Staying on message

Chat plat­forms have soared in pop­u­lar­i­ty. The abil­i­ty to share infor­ma­tion instant­ly and intu­itive­ly strikes right at the heart of busi­ness need.

Mes­sag­ing is direct, imme­di­ate, and relieves users from strain­ing inbox­es and long e‑mail chains. It enables new join­ers to get up to speed quick­er, form­ing inter­nal con­nec­tions and allows knowl­edge to be retained, for exam­ple if some­one leaves a team or the com­pa­ny. Real-time chat ulti­mate­ly dri­ves faster, bet­ter deci­sion-mak­ing, har­ness­ing input from mul­ti­ple sources quick­ly.

From a man­age­ment point of view, mes­sag­ing plat­forms also enable sub­stan­tial cost-cut­ting and ratio­nal­i­sa­tion, which is high on the agen­da of many firms. They reduce the need for trav­el to meet­ings for instance, the need for com­plex IT infra­struc­ture. They also reduce tra­di­tion­al tel­co cost and facil­i­tate remote work­ing, which in turn cuts office costs and boosts staff morale.

But for busi­ness­es, the rise of real-time mes­sag­ing isn’t all plain sail­ing. It also sig­nals chal­lenges, espe­cial­ly in sight of users devi­at­ing from the secure para­me­ters of cor­po­rate-defined IT plat­forms.

Unreg­u­lat­ed mes­sag­ing is already hap­pen­ing every­where, between col­leagues, with part­ners and often with cus­tomers. It is get­ting hard­er for organ­i­sa­tions to leg­is­late against it. Using pop­u­lar chat and mes­sag­ing plat­forms is after all very nat­ur­al behav­iour, an exten­sion of life in the real world.

Yet con­sumer or social mes­sag­ing tools – What­sApp, Viber, WeChat, Face­book – are unlike­ly to meet the organisation’s secu­ri­ty and com­pli­ance require­ments. Cor­po­rate data is high­ly sen­si­tive after all; the DNA of what makes a firm suc­cess­ful. Could it fall into the wrong hands, leav­ing the busi­ness open to penal­ties or rep­u­ta­tion­al dam­age? The recent list of data leaks is long. And what about record-keep­ing and time-stamp­ing? What stand­ing might mes­sages have in a court of law or with an audi­tor?

So what’s the alter­na­tive? In this dig­i­tal age, it isn’t real­is­tic to ban the use of famil­iar tools through strict employ­ee pol­i­cy. Of the one bil­lion-plus What­sApp users, 35 per cent claim to use the app for busi­ness pur­pos­es. Take these tools away and staff may feel demo­ti­vat­ed, know­ing that more pro­gres­sive com­pa­nies are proac­tive­ly equip­ping their staff with the lat­est tech­no­log­i­cal aids.

Glob­al organ­i­sa­tions have recog­nised the need to place chat and mes­sag­ing sys­tems at the cen­tre of their col­lab­o­ra­tion strat­e­gy

The greater the need for secu­ri­ty, pri­va­cy and pol­i­cy com­pli­ance in an organ­i­sa­tion, the more imper­a­tive it is to find a solu­tion which pre­serves employ­ees’ abil­i­ty to be ful­ly con­nect­ed and pro­duc­tive, but in a pro­tect­ed, con­trolled envi­ron­ment where com­mu­ni­ca­tion stays pri­vate, sen­si­tive data is safe, and trans­ac­tions and tim­ings can be reli­ably traced.

The finan­cial ser­vices indus­try, one of the most high­ly reg­u­lat­ed sec­tors, has made good progress here, imple­ment­ing enter­prise-cal­i­bre chat and mes­sag­ing. More than many oth­er mar­kets, it has had to strike a bal­ance between the need for high-veloc­i­ty infor­ma­tion exchange, empow­er­ing its work­ers – traders, deci­sion-mak­ers, front-office staff – while adher­ing to strict reg­u­la­to­ry require­ments.

As an exam­ple, finan­cial organ­i­sa­tions use sup­port chat chan­nels to offer deal­ers assis­tance with trad­ing, risk arbi­tra­tion chan­nels to gain clar­i­fi­ca­tion on pric­ing and back-office chan­nels to car­ry out end-of-day report­ing, col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly and in real time.

Glob­al organ­i­sa­tions have recog­nised the need to place chat and mes­sag­ing sys­tems at the cen­tre of their col­lab­o­ra­tion strat­e­gy, a con­cept that is now wide­ly being referred to as Chat Enabled Col­lab­o­ra­tion (CEC). They are choos­ing plat­forms that inte­grate well with exist­ing sys­tems, uni­fied com­mu­ni­ca­tions (UC) plat­forms and ways of work­ing, pro­vid­ing the robust con­trols these busi­ness­es need, but with­out detri­ment to user pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

Impor­tant­ly, the plat­forms are high­ly scal­able too, able to sup­port thou­sands or tens of thou­sands of users, in con­trast with many team col­lab­o­ra­tion tools look­ing to work on a small­er lev­el.

The ben­e­fits of cor­po­rate mes­sag­ing, beyond allow­ing employ­ees to work in the way they need to, are mul­ti­ple. Organ­i­sa­tions that har­ness enter­prise chat typ­i­cal­ly see a 50 per cent reduc­tion in inter­nal e‑mail, improved reten­tion and dis­sem­i­na­tion of knowl­edge, greater trans­paren­cy, and so on.

Ulti­mate­ly, it’s about embrac­ing nat­ur­al user behav­iour and mak­ing it work in a busi­ness con­text. It’s a key facet of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, so let’s stay on mes­sage.

For more infor­ma­tion please vis­it www.mindlinksoft.com