Collaboration as an Intangible Asset

Collaboration as an Intangible Asset7:37 AM Thursday June 16, 2011
by Robert J. Thomas | Comments (12)

Virtually every tearful Tony Award winner or jubilant NBA Most Valuable Player carries a crumpled wad of paper on which are named the people who "made it all possible." If ego and time allow, the list can be quite long. So it is with most breakthrough innovations and banner financial years.

The point is not to nod in the direction of the "little people," but instead to recognize that the intangible assets an organization has are the product of the hundreds, perhaps the thousands, of "assists" — to extend the basketball metaphor — that usually go unnoticed but without which problems would not get solved, insights would not be generated, and uncertainties would not be vanquished.

Interestingly, intangible assets are all the rage these days on Wall Street. Investors grapple daily in an effort to figure out how to value companies whose accounting assets — things like land, capital, products, and licenses — don't adequately express their true market value. Ask a buy-side analyst why Amazon or Apple fetches the price-earnings multiple they do, and inevitably the conversation turns to things like their ability to innovate, their capacity to capture and grow the best talent, their skill at managing brand and vendor relationships or ecosystems. There is no line on the balance sheet for "ability to innovate" or "skill at managing brand." And even if there were, it would have to be expressed as a probability statement: How likely is Apple to innovate or out-innovate its peers?

Most intangible assets are real but invisible, and the most important invisible ability is the ability (or, perhaps better said, the probability) to collaborate. After all, it's the willingness on the part of people to work together to solve problems when they could just as easily pass them along to someone else that forms the core of most things we call collaboration. It's the decision that someone makes to share an idea or to spend the extra hour helping out — not the regulation or contract that requires it — that usually means the difference between "good enough" and "outstanding."

Marvelous, but if it's invisible, how do you see an intangible asset or collaboration, for that matter? If you can't measure it, how can you manage it?

Fortunately, in recent years, social network analysis (SNA) has emerged as a powerful new way for managers to see the patterns of interaction — information sharing, problem-solving, coaching, and mentoring — that make up the less visible, often informal side of an organization. By asking simple survey questions online and identifying the people with whom they most frequently interact, SNA makes it possible to depict the networks that underlie or exist in parallel to the formal organization charts and process diagrams. Repeated surveys can, over time, reveal changes in networks or in patterns of collaboration — making it possible to assess whether interventions such as reorganization or targeted efforts to improve collaboration (like offsite events, new software/communications tools, or incentive programs) actually have their desired impact. Moreover, targeted questions can reveal different types of collaboration.

Case in point, SNA conducted at Novartis helped reveal a pattern of communication — and the existence of parallel innovation efforts — that made it possible to combine teams before they reached a crucial stall point in the development of a new vaccine. At a major retail bank, early signals of an emerging rift between factions — manifested in very different networks of information sharing — made it possible to save an acquisition before it came apart. And a rapidly growing pharmaceutical manufacturer discovered through network analysis that management bottlenecks were holding back critical decisions and alienating lower level employees.

Fortunately, tools like social network analysis are making it possible to do something more than "water and wait" when it comes to cultivating intangible assets. By utilizing more effective ways to depict social networks, to see change in them as a result of targeted interventions, and to distinguish among the types of collaboration possible, managers are finding that they can grow enterprise value and earn their companies a much richer treatment by investors.

So, the question is: What are the most critical intangible assets in your company? What are you doing to cultivate them? Who is responsible for managing the invisible that creates the intangibles?

Robert J. Thomas is the executive director of the Accenture Institute for High Performance and professor at Brandeis University International Business School. He is the author or co-author of eight books on leadership and organizational change, including Crucibles of Leadership (Harvard Business Press, 2008), Geeks and Geezers (with Warren Bennis, Harvard Business Press, 2001) and Driving Results through Social Networks (with Rob Cross, Jossey-Bass, 2009).

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Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.

A first look at Office 2010

Mary Branscombe reports as Microsoft reveals an improved interface and promises real-time collaboration and web apps

Published: July 14 2009 13:29 | Last updated: July 14 2009 13:29

The technical preview of Office 2010 is an early look at some of the new features coming in the next release. Updates to the desktop apps are welcome if not revolutionary, but the real shift is that Microsoft is embracing the cloud (and the mobile phone), albeit carefully and without undermining the market for the full-featured desktop versions.

