Joblogs recently announced at Office 2.0, a new web-based service that focuses on helping service-focused teams organize their constant flow of client communication and projects. Their service combines of blog concepts and CRM into a private communication hub where staff across the enterprise can collaborate themselves and with their customers to stay coordinated and get work done.

Joblogs is not a blog platform in the traditional sense. Within the application a blog describes a single web page that tells a story about something a team is working on e.g. a private agenda/folder for a business transaction or project. Most blogs remain private, used internally by the team, however publishing a blog to an external guest (anyone with an email address) enables the internal team to expose a specific view of its internal activity with its customers. They mentioned such examples as a commercial realtor who wants to market a property to a set of customers, a design company that wants to get feedback from a client, or a financial planner who wants to discuss a specific plan with a client.

Conventional CRM, CMS, Intranet and enterprise software has largely focused on material goods based industries. Joblogs has been designed from the ground up to support service oriented professions. This is in contrast to conventional CRM that has largely focused on material goods based industries. Their application is designed for businesses that provide services requiring daily coordination of people, information, processes, schedules and decisions and need to keep the entire business (sales, support and operations teams) coordinated and private.

Taking an enterprise 2.0 approach, Joblogs shifts work from a disjointed file / email exchange to an environment that’s more connected, contextual and collaborative. It is nice to see more of these applications that combine transparency with security for business purposes.