Introducing the myVmoso Network – a network of personal data connected by consent-based sharing
Introducing the myVmoso Network – a network of personal data connected by consent-based sharing
The way we communicate has changed. 10 years ago email was by far the most prevalent method of business communication. But now the ubiquity of smartphones, and the huge array of new communication apps has splintering our conversations across many different channels.
Vmoso’s Enterprise Knowledge Hub keeps track of which systems hold which information and helps you find what you’re looking for.
The Vmoso Retail Workforce Engagement Hub provides digital connectivity and accountability between company headquarters, regional offices and retail stores. It enables:
Built on Vmoso’s cloud architecture, the Retail Workforce Engagement Hub connects people, activities, systems, data and content in a “single source of truth”. Running on a virtual private cloud assures security and privacy, while enabling open integration with other retail systems.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The General Data Protection Regulation or GDPR is a new set of data protection laws set to be introduced on 25th 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:
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:
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.
For more information about how Vmoso can help your organisation, contact us at sales@broadvision.com or broadvision.com/contact
Galaxy Hospitals uses Vmoso to help medical researchers plan, prepare and execute their studies, Vmoso lets them engage with both the physicians who can benefit from research findings, and patients in the trial cohorts.
Dr Sandra Baker is a young researcher at Galaxy Hospitals. She’s got plenty of ideas and lots of enthusiasm, but hasn’t published many papers yet, so she struggles each time she applies for a grant.
She’s planning a study about the relationship between the environment children grow in – including nutrition, physical activity, pollution and exposure to pesticides – and their growth. In addition to the statistical snapshot this study would provide, she believes that indicators can be found to help prevent environmentally-induced pathologies that develop unnoticed.
Sandra has published a short abstract of her project in Vmoso, inside a public space which can be read by anyone from Galaxy Hospital who’s interested in pediatric research. A few physicians have answered her message, giving her a few extreme examples of children affected by pathologies which, they suspect, could be related to their lifestyle.
One of them, Dr Felz, has also contacted her in a private chat to share some data about cases which could help Sandra refine her research topic. His message includes his findings in an attached file, and a reference to Sandra’s original post, making it clear why he is contacting her.
From the data shared by Dr Felz, Sandra is able to see a pattern, but of course that’s just a suspicion. In the hope of discovering more supporting data, she comments on her original post, asking readers to point her to any data that could confirm or deny her initial findings.
Shortly afterwards, she gets an email from Dr John Martinez, from another research institute. John is currently trying to push forward a very similar project, and he’s been given Sandra’s details by Dr Felz. John is interested in joining forces, so that they can present a more robust project for a grant application. An abstract of his project is attached to the email.
Sandra decides to grab the opportunity and transforms the email into a Vmoso chat. As she does this, John receives a notification email, which is also an invitation to join Vmoso to gain full access to the chat. He registers, and becomes an external member. He can now collaborate with Sandra, but doesn’t yet have any access yet to the data shared only with Galaxy Hospitals.
John and Sandra work together to refine the abstract. Sandra creates a Vmoso space to share all the related documents, and gives John access to the space. They collect data which they either upload to Vmoso, or simply share from existing Galaxy Hospitals data already present in Vmoso.
After a few weeks of work, Sandra and John feel that their project is very solid, but still lacks some details regarding the recruitment of subjects for the clinical trials. Neither of them is very experienced on this topic, so they decide to gather some knowledge about it.
Sandra navigates the Vmoso posts and finds a couple of topics about cohort recruitment. She quickly gets lost in all the explanations she reads, so decides to look at the connections between those topics and users. For that, she switches to the knowledge map of the posts, which show relationships between discussions, documents, and users.
She quickly finds a researcher who is involved in many cohort selection discussions. Dr Victoria White is a recognized expert on this topic so Sandra invites her help in her study. That’s done very simply by adding her into the discussion already taking place with John.
By going through the discussion, Victoria is able to quickly understand the research topic, which she immediately relates to. She suggests a cohort recruitment process which is added into the grant application documents.
Finally, the application is ready to be sent to the granting body that they have decided to apply to.
The grant application has been well prepared, and shortly afterwards the team receives the approval and is able to start the research.
In order to organize the collaboration necessary for the project, Sandra creates a spaces in Vmoso to share documents and discussions with relevant and authorized participants.
A company-wide space is created to share status announcements about the project, and build up traction inside Galaxy Hospitals.
A restricted space is created, shared only with the core team, for all the discussions and documents which the team need to keep private.
Other private spaces are created to collaborate with individual physicians helping with the cohort selection and management, and also with the patients families to share instructions, news and advice with them.
In order to find potential patients, Vmoso is integrated with the electronic medical records system. A query is done through Vmoso and the results are returned to the selected Vmoso thread from the records database. This avoids the need for Sandra to switch between multiple tools and automatically makes the data available to all project researchers.
Because each patient has Vmoso access through Galaxy Hospitals, the potential trial patients will be notified about the research project through both Vmoso and email, allowing them to choose the communication channel they prefer.
Once enrolled, the patients’ families can interact with the research team through either the Vmoso-enavled MyGalaxyHospitals app, or directly through Vmoso.
In addition to the news and advice pushed to the patient families through their Vmoso app, the families are also asked to complete questionnaires relating to the lifestyle of their children. For example, how much time their child spends exercising, how much fruit and vegetables the child eats, etc.
The questionnaire results are made available to the physician following the child, and to the research team. The physician has the opportunity to double check with the family whether the answers are correct, and to correct them if needed, before the data gets fed into the study database.
Whenever physicians have doubts or need to discuss specific aspects with the research team, they can use either the global post, or one of the private chats each of them has with the team.
After 5 years of research, the study delivers interesting results, but Sandra’s objective is to have at least 15 years of data. Sandra and her team are able to use the data recorded in Vmoso to quickly build a grant extension application, and they succeed in obtaining a 5 year extension.
If a researcher requires a test using specialized medical equipment during the course of the project, they can book a time through Galaxy Hospitals’ equipment rental portal, which is integrated with Vmoso. A Vmoso task is created including both the equipment booking team and the equipment operator.
The researcher can then communicate with the equipment team through Vmoso with any questions. When the test has concluded, the results are added to the task.
Dr Felz is also very satisfied with the outcome of this study. Thanks to the communication channels he has with the research team, he is able to get early access to the study results. This helps him advise families in the best way possible to improve the health of their children.
Vmoso helps the research team plan, prepare and carry out their studies. It improves the communication and collaboration between the research team, the patients, and interested medical professionals, resulting in faster, more accurate results.