There are some users who dislike the “ribbon” interface introduced in Office 2007 but according to Microsoft product manager Chris Bryant “the ribbon has helped people use more of the Office applications in Office 2007 than ever before”.

He compares it to drag and drop, first introduced in Word in 1991: “Now it’s a fundamental part of the productivity experience; we think the ribbon will be very much the same in 10 years.”

Office 2010 extends the ribbon to all the applications and it does an excellent job of it. It also introduces the option to customise the ribbon completely, which should mollify most remaining critics.

The Office menu, which replaced the File menu in Office 2007 is in turn replaced by the Backstage menu which combines useful tools and settings once found in a variety of dialog boxes in one handy place, including file properties, previews of file templates, print preview, advanced printer settings and options for sharing files (by methods such as e-mail, SharePoint or Excel services) and packaging presentations.

Expect the look of Backstage to evolve as it currently takes up rather more space than necessary for many of the features it includes.

Otherwise, the interface of Office 2010 is generally cleaner and more efficient than the previous version, using the space better and presenting appropriate commands more intelligently.

Microsoft has gone back to basics on the core application features such as text formating, copy and paste, printing and integration between the different applications says Mr Bryant, noting that around 20 per cent of all commands used in Office are about copying and pasting.

“The long-term mission of Office is really to deliver that best productivity experience. We spent more energy and more time implementing those essentials and making sure they work the way people expect.”

Integration includes making more features common across applications. Some of that is playing catch-up. PowerPoint 2010 can now compare and merge presentations the way Word lets you compare and merge versions of a document.

But new features such as a preview that helps you pick the right format for pasting information such as tables, instant translations and tools for editing photos inside applications (adjusting the brightness, contrast and colour tone or adding Photoshop-style artistic effects) are in almost all the Office programs.

PowerPoint has basic video editing tools; they don’t replace sophisticated video editing software but if you only need to adjust the contrast or brightness and select a section to play then being able to do it all in your presentation will save a lot of time.

PowerPoint also gets the first connection to the cloud: you can embed videos from online services such as YouTube into slides and upload your presentation to the PowerPoint Live service, send the URL to participants at different companies and control the presentation in their browsers (which can be Firefox or Safari as well as Internet Explorer).

Excel’s new sparklines place mini-charts into tables, highlighting trends and key figures more clearly and new Slicer tools make it easier to explore large PivotTables and PivotCharts.

Outlook has Quick Steps and Mail Tips to streamline common tasks and help you avoid common mistakes, plus a very welcome Ignore tool for dropping out of e-mail conversations that take on a life of their own. Word gets an improved navigation pane for browsing and searching within long documents.

Useful as they are, these features are not compelling reasons to upgrade and that underlines the fact that this is very much a preview version (although it’s robust enough to do real work with).

It doesn’t include the Office Web applications (available as a preview in August) or the new version of SharePoint (expected in beta in October) that will enable collaboration between document authors and allow businesses to host the web apps themselves, suggesting Microsoft still has a lot of work to do.

The real test will come when businesses can evaluate whether the collaborative tools and web apps deliver Mr Bryant’s claim of “the best productivity experience across the PC, phone and browser”.

Most collaboration today is what he calls “linear”: using e-mail to send documents. “Today, not many people co-author in real time, but we think it will be a fundamental expectation of the future.”

Both the desktop and web applications will allow real-time collaboration, and Word will allow desktop and web users to work on the same document; Microsoft is also promoting its note-taking app, OneNote, as a collaborative tool for both storing and sharing information.

Similarly most people expect to use a PC (usually their own) to edit documents but that attitude is changing: “The freedom to work from anywhere is becoming a fundamental expectation.”

For Office to remain a key business tool, Microsoft has to judge those expectations correctly and satisfy them on the platforms business users care about.

The Office web apps need to deliver the same rich features and formats as desktop Office programs rather than the basic tools of most web apps today.

