Imagine That: 5 Ideas That Could Improve Your Work
/The County’s Information Technology Innovation Day, presented by the Technology Office, HP and AT&T, was held last week at the County Operations Center. The event was started in 2012 as a way to collaborate with employees and brainstorm tech ideas to increase work efficiency and improve customer service.
If you missed out on the innovative fun, don’t worry. We’ve got five ideas from the day that will inspire and, hopefully, spark more ideas.
1. Sprout
Who can benefit from it: Anyone, but Sprout is especially useful for departments that have marketing or communication needs, departments that share and edit multiple documents and departments that share evidence and artifacts.
What it does: The real question is, what can’t it do? Sprout offers up dual interactive screens (a touchscreen monitor and a touch mat) that allow you to seamlessly collaborate with other Sprout users. It’s a bit like the interactivity of Lync, but with a whole lot more tools. You can scan and edit items, collectively work with other groups on the same document and watch edits in real-time – heck, you can even play the piano on it!
Why it’s useful: Bye-bye paper! All digital scanning means less paper waste. It also allows a unified workflow. Bonus: It’s easy enough that kids can use it.
2. Idea Portal
Who can benefit from it: Anyone with an idea
What it does: Offers a digital platform for everyone to contribute ideas on a topic. A message board function allows you to talk out your ideas with others, fine-tune them and collaborate with colleagues. In the example presented, the County Technology Office could run an idea portal for possible IT improvements. Allows you to easily upload web clippings, pics and docs for everyone to view.
Why it’s useful: Your ideas go straight to the source to be considered as a possible new capability. Bonus: it helps connect interdepartmental goals and identify common needs across the County. Everyone has one forum in which to share and collaborate.
3. IT Vending Machine
Who can benefit from it: County employees who require immediate access to IT hardware
What it does: Dispenses much-needed, high-demand office technology supplies instantly. It can be customized to be filled with whatever your location uses most often and can efficiently control and track IT supplies. Basically, it’s a vending machine full of tech goodies (e.g. flash drives, wireless mice, keyboards, headsets, etc.) Bonus: Can be controlled with badge access and/or P-card.
Why it’s useful: Provides 24/7 access for needed supplies (no more waiting three days for your order!) and offers up controlled dispensing. Complete customization caters to employees, departments and/or locations.
4. WatchDox Document Security
Who can benefit from it: Anyone who needs to share documents
What it does: Love Dropbox? Can’t get enough of GoogleDocs? WatchDox takes the same concept from those private company offerings and adds security to it, enabling County employees to safely access, share and collaborate on sensitive information from any device (phone, tablet, computer) and with any user (other County employees or outside contacts). Bonus: You can edit documents on devices that don’t have Word (like your Apple iPad).
Why it’s useful: Synchronizes documents across PC and mobile devices so that all docs are updated, no matter where they live. With customizable security, you can have various folders with various permissions (Read-only, CoSD-only; download protocol, etc.). WatchDox offers up extra security and control that other doc-sharing systems can’t.
5. OMEGA (Online Mobile Engagement App)
Who can benefit from it: Our customers
What it does: Provides helpful information to people visiting County facilities. Sensors located at County buildings can, essentially, create an alert on smartphones that have a County app downloaded on it. Once the user comes within a certain range of the sensor, they’ll receive a push notification on their smartphone that offers up guidance based on their location: a map of the County facility they’re entering, services located in that building or other tips for their visit.
Why it’s useful: Adds to customer service. We’re holding the hands of our customers without smothering them. Bonus: The idea uses technology already in play – Bluetooth.
Got questions or crave more? Contact HPCoSDInnovate@hp.com and keep being innovative!
And heads-up to mark your calendars for June 3, 2015, as a similar event will be hosted by the CTO, Adobe, EMC and HP. This day will focus on business solutions and benefits of using the County’s existing enterprise document processing platform. You will have an opportunity to hear first-hand how several County departments have improved productivity and efficiency by processing documents using high-speed scanning, electronic forms, workflow and central content management. EMC and Adobe will present future plans of the products we currently use. This will be a day that you won’t want to miss!