Adapt is an association for international and comparative studies in the field of labor, law, and industrial relations. It has several research centers in Italy and abroad. The company has about 10 employers and about 200 co-workers, mainly PhD students from different research fields (Law, Modern Languages, Human Sciences, Economics, Education, International Relations, and so on).
Our need was to find a place where we could meet from different parts of the world in order to share materials for our activities, to organize the company, and update the whole group about the different projects.
The solution was our Moodle site, not only for educational purpose (e-Learning), but for managing the company as well. We have just begun opening a "course" where our administration staff could upload documents that were useful for any member of the company. After that, we opened other courses dedicated to different aspects of the organization of the company (for example, we opened a course just for managing every activity related to the placement of our students and combining the request from our partners, about eighty big companies, to the different curricula we had in our database).
It's simple and very adaptable to what we needed. First of all, we needed a tool where we could control access for every user, and with Moodle that is possible for each resource and activity. When you have to work with a lot of people, it could be necessary that in the same course you have to manage several objects (docs, wikis, and so on) showing some parts only to a person, some other parts to a group, and so on.
We have been using it since October 2009. At the very beginning, there was only one course for business and managing purpose (3 users); now there are more than ten (about fifty users, but it grows every day). We consider it a success.
We could manage our activities and saving of data more efficiently and keep it updated. For example, we have interviewed young students in order to suggest them to our partners (about eighty big companies). During the interview, we could immediately see the Curriculum Vitae of the candidate and write about our impression and other notes regarding the candidate on a dedicated wiki. This wiki was open to other co-workers who could share this information with the whole group of people related to the placement activity, just in time.
Technology is a tool that can help anybody to save time and to organize efficiently, especially for an activity that must be shared with a group of people.