Businesses will welcome the flexibility of hosting the web applications on their SharePoint servers at no extra charge and making those available through an extranet. But apart from the promise that the web apps will be included in the Office Professional Pro edition for enterprise and free to consumers and small business users through the Live service, Microsoft hasn’t finalised business models or what collaboration will be possible across these kind of boundaries.

Those issues will be as important as the features in the desktop or the web apps.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.

Skills: Business must learn from the new tribe

Skills: Business must learn from the new tribe
By Jessica Twentyman

Published: May 28 2009 21:39 | Last updated: May 28 2009 21:39

“To read the criticisms about the Net Generation,” writes author Don Tapscott in his latest book, Grown Up Digital, “you might conclude that they are a bunch of dull, celebrity-obsessed, net-addicted, shopaholic exhibitionists.”

Such a bleak view, he goes on to say, belies the fact that the children of the baby boomers – now aged between 12 and 30 and reared in an era of digital technologies – are poised to transform society in profound and largely positive ways.

In the workplace, he adds, their aptitude with technology and willingness to collaborate could provide their employers with a real source of competitive advantage.

But whether they are referred to as the Net Generation, digital natives, Millennials or Generation Y, this new tribe of employees can only make its mark if the businesses they work for are able to accommodate and capitalise on a host of new attitudes, beliefs and ways of working.

“Listen to young people,” Mr Tapscott urges business leaders. “Put them in the driver’s seat alongside you when designing work spaces, processes, management systems and collaborative working models.” In other words, be prepared to make big changes in order to unleash the power of these new employees.

Are businesses ready to heed that advice? In truth, many are not, says James Callander, managing director of recruitment consultancy FreshMinds. “This new generation is well-known for its unrestrained ambition, but its largely unparalleled handle on technology presents a significant management challenge,” he says.

“I think one of the biggest problems is that older members of the workforce feel scared of looking foolish in the face of new technology and are threatened by these younger peers who seem to hold all the cards.”

He observes two common approaches to tackling this challenge. “The first is almost a ‘divide and conquer’ approach, consigning technology to different divisions or units in the business. But the internet and mobile technology is now so all-encompassing ... that separation is all but impossible. The second and better approach is to encourage younger workers to train and enfranchise their older colleagues.”

In principle, that makes good sense, because while they may be reluctant to admit it, older business leaders have much to learn from their younger co-workers, says Urs Gasser, executive director at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and co-author of Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives.

As principal investigator on the Digital Natives project, an academic collaboration between the Berkman Center and the Research Center for Information Law at the University of St Gallen in Switzerland, he has devoted the past few years to studying how people who grew up immersed in digital technologies interact with the world.

Three characteristics distinguish a digital native in today’s workplace, he says. The first is their relaxed attitude to information disclosure; the second, their aptitude at social networking; and the third, the very different way they process information, as compared with previous generations.

It is this first trait that causes business leaders most concern, according to Prof Gasser. “Digital natives are generally more open about themselves and have fewer reservations about sharing their thoughts and opinions with the world.

“The fear is that this will lead them to share information about their jobs and the organisations they work for, without reflecting on how appropriate it might be to divulge information that might be considered confidential or commercially sensitive.”

Tackling the issue is a matter of education, he argues. Where corporate policies are thoughtfully applied (and observed), that propensity for self-disclosure can be a positive force, building trust between colleagues and opening the door to deeper collaborations.

It also offers organisations a chance to get to know young employees better, to understand what motivates them and the best ways to channel their energies to reap better business results.

But it’s the second and third traits that offer companies the greatest chance to get ahead. “For years, organisations have been investing heavily in knowledge management initiatives to tap into the collective expertise of their workforce, but the results have been mixed.

“Suddenly, the cultural barriers to information sharing are crumbling with the emergence of social networking and the rise of a new workforce that is more than comfortable with working online with their peers to solve a problem.”

This, he says, has huge implications in many aspects of business, such as developing products, identifying market opportunities and generating sales leads.

But the issue of working hours can be contentious, says Claire Schooley, an analyst with IT market analyst firm Forrester Research. “Work-life balance is paramount to Millennials. These young people do not work by the clock – rather, they work by the task. Let them know what they need to do and when assignments need to be done. With mobile technology, they’ll be online at night completing projects.”

