IBM
GroupSystems Structures Group Collaboration on IBM's Lotus Sametime 7.5 Platform
GroupSystems Corporation now possesses the ability to integrate ThinkTank™, its brainstorming, facilitation and collaboration technology, with IBM Lotus Sametime 7.5. ThinkTank™, launched in July 2006, expedites innovation and reduces costs by half by streamlining and structuring group meetings and sessions allowing groups to generate the highest quality output by tapping into the team's collective wisdom.
The seamless integration of ThinkTank™ with Lotus Sametime 7.5 empowers users to master key processes that drive innovation and growth: discovery, ideation, teaming, leading and learning. Group sessions benefit from ThinkTank™'s presence control, agenda management, anonymous contribution, multiple voting tools and capabilities to auto-document the groups' proceedings .
"We are seeing significant momentum among IBM Business Partners like GroupSystems in leveraging the power of the Lotus Sametime 7.5 real-time collaboration platform and building value on top of it," said Ken Bisconti, Vice President of Lotus Software Products, IBM. "GroupSystems' ThinkTank technology complements Lotus Sametime and plays a role in helping people communicate, share information and conduct business faster."
In helping to set the world standard for structured group collaboration, ThinkTank™ enables groups to reach consensus faster than ever before. The application will be integrated into the instant messaging feature of the Lotus Sametime 7.5 platform as a third-party plug-in accessible upon server-managed deployment or end-user installment.
"ThinkTank is the perfect Lotus Sametime 7.5 complement to enhance the value of instant messaging from unstructured conversations to structured group sessions that follow process templates, and can be archived in Activity Centric Computing and are easily distributed via RSS or email when finished," said Luis Solis, CEO and President of GroupSystems.
The ThinkTank™ plug-in for Lotus Sametime 7.5 enables automatic access from an IM conversation to a ThinkTank™ innovation session. In ThinkTank™, users can benefit from an easy to use interface to appoint a session leader, install order among participants, access real time prioritization, categorization and voting techniques, and analytic-based presentation of results. Future enhancements are expected to include the ability to cut and paste Lotus Sametime 7.5 contributions over to the ThinkTank™ session and the instant leveraging of the presence directory to invite gurus into sessions.