Week 7, Case Study 2: Collaboration Systems at Isuzu Australia Limited

Isuzu Australia Limited or IAL is a subsidiary of Isuzu Motors Limited in Japan and are responsible for all things Isuzu Trucks in Australia. The company needed a way to connect a large dealer network and to improve the speed and accuracy of their communications between headquarters and each dealer and other business partners (Isuzu Australia, 2008). The reasoning behind getting this communication network up and running is the high priority requirement for access to the latest materials and information from IAL head office (Bigdoli, 2014). In 2005 they distributed all information in printed format and shipped via the Australia Post. The benefits to creating a centralized communication network would be exponential to their productivity, dealers and other business partners would be able to access information and submit issues in real time instead of relying on post.
IAL decided to use IBM’s WebSphere portal and Workplace Web Content Management (WCM), along with Lotus SameTime instant messaging, Lotus Quickr for team based project management and Portal Document Manager (PDM) for a central repository of documents. The reasoning behind this was given by the Staff Operations Manager, Aninka Morhall – We chose WebSphere Portal and WCM because this solution was more capable of meeting our needs than the other offerings in the market, in particular in terms of its scalability. We were also interested in all of the extra collaborative components. As a long time Lotus Notes® user we knew these systems would integrate seamlessly with our existing technology platforms." IAL chose to use a solution that, in part, they were already familiar with and knew would work with existing systems.
A wiki is an application that allows users to edit and publish content in collaboration with other users. IAL uses their