As the connected world evolves, it is therefore vital that organisations adapt policies and tools to suit the style of new workers. In economies where the working population is ageing, this may not just be desirable but essential to survival.

Grown Up Digital, by Don Tapscott, McGraw Hill, 2008.

Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives, by John Palfrey and Urs Gasser, Basic Books, 2008

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

The world connected: Society’s new highway roars up the agenda

The world connected: Society’s new highway roars up the agenda
By Paul Taylor

Published: May 28 2009 21:39 | Last updated: May 28 2009 21:39

Expanded access to fixed and wireless broadband connections is beginning to transform business communications and corporate processes while driving a new round of innovation that could have profound implications worldwide.

“Today, broadband is at the turning point with infrastructure widely available,” said Carl-Henric Svanberg, Ericsson’s chief executive, speaking at a recent event.

“However, we have not realised the full impact and potential for society.

“Over the next 20 to 30 years, it will stimulate innovation across society and will lead to the deployment of completely new solutions,” he said.

Mr Svanberg predicted that broadband would be the society's new highway, with telecommunications contributing to sustainability through innovations such as telepresence, video links which can reduce the need to travel to meetings, for example.

The potential of broadband to streamline business processes and cut costs has also ensured that investment and providing access for individuals and companies has remained top of the political and business agenda.

“The sector is receiving growing attention worldwide as governments recognise the crucial role it will play in economic recovery,” says Dianne Northfield, analyst at Yankee Group, a connectivity research firm. “The emerging ‘Anywhere Network’ – a powerful, pervasive digital network that can connect all people, at any time, in any place – presents an opportunity to create more jobs, increase productivity and develop solutions for healthcare, education, transportation and energy.”

Recent research, including a study commissioned by Nokia Siemens Networks and conducted by LECG, a consultancy, on the economic impact of broadband adoption in Europe and the US over the past 10 years, suggests this emphasis is fully justified.

The LECG Broadband Study directed by Professor Leonard Waverman of London Business School, found that in countries where diffusion and use of information and communications technologies (ICT) were at medium or high levels, the economic benefit from improved penetration was significant.

For example, the study predicts that adding 10 more broadband lines per 100 individuals across the US, or a total of 30m new lines, would raise US GDP by more than $110bn.

Significantly, the LECG study also found that in countries where ICT deployment had been relatively low, broadband has generally been adopted more slowly and has not had a noticeable positive effect on productivity.

It suggested that in these countries, while it may just be a matter of time before the benefits are evident, governments should be active in helping to speed up its adoption.

Another conclusion is that there is a significant role for “demand-side” policies which create incentives for, or lower the costs of, adopting broadband and computing technologies. “Governments and businesses could look at providing training in using ICT and raising awareness of the potential benefits,” it suggests.

But like other studies, the LECG report also suggests that even where broadband has had an impact, there are lessons and warning signs.

First, providing there are no diminishing returns, policies that promote it are policies that promote productivity, innovation and economic growth.

“Innovative ability” is an important source of comparative advantage for advanced economies – thus policies that promote innovation and encourage investment in advanced infrastructure are to the good.

However, it must not just be about infrastructure because the same infrastructure in different, more skilled hands can yield far higher returns.

Second, even within countries such as the US and the UK there is an internal digital divide. This has sometimes been portrayed in terms of access to infrastructure, but many argue there is also a divide in usage and skills.

“Many countries are looking at how to provide universal access to broadband as an assumed driver of economic productivity,” says Prof Waverman. “But far too little attention is given to other key factors. For instance, a US stimulus package that addresses affordable access would have a far greater impact when complemented by emphasising provision of computing devices, ICT training and education.”

The lesson for policy makers, he suggests, is that there needs to be a greater focus on the users of future infrastructure, enhancing the “demand side” of access.

Specifically, for broadband to become a more effective way of enhancing productivity, countries need to invest in improving skills and lowering the costs to businesses of adopting technology and restructuring business models around technology.

