* All the buzz is around collaboration
Every year, Network World publishes a special issue that is key in helping you figure out what to pay attention to and what to ignore in terms of technology. In this year’s issue, I found a great nugget that hopefully will help you in justifying the move to collaboration. Here it is:
“Microsoft has designated real-time communication and collaboration as key initiatives in its current fiscal year, ending June 30, 2004. Although Microsoft isn’t the real-time collaboration market leader (IBM holds that honor with its Lotus Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing software), the flexing of its marketing muscle throws attention at these technologies.”
This paragraph was in an article by my colleague Network World Test Alliance member Christine Perey. She argues eloquently that the time is now for collaboration tools. Microsoft entering the game is just one of the reasons things are going to start happening in this arena.
She also points to the rise in the acceptance and use of instant messaging throughout the enterprise and the need for businesses to be more responsive.
If you’ve had any conversations with a vendor lately, you know that collaboration is THE buzzword. Collaboration implies that the vendors are going to help you build more interactions within your organization: among employees, business partners and customers. And that is the tone everyone is reaching for right now.
Going back to the point about Microsoft seeing the collaboration light, let’s all remember what happened when Bill Gates “got” the Internet. A revolution that had already begun was soon propelled forward. Take a look around and you’ll see something similar happening with collaboration.
Venture capitalists will soon dig deep into their pockets – a lot already have – to fund anything that screams collaboration. From messaging to CRM to database technologies, collaboration is going to be Job One.
And it’s up to you to get a handle on what collaboration means for your organization. Do you want to help employees collaborate with each other? Do you want them to be able to whiteboard ideas, quickly get answers from one another or even document-share in a more efficient way?
Or do you want to let business partners work easily with your organization? This can be done through document management, remote access to collaboration applications or mobile applications for employees that are working with your business partners.
Finally, do you want employees to better serve customers via collaboration? Do you need to beef up online transaction tools so that collaboration can happen instantly during the purchasing process? Do you need to streamline back-end operations so that collaboration happens within customer records? Do you need to add applications that allow customers to interact with each other to improve their “buying” experience with you?
Once you understand what collaboration means to you, then you can begin to plot out the course for your organization.
Check out Christine Perey’s article at https://www.nwfusion.com/buzz/2003/0929collab.html
Also, to stay up to date on collaboration news, check in on my pal Senior Editor John Fontana’s Web page:
https://www.nwfusion.com/topics/collaboration.html
As always, if you have comments on what collaboration means to you, send ’em on over to sgittlen@nww.com
