Blogs, wikis, online forums – the openness of the Web has revolutionized the way people share and discuss information. Management gurus say these innovations can benefit businesses as well, but companies want to make sure those discussions remain internal and secure – which is where Providence-based Traction Software’s TeamPage software comes in.

Jordan Frank, Traction’s vice president of marketing and business development, will discuss TeamPage at tonight’s Providence Geeks dinner, which will be held from 5:30 to 9 p.m. at AS220, 115 Empire St. in Providence. Frank talked with Providence Business News recently about how TeamPage works and how businesses are using it.

PBN: You describe TeamPage as “Enterprise Social Software.” What exactly is that? How does it work?

FRANK: Despite its billions of pages and lack of overarching structure, you can find what you seek on the Web with two words and a Google search box. Despite this simple and obvious working model, where pages, links and search come together to make information findable, enterprises have not been able to replicate the success of the Web within their own walls.

Enterprise social software enables the sort of page publishing and linking that makes the Web work. It enables people to connect through the content that they publish, edit, tag or discuss. Traction TeamPage is purpose-built around the needs of goal-focused project teams and communities who need to exchange and build upon information to get their work done. TeamPage’s section-driven interface delivers a dashboard-style experience that focuses individuals on what’s happening now and what’s important over all time, across all the spaces that they are able to read. TeamPage provides better-than-the-Web search experience that goes one step further by dynamically ranking pages based on each user’s own permissions

PBN: What are some examples of how different companies use TeamPage?

FRANK: With In-Q-Tel (the venture arm of the CIA) as our initial venture capital investor in the year 2000, we first set our sights on market research and competitive intelligence groups at enterprises and government agencies. That strategy got us into 10 of the top 20 pharmaceutical firms and many other Global 100 companies. Project, program and product management teams as well as communities of practice are the next top examples of how companies across all industries use TeamPage.

PBN: Businesses can be understandably nervous about corporate information flowing too freely – whether to the wrong employees or outside company walls. How do you address those concerns?

FRANK: Businesses have deployed very expensive Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to increase transparency across their processes that move goods from their supply chain, to their facilities and out to their customers. Why shouldn’t they want that same type of transparency across their working and communication processes? Besides, being able to “see” what employees are saying to other employees and partners in a protected workspace might give you clues about who is “miscommunicating” when you can’t monitor them – at bars, in meetings, on the airplane and so on.

Moving communication and collaboration into TeamPage allows for faster, freer flow of information to the people that need it. This makes it possible to support smarter, better informed decisions and to more quickly identify subject matter experts who can help when needed.

Inasmuch as total transparency may be an ideal, a great deal of communication requires protection and should be kept to individuals on a “can-know” basis. This is why we’ve gone to exceptional lengths to allow for enterprise-class security on TeamPage servers, as well as the assignment of permissions within each workspace. Additionally, if you think information may have leaked or been mishandled, the audit trail in TeamPage goes well beyond the “edit history” you expect from other wikis to help answer questions like, “What version of this page was e-mailed to who? When?”

PBN: Another concern could be productivity – if you spend too much time writing on an internal blog or updating a company wiki, people might lose time to work on projects. What impact does a program like TeamPage have on worker productivity?

FRANK: TeamPage got its name for a reason: because it’s designed for teams to get on the same page – to boost, not distract from, productivity. You update your team’s blog in TeamPage to report on status, raise an issue, ask a question or provide insight on how a new strategy is working, or failing. You update a wiki page in order to document a critical procedure or improve your product documentation for customers.

PBN: You got an investment from the Slater Technology Fund back in 2002. What role did that early support play in your growth as a company?

FRANK: Right when the tech bubble was deflating, Slater’s investment bought us the time we needed to do a commercial launch and catch a wave which started when the market went ga-ga about blogs and wikis in 2002. We were positioned perfectly to show how this sort of technology could be used in the enterprise to support productive working process. One year after our commercial launch, we achieved cash flow-positive operations and have grown every year since then. Slater’s investment came at a crucial time and, as a result, kept a technology leader and its jobs in Rhode Island for more than six years. •