Ilkka Lakaniemi, head of global political dialogue and initiatives at Nokia Siemens Networks, says: “The models must take into account the digital divide between northern and southern Europe.” He adds, however, that even in advanced countries, policies that call for universal broadband access should also address issues of skills and awareness.

The LECG study agrees: “useful connectivity” depends not just on the number of people connected to a network or infrastructure, but on how those connected use the network or infrastructure.

Although it is convenient for governments and the telecoms industry to focus on the “supply side” (access), policy makers cannot ignore usage, skills and technological know-how among businesses and consumers.

Ovum, the technology consultancy, reaches similar conclusions in its recent report, “Bridging the broadband divide: challenges and solutions”. Divisions in developed economies are linked to lack of demand and complex interfaces more than limited availability, Ovum suggests.

Globally, overwhelming evidence that broadband is “good for the economy and good for the nation”, has made connecting society an important government goal. In many developed markets, penetration is well above 50 per cent; although growth is slowing. This, says Ovum, is due to a significant minority of people either not being interested in broadband or facing significant barriers.

The report outlines strategies that could help bridge such divides. It says many people are put off by complex devices and interfaces that cater to the technically literate. In addition, users with disabilities are largely under-served. Inclusive design needs to play a much greater role.

It argues that strategies to promote internet use need to work as part of wider inclusion efforts – embedding broadband in education, employment, care and other programmes designed to empower the socially excluded – and connectivity needs community relevance.

In most cases, operators will play a key role in inclusion activity, but this will be in partnership with other commercial companies, public agencies, non-government organisations and user groups.

For example, efforts to target elderly people can involve charities, targeted media coverage, local care agencies and companies specialising in products designed for elderly users.

The debate over the role of government in promoting access continues. For example, a report from the International Telecommunications Union noted that several of the top ICT countries have higher ICT levels than expected, given their income levels. For example, South Korea is outstanding.

“This illustrates how a strong and targeted ICT policy can drive the development of the information society in countries with relatively lower income levels,” the ITU concludes.

What LECG, Ovum and other commentators agree on is that the provision of access, either by private entity or government, will not, on its own, ensure that the full potential of broadband internet access to transform lives, companies and economies is realised. For that, a more holistic approach is needed that transcends all divisions.

ITU: ”Measuring the Information Society – The ICT Development Index, 2009 Edition”, http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/publications/idi/2009/material/IDI2009_w5.pdf

NSN/LECG Connectivity Scorecard, http://www.connectivityscorecard.org/images/uploads/media/TheConnectivityReport2009.pdf

Ovum: Bridging the Digital Divide – less technology, more understanding, contact Maria Di Martino on +44 20 7675 7529 or maria.dimartino@ovum.com.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Erweiterte Open Text-Lösung beschleunigt Social Computing und Collaboration unternehmensweit

Erweiterte Open Text-Lösung beschleunigt Social Computing und Collaboration unternehmensweit

Open Text, globaler Anbieter im Enterprise Content Management (ECM), präsentiert auf der CeBIT in Halle 3, D09 seine neue Lösung Livelink ECM - Extended Collaboration. Mit diesem umfassenden neuen Angebot an Tools für Online-Communities, Social Computing und Echtzeit-Collaboration hebt Open Text Web 2.0 auf eine neue Stufe: Enterprise 2.0.

Das neue Angebot ist Teil einer ganzen Serie von Produktinitiativen, die Open Text im Rahmen seiner umfassenden, ebenfalls heute vorgestellten Enterprise 2.0-Strategie bereits auf den Markt gebracht hat und bringen wird. Das Ziel dieser Strategie besteht in der Weiterentwicklung von Organisationsstrukturen durch den unternehmensweiten Einsatz leistungsstarker Social-Computing-Werkzeuge. Open Text stattet die neue Generation seiner Collaboration- und Weblösungen mit Web 2.0-Funktionalitäten wie Wikis, Foren, Blogs, Tagging, Moderation, Online-Communities und Echtzeit-Collaboration aus, die Unternehmen im Rahmen breit angelegter ECM-Strategien einsetzen können. Livelink ECM - Extended Collaboration folgte den leistungsstarken Angeboten an Weblösungen von RedDot, der Open Text Web Solutions Group, die alle mit der Livelink ECM-Plattform und anderen gängigen Content Repositories integrierbar sind.

