of data protection laws set to be introduced on 25^th May 2018. It applies to all organisations in the European Union, and all organisations outside the EU that offer goods or services to individuals in the EU.

It aims to standardize data protection rules across the EU, and for most countries goes significantly beyond the previous national laws in place to establish a wider set of rights for individuals about the information organisations hold about them.

GDPR provides individuals with:

The right to be informed about the information organisations hold about them, and how it is used
The right of access to that information
The right to rectification of any incorrect data held
The right to erasure of the data
The right to restrict processing, limiting how data an organisation holds may be used
The right to data portability, allowing individuals to transfer their data from one service to another
The right to object to how their data is used, and
Rights in relation to automated decision making and profiling

As most organisations already comply with their data protection obligations, the processes and systems they have in place form a solid basis for ensuring GDPR compliance.

However, in recent years, changes in the way business communication takes place have often worked against organisations’ good intentions around data protection. While their systems of record are typically well-structured and enable organisations to comply with their data protection obligations, their internal and external communication systems are a different matter entirely.

GDPR describes how personal data and sensitive personal data is handled. When this remains in an organisation’s systems of record – their customer databases, CRM systems, finance systems , etc, it’s relatively easy to comply with GDPR’s provisions to protect the individual’s rights. The problems start when this personal data is held in, or copied to communication systems that are much less tightly regulated.

This problem has been exacerbated by a move away from email into wide range of new communication tools, often brought into the organisation by employees without IT approval. This trend towards “shadow IT” or “bring your own app” puts company data at risk, and makes it almost impossible for organisations to meet their data protection obligations. How can an organisation possible find, rectify or erase an individual’s data if it is scattered across a mish-mash of employee-chosen communication apps?

If this scenario sounds unlikely to you, think again. In the UK, one of the largest ever fines imposed by the Information Commissioner’s Office related to the breach of a customer database that had not been approved by the organisation’s IT department. And it is widely acknowledged that NHS staff are regularly using WhatsApp to exchange patient data, often crossing the boundary of what constitutes “personal data”. Shadow IT is alive and well in most organisations, whether they know about it or not.

So all the good data protection work on your core enterprise systems could be undone if you fail to consider how personal data is included in your day to day business communication. One of the major changes GDPR brings is significantly increased fines for non-compliance. For example, Pharmacy2U’s fine of 130,000 in 2015 could have been 4.4m under GDPR. Talktalk’s 2016 fine of 400,000 could have been 59m under GDPR. In the new world of GDPR, no company can afford to ignore the risks of shadow IT.

Vmoso from BroadVision helps your meet your data protection obligations by consolidating your business communication in one place, removing the need for shadow IT communication solutions. Instead of messages being scattered across individual users’ email inboxes, or locked into unapproved communication apps like WhatsApp or Line, Vmoso stores all messages in a secure, cloud-based environment, making data discovery, rectification, and erasure straightforward.

Let’s look at an example.

Galaxy Telecom provides phone and broadband services to residential customers.

As Galaxy customer, Sarah is provided with a dedicated Vmoso customer service channel for all her communication.

She has reported a problem to Galaxy customer service, saying she’s unable to access certain websites and is being redirected to other sites.

Lloyd in the customer service team asks for details of which sites Sarah’s trying to access and where she’s ending up instead. During this discussion, Sarah confirms the IP address she’s currently using – this is something that GDPR classes as “personal data”.

As part of this discussion, Lloyd explicitly asks for Sarah’s consent to use the information provided to resolve the issue. A key requirement of GDPR is being able to demonstrate consent to use personal data, and receiving this consent in Vmoso provides a permanent record.

It’s now several months later. Galaxy have recently suffered a security breach of some customer data. They have, as GDPR requires, reported this to the relevant supervisory authority.

At the end of her contract, Sarah chose to switch suppliers so is no longer a Galaxy customer. But she hears about the breach in the news and is concerned that Galaxy may still hold some of her personal data. He asks Galaxy to provide her with all the information they still hold about her , and to delete it all.

Because all Sarah’s interactions with Galaxy have been through a persistent Vmoso customer service channel, this is trivially easy for Galaxy to do. Galaxy are able to provide Sarah with both the records from their core customer database, and a transcript of all the discussions they had with Sarah on Vmoso.

Galaxy’s use of Vmoso enables them to meet their GDPR obligations by providing Sarah with a rapid and comprehensive response.

But the impact of GDPR on communication systems isn’t just limited to customer service. It applies equally to any organisation inside or outside the EU that holds personal data about EU citizens, including cases such as:

HR departments retaining candidate information for recruitment
Charities maintaining lists of donors and volunteers
National and local government departments communicating with citizens.

