A single web-based visual environment for building a web-based knowledge architecture

The challenges facing organisations today include these:

• Real-time collaboration between geographically dispersed team members is becoming increasingly important.
• Equally vital is an organisation's agility - its ability to react to changes rapidly.
• Finally, the regulatory environment continues to make ever greater demands on organisations.

Agility requires joined-up thinking, as does the new regulatory emphasis on process. Speed of action calls for a real-time communications platform.

Organisations need a single platform where current business data is visible, where new ideas can be developed and communicated, where messages can be delivered to a variety of audiences.

This is Ecstra.

Ecstra belongs to the general class of systems known as Content Management Systems (CMS) - that is, its most essential functions are to do with creating, storing and manipulating text and documents for publication on the Web, in print and via other media.

What makes Ecstra different are three key insights.

• A picture is worth a thousand words. The technology now exists for teams to collaborate in real time using interactive "live" diagrams - so why not use it?
• Over the last two decades, data interoperability has taken leaps forward. The technology now exists for organisations to standardise data at the application level, building systems which are guaranteed to be interoperable with each other. This is an activity for business people, not software developers.
• Business processes can be treated as data. Once defined and stored, they can be monitored and improved.

Too often, an organisation's investment in CMS technology is wasted by a narrow project focus. By contrast, a team that adopts Ecstra starts immediately to create value by structuring and sharing the data and processes that make it work.