"Große Unternehmen operieren heute auf hart umkämpften globalen Märkten und müssen eine internationale und zunehmend mobile Belegschaft managen. Transparenz, Collaboration und der Austausch von Wissen sind daher wichtiger denn je", so Cheryl McKinnon, Director, Collaborative Content Management bei Open Text. "Livelink ECM - Extended Collaboration gibt Unternehmen einen Leitfaden zu Enterprise 2.0 im Rahmen einer breit angelegten ECM-Strategie an die Hand. Gleichzeitig eröffnet das Produkt neue Wege, um die Zusammenarbeit und Produktivität der Mitarbeiter zu verbessern und die Kundentreue zu steigern."

Livelink ECM - Extended Collaboration verbindet Menschen, Prozesse und Inhalte unternehmensweit und lässt eine Arbeitsumgebung entstehen, in der die Mitarbeiter problemlos Ideen, Erfahrungen und Wissen in Echtzeit austauschen können. Die Lösung verbindet eine zuverlässige Wissensdatenbank mit Funktionalitäten für Projekträume, Umfragen, Nachrichtenticker, Aufgaben und Projektmanagement. Community-Applikationen mit speziellen, unternehmensweit skalierbaren Tools und Echtzeit-Collaboration sowie Newsletter, FAQ, und Veranstaltungskalender fördern den Austausch von Expertise und Best Practices.

Die Collaboration- und Community-Tools sind zusammen mit sämtlichen Inhalten in einer intuitiv bedienbaren Umgebung zugänglich. Das fördert die Zusammenarbeit und gleichzeitig werden Projektinformationen im darunter liegenden ECM Framework erfasst. Sicherheit, Zugriffskontrolle und Aufbewahrungsregeln werden unter Nutzung der bereits vorhandenen nativen Sicherheitsmechanismen und ohne zusätzliche Administrationsschicht durchgängig angewandt. Die damit ausgestatteten Mitarbeiter können schnell und sicher bereichs- und aufgabenübergreifende Teams bilden, ausgetauschtes Wissen erfassen, Prozesse managen und Projektfristen selbst über Abteilungs- und Ländergrenzen hinweg zuverlässig einhalten.

- Verbreitung von Expertenwissen und Best Practices in Communities: Unternehmen können effektiv ihre Wissensinseln miteinander verknüpfen und Mitarbeiter, die vor ähnlichen Zielen und Herausforderungen stehen, zusammenbringen. Neue Ideen und Chancen lassen sich in Support-Netzwerken kommunizieren, Standards und Best Practices können festgelegt werden, die Zusammenarbeit mit Kunden und Partnern wird effektiver. Zudem können mit Livelink ECM - Extended Collaboration sichere Records Management-Kontrollen auf Inhalte aus der Community-Umgebung angewandt werden.

- Agilere Unternehmensstrukturen durch Projektmanagement: In eigenen Projekträumen können sich Mitarbeiter voll und ganz auf ihre Arbeit konzentrieren. Projektleiter können flexibel Teams zusammenstellen, neue Teammitglieder über eine Browser-basierende Benutzeroberfläche hinzufügen und ihnen verschiedene Rollen und Aufgaben zuweisen. Alle relevanten Projektinformationen - Pläne, Dokumente, Aufgabenlisten, URLs etc. - werden zentral im Projektraum gespeichert und vorgehalten. Die Kommunikation der Projektmitglieder kann innerhalb so genannter Threaded Discussions erfasst, in gängige E-Mail-Systeme integriert und auf dem Desktop bereitgestellt werden.

- Echtzeit-Zugriff auf Menschen und Informationen: Echtzeit-Funktionalitäten ermöglichen die flexible und vor unerlaubtem Zugriff geschützte Zusammenarbeit im Unternehmen. Unterstützung für Teambesprechungen, Instant Messaging, Screen- und Applikationssharing sowie gemeinsam genutzte Arbeitsräume verbessern das Arbeiten im Team und erhöhen die Produktivität.

