Genencor International is a global leader in genomics. Founded in 1982 as a joint venture between Genentech and Corning, Genencor uses biotechnology to develop products that address the needs of the healthcare, agricultural, and industrial chemical markets. With more than 1,500 people working at sites in Palo Alto, California, Rochester, New York, and the Netherlands, effective collaboration is key to Genencor's success.

Researching, manufacturing, and marketing products in a highly competitive market such as the biotech field, Genencor needed a way to take advantage of its most valuable asset: the knowledge of its employees. The company set out to create an environment to facilitate collaborative development among researchers at its various sites. Genencor also needed a way to conduct real-time online meetings to eliminate the need for travel to a common location.

As a research-oriented company in a heavily regulated field, Genencor handles a phenomenal amount of sensitive data. The data has to be compiled, managed, and made readily accessible on a need-to-know basis to individual users without compromising security for a single document or database, and without incurring excessive IT admin costs. Security being a primary concern, Genencor looked to Lotus Domino as a solution to its collaboration needs.

Genencor, with help from Lotus Business Partners Cutting Edge Technologies and Infocation, created a Domino-based portal that provides job-specific information to individuals, managers, and executives.

"Our portal shouldn't be confused with an intranet," says Brian Shew, Informative technology director for Genencor. "This portal holds everything that's relevant to people doing their jobs: documents, research reports, spreadsheets, you name it."

A little help from the partners

Cutting Edge Strategies used its Web Object Builder tools to build a Domino-based, Web-accessible portal, under which Genencor can roll out new portals at will. Within a portal, Genencor users can post content, as well as manage the security and navigation associated with that content. According to Shew, "For us, user-managed security is Lotus' most distinctive capability. That is a key reason why we chose Domino over Microsoft technology for our corporate portal."

Another partner, Infocation, created the login interface, featuring single sign-on that fully integrates Lotus' security characteristics, giving each user access to everything within the portal for which that user has authorization, but no more. Infocation also extended the portal's capabilities significantly by integrating Domino Search and Sametime into the Cutting Edge Strategies' design.

The portal grows continuously, partly through addition of content by users, and partly through a lengthening list of applications developed in-house. "We always intended to develop applications to get the most from the portal. That brings up another major differentiator in Lotus Domino's favor -- ease of application development from one project to another," says Shew.

Real-time Collaboration

Lotus Sametime has increased Genencor's efficiency and reduced travel time by letting employees share applications and conduct effective meetings without leaving the office. "When a person sets up a meeting, they might the office. "When a person sets up a meeting, they might set up a spreadsheet. In the meeting, everyone can work in that one spreadsheet -- they are all at different locations of course -- and view live updates as they all contribute information," says Shew. Especially enthusiastic about Sametime are Genencor's research teams, who now can collaborate more regularly on highly technical development projects.

Security details

Users define who can access portal documents. The process is as simple as addressing an e-mail. "Security plays a huge role," says Shew. "It's user-managed -- and that's the key to opening up the portal to everyone and keeping it current. Users can post sensitive information without worrying about the wrong people seeing it because they define security for the documents themselves. No other product can do that."

In addition, this security approach is fully integrated into Domino Search. Unlike standard search engines, when Domino Search responds to a query, it retrieves only those documents for which the requester has security clearance. The requester isn't aware any other documents exist.

Key benefits

Genencor's product pipeline management system is accessible to management via the portal. This Domino-based application pulls all product and project information into one central and secure repository for portfolio analysis and decision-making. Observes Shew, "The combination of the portal and the pipeline management application is one of the most innovative systems in the biotech field and has made our R&D processes faster, more productive, and more effective."

Another of Genencor's key assets is its blue chip partnerships. The company is developing portals targeted to key customers to be housed underneath the main portal. These customer-specific portals will draw together everything available about the customer, including transaction data, documents, licensing data, sales call summaries, and more. It will also contain search engine facilities and the Internet crawlers that will pull in news items. Once again, user-managed security will help Genencor to keep administrative costs to a minimum.

The Domino-based corporate portal is revolutionizing information sharing and collaboration at Genencor. The quantity of information being shared has increased, as has its timeliness and significance. As Shew summarizes, "The portal gives people the information that they need to do their jobs -- not just occasionally, but every day. That is really impressive."