All-In-One rapid development platform

During initial customer meetings, many people ask us "Why Lotus Notes?".  To put it simply: it enables us to implement our core methodology of becoming a preferred supplier to our customers.  In order to do so, we need a cost-effective collaborative platform to quickly facilitate customer service, provide our team with the right information at the right time when working on projects, and a way to measure how effective our current processes are.

The Lotus Notes platform (sometimes called Lotus Domino) provides all of these functions and more.  With one server application, we can provide email, calendaring and scheduling, workflow, and document management - right out of the box.  To get something similar utilizing Microsoft Exchange, you would need to install Active Directory, Exchange Server, Windows Live Communication Server, SharePoint Services, Internet Information Server, and SQL Server.  (see the comparison PDF here)  This would escalate costs and complexity for both development and support of the system.

Add to this the ability to rapidly implement workflow processes into a structured system, and measure our success in terms of those processes, and you can quickly see the value in the Lotus Notes platform.  We can implement most business processes into our TeamWork application in about a day.  Other platforms can take weeks because the messaging infrastructure is separate from the application environment.

What about emerging web-based platforms?

Many web-based technologies are making great strides in providing users with an experience similar to that of their desktop applications.  However, nothing can replace the type of interactions you can get with a rich-client - the kind provided by the Lotus Notes platform.  Things like dragging-and-dropping, in-place editing of attachments, fly-out menus, and more - It is hard for users to give up functionality once they've come accustomed to it. 

Also, web applications only work when you are online.  For some teams, this is acceptable. But if your work force is out in the field, or management spends time building customer relationships outside of the office, you need a robust platform that can synchronize information and let you work offline, securely, like Lotus Notes.

For more information on Lotus Notes, please check out this web site, or feel free to contact us directly, and we will help you see the strategic benefits of the Lotus Notes platform.