Verfügbarkeit

Livelink ECM - Extended Collaboration wird im Mai 2008 verfügbar sein. Weitere Informationen sind unter http://www.opentext.com/... erhältlich.

05.03.2008, Katalin Balogh

Google Pressures Microsoft With Team Collaboration Tool

Google Pressures Microsoft With Team Collaboration Tool

Google expanded its suite of personal and group productivity tools by adding a persistent collaboration repository to Google Apps. This move increases the pressure on Microsoft and once again alters IT pricing economics.

FT.com / Technology - Doing what comes naturally

FT.com / Technology - Doing what comes naturally

Doing what comes naturally
By Alan Cane

Published: November 20 2007 14:44 | Last updated: November 20 2007 14:44

People collaborate naturally; the internet has simply added a new dimension to this most human of characteristics.

“If collaboration hasn’t happened in the past, it’s mostly because barriers got in the way – geography, time zone, position in the corporate hierarchy, language and so on,” says Graham Oakes, founder and head of the IT consultancy Graham Oakes Ltd. “Most technology does not really help collaboration so much as reduce the effect of barriers.”

These technologies enable individuals and groups to communicate easily across time and space, sharing data and the “same version of the truth”.

Jen Wachtel, senior product marketing manager for Vignette, a collaboration tools developer based in Austin, Texas, says that, to her, collaboration means “allowing people to connect across their organisations where before they were siloed by geography, department or status.

“It enables omnidirectional communication. Products get to market faster because the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ enables you to make quicker and smarter decisions.”

Not everybody agrees, as will become evident later in this article, but there is, nevertheless, a cornucopia of collaboration software tools on offer, ranging from the large and complex to the small and simple, from the heavily professional to the consumer-oriented.

Dassault Systèmes’ Enovia product set represents the top end of the market. It is used by Boeing to co-ordinate the design and production of airliners, most recently, the US aerospace group’s giant 787 Dreamliner.

John Squire, vice-president of Enovia marketing for the French software group, says supporting the development of the 787 is the most complicated commission Dassault has undertaken and “uses everything we have”.

Boeing describes it as a “global collaborative environment”. Mr Squire says it is a way to bring together the 40 partners sharing the risk of creating the 787.

“It’s the people who build the engines, the fuselage components, the avionics and so forth,” he explains. “Three years ago, before the airplane ever existed, Boeing could bring all the parts together in a three-dimensional digital model and ensure they fitted together before they had to worry about manufacturing those parts. They could check for tolerances and conflicts between parts early in the development phase when the cost is much lower.”

Mr Squire says the trick in collaboration is to allow engineers to have access to the parts they are responsible for, allow them to see the parts around it, but deny them access to parts for which they do not have clearance.

“We use 3D as the universal language. Even if you don’t speak the same language as a Japanese engineer, you can share the screen with the guy and point to a problem area. Using a few words of broken English over instant messaging you can communicate what needs to happen.”

Dassault 3D software is used to collaborate in the design of everything from airliners and rocket engines to yoghurt cartons and mobile phones. At the other end of the scale, there is a growing market for simple collaboration tools using nothing more complex than the telephone and a web browser.

MeetingZone, for example, a fast-growing UK-based company, has introduced a high level of automation, and therefore economies of scale, to the simple concept of conferencing by telephone coupled with screen-sharing over the internet.

Tim Duffy, co-founder and chief executive, points to the disadvantages of conventional business meetings: “No one has the time, no one wants to put up with the expense and inconvenience of travel and everybody is looking to reduce their carbon footprint.

“We think good collaboration tools that enable people to do business without travelling are vital requirements for most businesses these days.”

While still small, MeetingZone, Mr Duffy says, has achieved 67 per cent average annual growth for the past three years, suggesting his analysis is accurate.

Sun Microsystems, the US group whose server technology underpins much of the internet, prescribes collaboration and takes its own medicine with a full set of collaboration tools.

According to Heather Garrett, head of human resources for Sun in the UK, the intention was to enable staff to work any time and anywhere. She says the result has been a 30 per cent improvement in productivity with impressive savings on travel, real estate and a lower carbon footprint. Sun staff are in favour of electronic collaboration, she says.

