LINE Comunications Pioneers B2ME Portal
LINE Communications, has developed one of the world's
first B2ME environments - what it believes is the
future of enterprise-wide corporate learning and communication
portals.
The company has recently conducted a successful consultative
project with a global financial services organisation
to explore the possibilities for creating individual
learning channels. As part of this project, LINE has
conducted extensive research with individuals to analyse
their information and communication needs across a
full range of jobs, countries and learning cultures
in order to develop a prototype environment. The end
result was an environment, bringing together material
from a wide range of sources, including full multi-media,
server-based documents and Internet content.
The
project took around 4 weeks to research, conceptualise
and develop. The speed at with a fully functioning
global environment could be up and running is dependent
on existing and planned IT infrastructure.
B2ME
is concerned with the concept of providing all employees
with an individual customised web site, providing
access to every conceivable kind of content. The B2ME
environment is designed to allow each employee to
access information on their own health, safety and
the environment, corporate news, competitor information,
current affairs, training and learning, along with
diary, email, internal messaging and personal information
like bank accounts and train timetables all from one
screen.
Chairman
of LINE, Ian Philion explains, 'The point of B2ME
is to solve the growing problem of information overload
- more now in one day than they had in a month, twenty
years ago. Today employees are blanket-bombed with
information, all of which has different degrees of
relevance and interest. They spend valuable time switching
between different applications and channels in order
to access it, only to find they didn't need it in
the first place.'
'B2ME environments provide time efficiencies, performance
improvements, and cost savings by enabling organisations
to manage their knowledge, learning and communications
more effectively and more efficiently. Individuals
will also be able to tailor the information they receive
to their specific needs.'
The
solution used LINE's experience in developing functional
and compelling learning solutions, blending a range
of fat and thin media, data sources and technologies,
whilst ensuring the cultural component was addressed
for this multi-national audience. The
B2ME environment will help develop motivation and
a shared culture within the organisation, increasing
e-learning take-up, knowledge sharing and understanding,
and as a result, efficiency and effectiveness.
B2ME will also ensure that the workforce retains more
information. With the development of new mobile technology,
remote and mobile employees will also be able to access
information at any time, in any place, and on any
device (including Pocket PC and Palm).
Whilst
the B2ME environment is still a prototype, LINE claims
to have proved that B2ME portals are a thing of the
present, rather than the future.
March
26th, 2002
 
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