Justifying technology for an organization is not easy. There's so many considerations and so many stakeholders that bringing a new application on-board can take weeks and even months of a business manager's time and effort. So, it's no surprise that collaboration tools with their promise of improving organizations’ ability to react and adapt to industry threats and opportunities have taken so long to be fully integrated in modern business. But, that's changing and what was once a movement characterized by efficiencies in IT departments in the forms of convergence, virtualization and integration is morphing into inter and intra-company team productivity. The next generation of collaboration is here and it is defined by Social, Collaborative, Mobile (SoCoMo) platforms that will revolutionize the traditional understanding of what it means to collaborate.
One of the earliest forms of collaboration, “unified communications”, emerged over a decade ago bringing with it debate as to its meaning, along with confusion, fractured systems, and a poor user experience. Today, as businesses and employees look to message, meet, and call easily and readily across the supply chain, a mish-mosh of solutions, freemium services and alternate applications like Skype, Evernote and Box has left IT teams scrambling to meet organizational needs and demands. According to Forrester, “A one-size-fit-all model does not match the current state of the unified communications marketplace. Currently, 22% of SMBs are on-premises, 37% are split with hybrid deployments, and 33% are in the cloud. The remaining surveyed companies have not yet deployed. This diversity will continue into the foreseeable future as businesses strive to protect existing investments while leveraging the cloud to add new capabilities.”
Why Collaboration Now?
Today, people work from anywhere—at home, in coffee shops and airports, hotel lobbies, and everywhere in between. According to Gartner people also tend to work differently, using their favorite devices, such as phones and tablets, and methods, such as video and messaging. And the mix is constantly evolving–especially as millennials enter the workforce.
And working together isn’t always about working with internal coworkers. Now, a typical project might involve engaging with a broader ecosystem of business partners, vendors, employees, and even customers.
A 2015 PGI report showed that 35 percent of participants reported an increase in innovation and creativity with collaboration outside the organization.
It’s clear that the “one size fits all” approach won’t work for today’s dynamic businesses. People need to discuss issues interactively and connect with one another to build closer, more trusted relationships. They need to share ideas and information, make decisions, and document and recall them effectively. An effective collaboration platform will make communication simple and natural for everyone, regardless of their preferences. Look for for collaboration solutions to augment workforces in the following ways:
Help mobile and remote workers be as productive as they are in the office.
Securely extend your company’s network and applications to them wherever they are. Cloud-based collaboration should include built-in support for all leading smartphones, tablets, and laptops, and offer the same collaboration tools that are in office.
Easily meet with co-workers, mobile and remote workers and outside organizations. Today, your employees, customers, and partners expect to attend meetings from anywhere on any device and share documents, images, designs, worksheets, and more—together with high-definition audio and video.
Interact anywhere with video. There’s nothing like meeting face to face to solve a problem, share knowledge, or reach a decision. Users will look to tap into a rich endpoint portfolio that supports high-quality video in every room, every desk, and every pocket.
Collaborate from within business applications. Accessing collaboration and conferencing tools directly from the applications that are in use most often, like email and CRM solutions will soon be table stakes for any application deployment.
In a changing world, you need to do more than just control costs and work more productively. You need to give your workforce the right tools to so they can have the agility to innovate and make decisions faster. You’ve invested a lot in your technology, and you don’t want to rip and replace your phones and network gear. Sidestep expensive upgrades with the cloud. Cloud-based collaboration helps your organization get out in front of changing markets and new demands. It also enables you to scale up or down when your business needs to evolve and frees up your IT teams to focus on things that matter most, like growing your business and serving your customers better, instead of managing network devices.
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