Organisations today have many tools for internal communications: phone, email, instant messaging, video, presence. Combined they come under the umbrella of 'unified communications'. These tools are very useful but much more so when they underpin an enterprise collaboration strategy.
CDW, a US provider of integrated information technology solutions, has come up with five pillars of enterprise collaboration that, when combined effectively, create an enterprise collaboration strategy. They are: unified communications (voice video and presence) as one pillar, messaging as a second and social collaboration, content sharing and the contact centre as the others.
That last one, the contact centre, is important. If the collaboration strategy is effective and if the contact centre is integrated with the other components the result is better customer service because call centre agents can connect in real time with the people inside the organisation that they need to help them answer customer queries.
Social collaboration is an interesting one. Enterprise social networking tools can enhance the functionality of the basic communications tools, especially among teams working on specific projects. There are a number of products on the market designed specifically to enable social networking within the enterprise. And there have been cases where, in the absence of such tools, teams have made use of public services like Skype and Dropbox, just to get the job done.
Global consulting firm McKinsey & Co has estimated that companies could raise the productivity of knowledge workers by 20 to 25 percent through the use of enterprise social networking tools, but with the caveat that "such gains will require significant transformations in management practices and organisational behaviour."
Deloitte, in its 2013 Technology, Media and Telecommunications predictions estimated that, by the end of 2013, more than 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies would have partially or fully implemented an enterprise social network, a 70 percent increase over 2011.
So just how important, and useful is an enterprise collaboration strategy? According to Information Week's 2013 State of Unified Communications report: "eighty three percent of organisations that have studied their RoI from a collaboration deployment have determined that it meets or exceeds their expectations" and "Fifty six percent of IT professionals said improved efficiency was the main business goal behind the decision to deploy a collaboration solution."
CDW's conclusion is that: "An enterprise collaboration strategy provides your organisation with a holistic view of the tools it has in place for customer service, giving leaders a view of where opportunities for improvement exist. The assessment improves the understanding of collaboration and communication challenges within teams and across your organisation. The strategy also helps your organisation build a business case for implementing appropriate solutions. It provides a roadmap your organisation can use to apply technology and achieve your goals." And that can only be good.
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