AXIMA Services

Customer Space

AXIMA Services S.A./N.V. is a service provider. As your partner, we handle the management, running and maintenance of your technical installations, as well as all other services necessary for the smooth running of your company. The aim of all these services is to increase efficiency and control costs, based on an underlying ongoing commitment to quality.

Within this context, AXIMA Services has taken the initiative of developing an Internet information space dedicated exclusively to its customers. This “Customer Space” initiative is part of a general plan named “eAxima” intended to use and capitalise on the opportunities provided by Internet technologies within the framework of our company’s overall strategy.

The main aim of this information space, in other words this site, is to improve the flow of information between our company and our customers within the framework of the contractual management relationship.

It is composed chiefly of :

An IT infrastructure based on high-quality and state-of-the-art technological solutions. The company portal, one of the current technologies used for the development of the Customer Space, facilitates among other things the organisation of information and applications within communities and enables individual users to customise the tools available in their personal working area.

A series of tools designed for the publication of documents usually distributed in paper format or by e-mail. These tools are not intended to replace traditional means of communication but to complement them so that the Customer Space contains reference documents that are easy to consult, copy, print and search at all times.

A series of applications which facilitate the consultation and interaction with data relating to the activities of our technical management teams. These data concern, for example, maintenance and reflect the content of the databases used by our teams for CAMM (Computer Aided Maintenance Management).

The content of our Customer Space is constantly adapted and updated. It is the starting point of a new customer relationship process which is to enhance the functionalities and desired content via close collaboration.

The portal

The portal is a modern Internet application platform which is intended chiefly to provide users with an integrated, customised view of structured and unstructured information housed in multiple, heterogeneous systems.

This integrated view means that the information obtained from heterogeneous sources is presented to users in their personal working area or their community, with a standard presentation, for example as regards style, that the portal manager has decided to put in place using parameterisation tools available via the portal.

The information is presented to users in their working area which is composed of user-specific pages and community pages. The applications contained in these pages are displayed in the form of windows. In their user-specific pages, users can display their applications as they wish. In the community pages, which are accessible to several users, this is the responsibility of the community manager.
In the Customer Space portal, a community is composed of the people who share contractual relations with a customer. For example, the Dexia Banque community or the Electrabel community, are composed of customer contract managers, the customer’s correspondents at Axima Services and, if applicable, outside partners, such as research agencies or customer consultants.

There are three types of applications In the Customer Space portal :

- Document management, which enables users to view all the documents concerning the contractual relationship.

These documents are grouped together by contract and by category of documents (minutes of meetings, call reports, meeting reports, offers, etc.).

The source of these documents is the Axima Services document management system within which the documents are published in native file format or in Adobe Acrobat PDF format.

The main applications of this type are the consultation of directories, publishing and search applications.

- Operational activity data.

These data currently concern computer aided maintenance management.

The source of these data is a relationship database in which the data of the various databases of the operational teams are centralised. These data are published by the managers of these teams using a data mail service application.

The applications available display buildings, equipment, theoretical schedules (preventive work orders, operational schedules (work orders), technical regulations, etc. Other applications will be developed, for example, for the management of call-outs.

- Ad-hoc applications.

These applications are developed to make available various related or specific functionalities.

These applications include the list of links, contacts, calendars, unit converters, etc.

Other applications can be developed to resolve specific problems, such as for example, project data consultations.

Customer Space – eCollaboration

The portal.axima.be Customer Space is an Internet portal which Axima Services makes available to its customers and which provides contract managers with various services.

It is composed chiefly of :

The latest innovations available on our portal include an eCollaboration application, that is to say a suite of project management tools.

This eCollaboration application is integrated in the portal by means of portlets. These portlets are available in a version for user-specific pages and in a version for community pages.

The eCollaboration portlets are distributed on the community pages. The default community settings include a home page and a projects page. The projects page includes two default portlets: the project explorer and the eCollaboration search engine.

The project explorer portlet enables users to create, select and access the community’s various projects. The default setting includes access for the community to its community project, but the community manager can create any projects considered necessary.

The search engine portlet enables users to make simple and advanced searches of the elements, including in documents, of the community’s projects.

The portal’s general search engine not only searches the portal’s directories as currently but also searches projects.

Other portlets can also be placed on the community page by the manager of the community in question. These portlets group together objects of the same type belonging to the projects selected, that is to say the projects displayed in the project explorer.

The document management portlet facilitates the processing of documents. This portlet, in the same way as those described below, enables users to screen documents by project, and display only the desired number of documents. The portlet enables users to carry out the main document processing operations, such as loading, checking out or checking in or publishing documents. Loading documents is an innovation in the portal since previously users could only read documents. The check out and check in functions enable users to modify documents and keep the different versions while ensuring the consistency of the modifications made. The online publishing function enables users to modify a document online (that is to say while it is still on the server) while carrying out an implicit check out and check in.

The task management portlet enables users to process different tasks or tasks list created in the various projects selected. The tasks can be created and requested from this portlet. A task may be allocated to one or more people having access to the project, may have a start and end date, may appear in the schedule and be notified to the people to whom the task is allocated at the time of allocation, at the planned start or end of the task execution.

The schedule management portlet enables users to process the elements in the schedule. The schedule includes the start and end dates of tasks, events and milestones of the various projects selected. The schedule can be displayed with time horizons of 1 day, 7 days or one month.

The announcement portlet enables users to create, modify, delete and post announcements for the projects selected.

The discussion portlets enable users to create, modify and delete discussions and to reply to messages posted on the discussion pages of the projects selected.

From the project explorer, users can also access an integrated management application for each project. This enables them to process the schedule, tasks, documents and discussions for the project selected. The project manager also uses this application to manage authorisations. Each project involves three roles: the project managers, the project members and the project guests. Users or groups of users are allocated to one of these three roles and those users then have the authorisations attached to the role in question. For example, the project guest role has a read only authorisation.

This application includes all the functionalities present in the community portlets. These functionalities are extended for each of the object categories. For example:

Documents, tasks can be placed in project directories and sub-directories.

Users can subscribe to project modifications or modifications to the object lists by type of object. For example, users can receive notification of all modifications to the tasks or project documents.

Users can notify directly another user, for example, that a new document is available without that user needing to subscribe to automatic notifications.

Users can allocate tasks to other users.

This application has complete online documentation for its functionalities.

There are numerous links between the community portlets and the integrated project management application. In addition, there are numerous links in a project between the different types of objects. For example, a document can be linked to a discussion or to a task.