“We believe it is the job of
management to remove
barriers for the workforce
so they can do their job,”
explains Michael Monette,
VP of Strategic Planning
and   Development   at
Canada  Communication
Group,  Inc.  (CCG)  of
Ottawa-Hull, Quebec. The
latest barrier to be removed
was the frustration of the
600 employees unable to
effectively  share  their 
work with each other and
the resulting duplication,
expense,  and  reduced
productivity.    Utilizing
DocuShare, an intranetbased  
document-sharing
product from Xerox, eliminated 
this barrier. “With
the new approach that
DocuShare allows us,” says
Monette, “the employees
are empowered, there is a
higher level of morale in
the workforce, and we are
seeing considerable cost
savings.”
Although it has only been
three   months   since
DocuShare came onboard,
there is a direct reduction
in phone calls to Human
Resources, a decrease in
time spent locating and
accessing marketing collaterals, 
and a five to ten
percent estimated reduction 
in expenses for sales
and marketing. There is a
direct productivity impact
on  operations  through
sharing  product  capabilities,  
limitations  and
workarounds.      “With
DocuShare we see the
impact of collaboration that
we were hoping for,” says
Monette,  “and  if  just 
one customer solution can
be reused for another
customer, the benefit could
be tens of thousands of
dollars.” 
CCG is an integrated communications 
company with
nearly 70 locations, offering 
a broad range of
services addressing the full document cycle—from creation
to print to warehousing and distribution to facilities management. 
Formerly a government printer, they are now privatized, 
with the government as their largest customer. 
CCG was acquired last year by St. Joseph Corporation of
Toronto, doubling its size and its revenues to over $200 million 
per year. St. Joseph Corporation, the third largest
printer in Canada, houses some of the largest high-speed
web-offset production equipment in the world. They also
provide studio work, digital photography, and film production. 
Together, CCG and St. Joseph Corporation offer customers 
a broad range of complementary services.
“Our near-term goal is to improve service and performance,” 
says Monette, “and our competitive advantage is
that we have a completely self-owned national network, so
we have control over the customer’s business from start to
finish.” Without franchised or affiliated shops, CCG feels
they are able to offer their clients greater security and confidentiality 
as well as a higher-quality work process, since
each location can draw on resources from the others.
Canada
Communication Group
Communicates Faster
With Xerox
“With DocuShare we see the impact of collaboration that we were hoping for.”
– Michael Monette
Case Study
Monette explains, “We are a family-based organization and
refer to our employees as associates to recognize their
important contribution to the organization.” The focus on
family values was one of the motivations of CCG to find a
way to enable employees to share more information. Adds
Monette: “We want tools that help our associates treat our
organization as if it is theirs.” This high level of morale
ultimately benefits the customer.
• Removing Barriers to Communication
CCG also recognized that there were barriers to communication 
which needed to be lessened in order to provide
better service to clients. It was a goal that the national organization 
be able to improve its internal communications so
that clients could receive, from any one location, the advantage 
of the total knowledge base. “We want to be so tightly
integrated with the customers that they can understand
directly the full range of services,” explains Monette.
Before the network and collaboration software was in
place, associates shared their information via paper copies
and e-mail. This was simply not effective. Associates were
not able to access information easily as they needed it, nor
was the information always up-to-date. They were unable
to send out their own information fast enough; and paper
distribution, with its attendant labor and postage costs, was
expensive.  With  many
remote locations and home
offices, associates were
often without important
data when it was needed.
In September of 1997, CCG
set up a national intranet
network. The first level 
of   information-sharing
included basic knowledge
of  the  business,  the
products,  the  policies,
administrative tools, and
templates,  with  limited
access  offered  to  customers.  
Although  each
person had his or her own
subdirectory and repository
on the Novell file server
and access to a database
with a workflow to input
data, collaborative sharing
was not high. There was an
information base and a
communications   infrastructure, 
but the kinds of
hints-and-tips knowledge
that it was hoped operations  
associates  would
share freely was not occurring. 
So CCG looked further
for a solution and found
DocuShare, the ad hoc collaboration 
software tool
from Xerox.
DocuShare is a communitymaintained   
knowledge
management tool which
uses    standard    web
browsers and a corporate
intranet for posting and
managing collections of
knowledge. It lets users
create, manage, and control 
access to collections of
files, links, bulletin boards,
and  calendars,  without
having to learn HTML. It
lets users browse these collections 
and files, and it lets
them find documents by
searching the full text of
over 30 popular file formats.   