For more information about how Vmoso can help your organisation, contact us at sales@broadvision.com or broadvision.com/contact

Vmoso Enterprise Transformation Methodology

As organizations embark on programmes of digital transformation, managing collective knowledge is becoming more important than ever. Knowledge is increasingly lost in employees’ email inboxes, or fragmented across a chaotic assortment of new communication tools brought in to address email’s failings.

At BroadVision, we understand that getting your corporate knowledge under control is more than just a technology implementation programme. The Vmoso Enterprise Transformation (or VET) methodology is a 10-step iterative process that refines working practices and establishes Vmoso at the heart of your enterprise communication and collaboration.

VET help organizations:

Identify and integrate existing knowledge sources
Capture new knowledge at source and index it for easy access
Define collaborative processes to add accountability to business communication
Devise and report upon meaningful metrics that link directly to business objectives

We know that the hardest part of any project to adopt new technology is getting started. Many employees remained wedded to working practices that discourage effective collaboration and impede the flow of information around the company. The VET methodology engages with all participants and stakeholders to drive behavioural change alongside Vmoso product implementation.

Let’s take a look at the ten steps in one cycle of the VET methodology.

First of all, it’s essential to gain a mandate for the project from the executive sponsor. Experience shows that without clear objectives from senior management, and commitment to make the people involved in the project available, it will be very hard to make the rest of the project successful. So before we do anything else, we need to establish project charter, endorsed by company management.
Next, we audit the communication and collaboration tools currently in use, and who’s using them. Digital transformation is a journey, and to define a realistic destination, we need to understand where we’re starting.
Then, we identify where the vast amount of collective knowledge in the organisation is currently stored, and decide whether that should be migrated to Vmoso, or left in place and integrated to Vmoso.
In step 4, we specify the use cases that are going to be implemented in this iteration of the methodology. The priority here is choosing those cases where we are most likely to see the biggest benefit, based on what we discovered in steps 2 and 3.
Then we design the knowledge architecture – how we are going to organise the information that will be held in Vmoso or integrated to it. This includes the Vmoso spaces, user groups and access control restrictions. We also map the business workflows we’ve identified in previous steps into Vmoso-based collaborative processes.
Next, we plan the schedule for the adoption phases of the project. This includes any technical integration and customization work required, the training schedule, and the metrics that are going to be used to evaluate success.
The length of the solution implementation itself will vary based on the amount of integration and customization work, so may be anything between a few days and many weeks, depending on decisions made earlier in the project.
Next, we transfer knowledge to the project steering committee and then all project participants. This includes not just Vmoso product training, but how the new working practices will be applied.
Then, of course, we need some time for the system to be used in the way it has been designed. The length of this phase can be anything between a few weeks and several months, with regular steering committee meetings to monitor progress.
Finally, we evaluate the results of the project against the success criteria defined earlier. Inevitably, some things will have worked well, some less so – this is essential input into the next iteration of the project, which starts again back at the “gain mandate” step.

VET is a continuous improvement programme. At BroadVision, we understand that behavioural changes take time and the end goal is only reached through a series of smaller steps. The results of one phase of the project feed directly into the definition of the next. Each iteration delivers invaluable data about which initiatives have worked, and which need to be reviewed. So the journey from noise and miscommunication to a streamlined “big knowledge” environment is taken gradually, not as one big leap.

BroadVision Global Services have been assisting leading enterprises around the world with their digital business initiatives for more than 20 years. Throughout the VET process, consultants from our Digital Transformation Group are here to help you. We’ll take part in your steering committee meetings, assist with project scoping and implementation, and training project participants.

The Vmoso Enterprise Transformation Methodology formulates and executes a clear, realistic, achievable plan for digital transformation of your communication, collaboration and engagement. It unlocks collective knowledge stored in fragmented systems across your organisation and introduces dynamic, collaborative processes to your business workflows.

Vmoso Chatbot by Optimist

Vmoso Chatbot by Optimist enables companies to provide rapid, automated assistance to customers within the context of their ongoing relationship with the customer.

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Using the Optimist software, the chatbot can be taught how to handle requests for any type of industry.

In this video we’ll see how Galaxy Airlines uses the chatbot to help John, who’s planning a short trip to Los Angeles with his family.

John starts by asking the chatbot for some information about access to the VIP lounge. Using a bot to answer frequently asked questions like this saves time and cost for the customer service team, and gives the customer a faster response.

But the chatbot can also help with the more complicated task of booking a flight. Based on John’s requests, the chatbot is able to suggest an itinerary, and then revise it in response to John’s replies.

The chatbot can also upsell – so offers to help John book ground transportation for when he arrives in LA.

By automating the response to frequently asked questions and assistance with the booking process, Galaxy Airlines reduces its customer service cost and delivers a faster response to its customers.

And because this all takes place within the Vmoso customer service channel, the discussion is retained for future reference for both the chatbot and customer service staff.