Answer to Question 1
The Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson runs an extranet for current and former employees, families of those employees, and employees of approved business partners. Ericsson has more than 120,000 employees scattered across the globe. One part of this extranet includes a Web site that enables current employees, retirees, and other recipients of payments from the companys medical and retirement plans to efficiently track their benefits. Another part of the extranet includes a Web site designed to facilitate knowledge management.
Knowledge management is the intentional collection, classification, and dissemination of information about a company, its products, and its processes. This type of knowledge is developed over time by individuals working for or with a company and is often difficult to gather and distill.
Answer to Question 2
Human resources, payroll, and retirement plan services are all areas in which small and midsized companies often look for outside help. These business processes are subject to many detailed rules and regulations that often require an expert to decipher. A wide range of companies offer human resource management services online. Firms such as CheckPointHR offer a full range of services online; others, such as Advantage Payroll, specialize in payroll processing services, which are also available online. These business process outsourcing providers duplicate their clients human resources and/or payroll functions on a password-protected Web site that is accessible to clients employees. The employees can then access their employers benefits information, find the answers to frequently asked questions, and even perform benefit option calculations. Larger firms build these types of functions into their own internal systems.