The DocuShare
server software is easy to
install, with users simply
using their existing web
browsers to browse, manage, 
and upload files. It’s as
easy as surfing the net, with
DocuShare offering userfriendly 
prompts every step
of the way. “Just put it up
and use it,” Monette says.
Currently CCG maintains
eleven   folders   with
DocuShare, all visible by
those  who  have  “full
access.” One CCG folder
has calendars, where each
functional work area posts
its own calendar and room
availability and training
courses  are  included.
Another folder is Corporate
Information, maintained by
the  Human  Resources
department. There are also
private folders with different 
levels of access.
Users create their own
accounts,     permission
groups and shared workspaces. 
They can work
easily with all kinds of documents, 
find out “What’s
new?” at a glance and customize 
DocuShare for their
purposes. They can effortlessly 
search and retrieve
files, identify documents
changed  in  the  last
“With the new approach that DocuShare allows us, the 
employees are empowered, there is a higher level of morale in
the workforce, and we are seeing considerable cost savings.”
Canada Communication Group’s Larry Cyr (left) and Michael Monette look over
their latest documents. Xerox DocuShare helps the company’s 600 employees
improve their productivity by more easily sharing documents.
two days and lock documents 
to prevent simultaneous 
updates.
• Benefits From
DocuShare
According to Monette, “The
first benefit of DocuShare
was the ease of setting it up
and the fact that it was not
a high capital cost decision.
The next benefit was the
fast rate of adoption by
associates.” After a week or
two of being operational,
over 300 users had access
in all 69 locations and there
were 100 “core” or regular
users—with  information
flowing faster than could
be tracked. The major
learning curve was not
learning DocuShare but
getting comfortable with
using web browsers—only
a small percentage of this
manufacturing organization 
had any previous
browser     experience.
Nevertheless, many have
became fluent users and
CCG has not had to add
platform equipment.
With  DocuShare,  users
have the control needed to
build and store information
themselves. “Not having to
go through the IT department 
is a big plus,” says
Monette. Since DocuShare
requires no client software
other than a web browser, a
further benefit is reducing
the expense of keeping
information on local hard
drives. With a shared drive
you can maintain “thin” clients by reducing the need for
large memory and storage locally. But the largest benefit by
far is the ability to share information on a timely basis.
“Having bulletins across the country weekly, sharing on a
daily basis and being on-line five minutes after you have
authored a document,” says Monette, “has a major impact
on the company.”
According to Monette, CCG selected Xerox and DocuShare
because it was the right solution, but also because they felt
that Xerox, as The Document Company, “is working on the
right things.” As Monette puts it, “Xerox has a forte in supplying 
print engines and the related technology to feed
those devices.
• DocuShare Enhancements
As with most good partnerships, CCG is confident that
Xerox will continue to enhance DocuShare and its other
products with features that will continue to meet their
needs. Xerox has already announced a new release which
has more flexible features—such as the automatic HTML
conversion of documents so users can view and print a document 
from within the browser without having a copy of the
application in which the document was authored. Further
announcements include alliances with Encanto Networks,
Inc., and Chiliad—who will incorporate DocuShare into
“We are a family-based organization and refer to our
employees as associates to recognize their important
contribution to the organization.”
Guy Tanvette removes a new batch of documents from CCG’s Xerox DocuTech
6135 printer.
Jean Pierre Proulx moves a cart of newly printed documents.
For more information about the solutions discussed in this document, please contact your local Xerox representative.
©1998 Xerox Corporation. XEROX®, The Document Company® and the Xerox product names and numbers mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks 
of XEROX CORPORATION. All non-Xerox product names and numbers are trademarks of their respective companies. 701P97559
web-based access and publishing solutions. The reason
Encanto Networks and Chiliad give for incorporating
DocuShare is that they feel Xerox has identified what users
are looking for in collaboration, convenience, simplicity,
and flexibility.
“DocuShare is a powerful complement to a more structured
intranet,” Monette points out. “Management does not need
to exert tight control, and this takes a burden off management 
and reduces overhead.” It allows end users to manage
the look and feel of the collections they create and share
across an organization. It also fosters creativity and allows
the organization to move faster. The company just sets up
the framework, makes sure it’s secure, puts the tools up,
and “lets employees do what they do best,” Monette
explains.
For the future, CCG will continue their vision and expand
the networked capabilities for their associates and customers. 
Specific features for customers will include job
scheduling and job tracking, although the more significant
aspect to CCG is that the customers in each location will
have the resources and knowledge of the entire enterprise
at their disposal.  CCG plans to realize their goals for
growth by meeting customer requirements better than their
competition—through effective knowledge management.