Sample Applications

Accounting

J.T. Hicks & Company jthicksandcompany.com

J. T. Hicks & Company is a prominent accounting and financial planning firm that uses CollaborationStudios.com^® (CS) to receive and distribute financial information to their clients in a secure and timely manner. The company wanted to improve efficiency and reduce costs. They wanted to move as quickly as possible toward their goal of a "paperless office." CS offered a system that enabled them to make huge strides toward achieving their objective. Each accounting client receives a network ID and password to their own CS network. Tax returns and other financial information is distributed by CPAs working in the main office directly into the client's CS Cabinet. Information is organized by tax year. This structure keeps everything organized, accessible and secure. The office administrator controls who can access the data and what their access permissions should be (Read only, Read-write, write-only, etc.). These permissions can be shared among network members or even between members in different networks. CS Presentation Rooms can be used by the accounting team to share information with the client. CS "metadata" can be used to supplement information on spreadsheets and other documents. CS even offers the ability to store and retrieve multiple "versions" of the same document – an invaluable tool that enables accountants to track changes or perform "what-if" analysis.

Disaster Recovery

Loeb Partners Corporation loebpartners.com

Loeb Partners is a large financial company based in New York City. They were concerned about their ability to recover their world wide operations in the event of a disaster. CS offered the solution – a web-based, secure environment with automatic backup protection.

Education

New England Institute of Technology neit.edu

NEIT is a 4-year college offering both associate and bachelor degrees in a variety of technical disciplines. NEIT administrators needed a way to accept sensitive personal and financial information from students who were planning to attend their school. They wanted to accept information from forms residing on their own web site. They needed to store the information in both a database and also in "document" format. These documents needed to be transferred between a number of NEIT departments for processing. CS provided a secure messaging system that allowed the information contained in these applications to be easily stored and securely distributed. A set of administrative reports that accessed the database information was made available through CS Cabinet links.

Engineering

Hydro-Photon, Inc. steripen.com

Hydro-Photon manufactures SteriPEN^®, a unique portable water purification system that sterilizes water using ultraviolet light. Engineers at their home office needed to share engineering drawings, images and technical specifications with their colleagues located at manufacturing centers in Asia. The Steripen marketing and sales team wanted the ability to distribute marketing and sales information (such as price lists and order forms) with their worldwide network of distributors. Collaboration Studios designed a system to meet their specific needs. CS used their "batch-update" utility to transfer the needed data files into a CS Network. Instead of flying to Asia to discuss a design change, engineers could now share information using the powerful CS toolset (Messaging, Presentation Rooms, IRC, Metadata, etc.). Instead of mailing out packets of CDs to their distributors each time a logo changes, Steripen's marketing team now simply moves the necessary files into a CS cabinet. Hydro-Photon's latest material is now always "just a click away."

Financial Planning

Tax Partners LLC taxpartnersllc.com

Tax Partners is a group of financial advisors who required a system capable of automating their complex, tax-related, manual workflows. They needed to distribute the latest version of their unique financial planning tools to each of their member clients who are spread across the US and who use these tools in a collaborative manner as they work together with the Tax Partners' nationwide network of CPAs, legal services providers and other professionals. They also needed a system that would enable their members to request resources and enable them to track the flow of information requests through the system. CS provided Tax Partners with an organizational framework through which the status of workflow tasks could be assigned and monitored. Business tools and corporate information are stored within the appropriate CS Network by their central office staff. Members of their organization are located throughout the United States but with CS they are confident that they are always working with the correct forms and latest financial information.

Marketing Management & Solutions

Demographic Architectural Marketing LLC

Demographic Architectural Marketing, LLC (“DAM”) is a private marketing management and technology solution services company formed to support the activities of professional Financial Advisors. DAM required a generic technology platform that would allow them to support an entire range of business models. Each model needed secure and effective communications and documents exchanges on a nationwide basis. CS offered DAM the new CS “Smart Folder” functionality that enables information originating from automated telephone conversations to be passed securely through the CS – API channel into secure Collaboration Cabinet^® folders which have been set up to automatically trigger a wide range of “Expert” workflow processes to be managed within the CS "Workflow Tracking System" (CS-WTS). The client workflow requests may also be entered into the system through web-based interactive forms. The work requests are examined by DAM workflow managers who assign the work out to a nationwide distributed team of qualified “Experts” (such as legal experts and/or financial professionals). As the work is completed, the resulting documents and records are automatically securely stored within the CS cabinet/folder/file structure where they can be easily and securely shared nationwide among the distributed workgroup members, and the documents can also be securely sent back to the original telephone based work requester via the secure CS Folder Share functionality. The CS technology platform was selected by DAM because they believe it will also allow them to design and support a wide range of new business model requirements which are being demanded by the DAM clients and new client prospects.

Nonprofit

Jumpstart Our Youth jumpstartouryouth.org

The JOY program is Maine's most comprehensive youth philanthropy program. In 2009, over 2,000 Maine students from more than 65 schools throughout the state spent over 1,000 hours making local community grants and volunteering within their communities. In the first year of operation it is estimated that the students involved in the JOY program put more than $150,000 back into their local communities.

Using grant money provided by private donations and the Maine based Unity Foundation, students in the JOY program fund local organizations serving youth needs. These programs have included fitness and recreation, early childhood development, the arts, and many others. JMG school specialists work directly with students within their schools to help them evaluate donor grant proposals and teach the students how to channel their passion, skills and funds towards solving local community problems.

Under the control of CS-Smartfolder™ technology, the JOY/JMG program uses Collaboration Studio's CS-Core™ program to store and distribute grant information from CS's secure databases to JMG school specialists and JMG/Unity Foundation administrators. The CS workflow management and tracking module (CS-WTS™) manages each stage of the donation process from initial grant proposal through the delivery of the final check.

Workflow Management

Professional Tax Planners of America protaxplanners.com

Professional Tax Planners of America is a CPA Advisory and Tax Return Preparation service formed to support the activities of professional Financial Advisors. They needed a system that would allow them to allocate work and track the status of client projects on a nationwide basis. CS offers "Secure Gateway" functionality that enables information to be passed to external programs in a secure manner. In the case of Pro Tax Planers, this information is passed to the CS "Workflow Tracking System" (WTS). Client requests are entered into the system through web-based interactive forms. The requests are examined by Pro Tax staff members who assign the work to a nationwide team of qualified financial professionals. As work is completed, documents and records are securely stored within the CS cabinet/folder/file structure where they can be easily shared among workgroup members. The Workflow Tacking System follows the status of each request from initial submission through final billing.