Ten years ago, the company started with a collaboration site, a shared work and information space, and added a collaboration dashboard, a way of tracking progress in projects, so individuals can see what has been achieved and what has yet to be delivered.

Jay Huff, head of Sun’s UK marketing department, says the company has taken to wikis in a big way. A wiki involves software that allows users easily to create, edit and link web pages. According to Wikipedia, the Delphic oracle on all things wiki, they are: “often used to create collaborative websites, power community websites and are increasingly being installed by businesses to provide affordable and effective intranets”.

This is their function at Sun, where Mr Huff says all the company’s engineers and systems architects work in a wiki environment. Wikis are also popular with the marketing people: “Wikis are where we talk about work in progress so we can get feedback quickly,” Mr Huff says.

“The aim is to stop the tremendous amount of e-mails you would normally have associated with one of these projects where everybody responds to everybody else with 20 to 30 e-mails on the same subject.”

E-mail jail is an example of the kind of dangers that lurk in the over-enthusiastic use of technology to promote collaboration. Dr Oakes, the IT consultant, warns that many people are driven to respond to e-mails and instant messages 24 hours a day. “Eventually they will burn out and be lost to collaboration altogether,” he comments.

“This happens because they have not developed ways to control the technology – it is controlling them. Helping people take back this control, perhaps by developing appropriate etiquette within their networks, is probably necessary for most companies to push collaboration to the next level.”

Sun Microsystems is unusual in that its management encourages – but does not mandate – staff to make use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Ning and Twitter where it makes sense to do so – to distribute information before a conference, perhaps, or photographs of attendees.

There are dangers, of course. Global Secure Systems, an IT security consultancy, faced spending several thousands of pounds upgrading its internet access provision until it discovered that about a quarter of its bandwidth was being swallowed up in social networking: “After locking down this traffic, we found we didn’t actually need to upgrade our bandwidth after all,” says David Hobson, GSS managing director.

He now advises his clients to block access to social networking sites. “They are just trouble all round and have no place in the modern business environment, even during legitimate staff breaks,” he said.

However, Scott Petty of Dimension Data, an IT services group based in South Africa, argues that social networking sites, used carefully, are both valid and necessary business tools.

He says: “Our younger engineers straight out of college are much more comfortable with tools such as Second Life and Facebook than senior managers. They would think we were quite a strange company if we didn’t allow
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

Wissen und Fachkräfte in einem people_ready business

Wissen und Fachkräfte in einem people_ready business

Als Unternehmen vor Jahren versuchten, die Erfahrungen und Kenntnisse ihrer Mitarbeiter zu nutzen, sammelten sie diese Informationen in großen Datensystemen, wo sie zum Abruf bereitstanden. Doch kaum jemand griff auf das digitalisierte Wissen zu. Zu unhandlich, unstrukturiert und mit überflüssigen Informationen beladen kamen die Datenbanken daher. Zudem fürchteten die Mitarbeiter, überflüssig zu werden, wenn sie ihr persönliches Know-how dem Unternehmen und Kollegen zur Verfügung stellten. So blieb dem sogenannten Knowledge-Management der durchschlagende Erfolg verwehrt.

IBM's Notes and Domino 8 Will Consolidate Lotus Base

IBM's Notes and Domino 8 Will Consolidate Lotus Base

Google's Expanded Workplace Products Won't Usurp Office Yet

Google's Expanded Workplace Products Won't Usurp Office Yet

With the Tonic Systems acquisition, Google continues to widen its offerings into a full collaboration suite. Adding presentation features takes it closer to competing with Microsoft Office.

Google Targets Enterprise E-Mail and Collaboration Tools

Google Targets Enterprise E-Mail and Collaboration Tools

Google's fee-based, hosted suite of e-mail and other collaboration-oriented tools will disrupt Microsoft's model for pricing and provisioning enterprise e-mail and other applications.

How to Define a Collaboration Strategy That Drives Business Value

How to Define a Collaboration Strategy That Drives Business Value

Document Collaboration

Document Collaboration