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magazine
34
Collaboration
Businesses today recognise the value
of effective communication across and
beyond the enterprise, as they seek to
respond quickly and effectively to changing
customer needs. The realisation has pushed
virtual collaboration up the IT agenda and
driven investment in solutions that enable
employees to communicate and work with
each other, irrespective of time or location,
with no loss of productivity or effectiveness.
Like other tools with the potential to
drive real business improvement, it’s easy
to get carried away with the hype and fail
to get the basics right. So what are some of
the major pitfalls to avoid when defining and
implementing the most appropriate solution?
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Worrying about uptime, not uptake:
If IT’s only measure of success is operational
uptime, then collaboration will fail. The key
is not deployment but, rather, adoption of
collaborative technologies. IT must work with
the business to ensure that any investment
meets the organisation’s broader strategic goals.
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Failing to link features with practice:
Aligning any new technology with the way
people work will result in more effective
adoption. Identify situations that demonstrate
the value of collaboration and then work with
managers and staff to integrate the technology
within relevant working practices to achieve this.
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Failing to create ’preferred use’ cases:
It’s
not easy to predict every way that a new tool
will be used. Document the before/after impact
of the technology on key target processes
or activities to encourage transition. Also, let
staff share their successes within the new
collaborative environment, so that others can
emulate and learn from emerging best practice.
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Failing to negotiate and manage
expectations:
Not engaging with staff around
how collaboration might change the way
they work and why the company is making
the investment can create resistance to new
technology, even if people like what they see.
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Not using collaboration software to
support collaboration:
If a new update brings
a new version of a collaboration platform, for
example, and this is communicated only via
email or in a company meeting, then IT is not
reinforcing the core benefit of collaboration.
The first line in demonstrating its real value to
the business should be that IT visibly supports
collaboration within an enterprise collaborative
environment.
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Believing that collaboration is too
expensive:
As with any emerging technology,
it’s easy to think that collaboration is beyond the
reach of smaller businesses. Yet, the latest cloud-
based software tools are affordable for even the
smallest firm and are very simple to set up and
use so that users can access sessions without the
need for costly IT and training support.
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Not ‘walking the talk’:
People need
permission to change the way they work. If
management styles do not change and align
to a more collaborative work style, staff will
continue to operate as before and the true
benefits of collaboration will not be realised.
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Not thinking globally:
Collaboration is a
cultural activity that can be defined in various
ways by different cultures. It is important for
IT to adopt a culturally-neutral approach to
implementation to maximise understanding
Grabbing defeat from the
jaws of victory – and
how to avoid it
Andrew Millard considers the pitfalls to avoid when
implementing collaboration technologies and explains
how to maximise the return on your investment.
Andrew Millard is senior director marketing,
EMEA, online services division at Citrix.
The company’s market-leading solutions
for mobility, desktop virtualisation, cloud
networking, cloud platforms, collaboration
and data sharing enable people to work and
collaborate securely from anywhere, accessing
apps and data on any of the latest devices,
as easily as if they were in their own office.
Citrix solutions help IT and service providers
build both private and public clouds, leveraging
virtualisation and networking technologies to
deliver high-performance, elastic and cost-
effective services for mobile workstyles. Citrix
products are used by more than 260,000
organisations and 100 million users globally.
www.citrix.com
and buy-in from staff across the business,
multiple geographies and markets.
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Failing to learn implementation lessons:
IT organisations that fix objectives and do
not learn from, or adjust to, the realities of
adoption will not derive the most benefit from
collaboration initiatives. Engage with individuals
and teams to find out how they actually use
collaboration technologies. Make sure tools meet
real needs rather than a set of theoretical goals.
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Going backwards, not forward:
Reverting
to old technologies if new collaboration tools
don’t produce instant results will, at the very
least, lengthen adoption and may stop it
altogether. Examine why the new approach isn’t
working and adjust it accordingly. Continuing
to use old technologies will almost certainly
reduce the return on your investment.
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Forgetting about training and development:
Implementing new software invariably means
staff have to learn new skills, often through
experiential learning. Creating programmes that
help people see how collaboration adds value
to what they do as individuals, rather than just
benefiting the business overall, is likely to ensure
a greater level of acceptance and adoption.
The common theme linking these traps is that,
for a business aiming to differentiate itself
through quality of customer service, collaboration
is too important an issue to get wrong.