The new tech facilitating collaboration

In 2016, a lot hinges on an organisation’s abil­i­ty to move deft­ly. Being effi­cient, improv­ing the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence and pre-empt­ing mar­ket dis­rup­tion depend on the abil­i­ty to con­nect dynam­i­cal­ly and regroup.

These are now the dri­vers for uni­fied com­mu­ni­ca­tion (UC) and col­lab­o­ra­tion. It is not about blind­ly equip­ping employ­ees with tech­nol­o­gy, but empow­er­ing them to get the job done with­out fuss.

Facilitating collaboration

Rob Bam­forth, a prin­ci­pal ana­lyst at Quo­cir­ca, attend­ed a col­lab­o­ra­tion con­fer­ence in Lon­don recent­ly, where a recur­ring theme was improv­ing user adop­tion. James Tye, chief exec­u­tive of Den­nis Pub­lish­ing, told of his deci­sion to default to team com­mu­ni­ca­tion tool Slack because of its imme­di­a­cy com­pared to e‑mail. Its use had been ris­ing any­way, but now Mr Tye is dri­ving it from the top of the busi­ness. “In the midst of all the pos­si­bil­i­ties, sim­plic­i­ty and ubiq­ui­ty are key,” Mr Bam­forth notes.

Busi­ness­es are also invest­ing more in their work­spaces to facil­i­tate col­lab­o­ra­tion. Wain­house Research esti­mates there are 40 mil­lion “hud­dle rooms” – small ded­i­cat­ed spaces for on-the-fly mee­tups – in use among com­pa­nies glob­al­ly. Tech­nol­o­gy must reflect that. Log­itech, for exam­ple, is tar­get­ing hud­dle rooms with an inex­pen­sive, portable, HD-qual­i­ty video-con­fer­enc­ing cam­era.

Ubiq­ui­tous high-speed con­nec­tiv­i­ty, smart mobile devices and cloud-based appli­ca­tions are impor­tant enablers

Jabra trans­formed its work­ing prac­tices a few years ago. The head­set man­u­fac­tur­er, which employs 1,000 peo­ple, removed all desk phones in favour of the UC plat­form Skype for Busi­ness (for­mer­ly Microsoft Lync). Com­mu­ni­ca­tions are large­ly mobile now and speak­er­phones can turn any space into a meet­ing room.

“The new set-up paid for itself in less than three months, remov­ing the cost of fixed lines, reduc­ing trav­el and boost­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty,” says senior vice pres­i­dent Hol­ger Reisinger. “More impor­tant­ly, it reflects the way peo­ple want to work now – they can be at home with all of the capa­bil­i­ties of the office.”

For younger gen­er­a­tions, such flex­i­bil­i­ty is assumed. It also enables com­pa­nies to address gaps in their tal­ent, effort­less­ly join­ing remote free­lancers to work­groups.

Collaboration through the cloud

Ubiq­ui­tous high-speed con­nec­tiv­i­ty, smart mobile devices and cloud-based appli­ca­tions are impor­tant enablers. “For years, busi­ness­es have put up with the pain and cost of dis­joint­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems,” says Ed Grant, co-founder of Sol­gari, an Irish UC start­up. “Now end-users should be able to access what­ev­er ser­vices they need through any inter­net device.”

Sol­gari pro­vides free, brows­er-based video, voice, con­fer­ence or chat via the cloud. “The cloud has changed every­thing,” Mr Grant says. It paves the way for any com­pa­ny to access the lat­est inte­grat­ed capa­bil­i­ties, flex­i­bly and afford­ably. Oth­er­wise they become lim­it­ed by pro­pri­etary sys­tems, which third par­ties can­not eas­i­ly con­nect into.

Mod­ern col­lab­o­ra­tion should be inclu­sive, mobile and social, cross­ing com­pa­ny bound­aries. “As more busi­ness appli­ca­tions and UC move to the cloud, it becomes far eas­i­er to ‘mash up’ ser­vices and make them avail­able any­where,” says Greg Zweig, direc­tor of solu­tions mar­ket­ing at Gen­band, which facil­i­tates this. “UC is mov­ing to a mod­el where mul­ti­ple busi­ness appli­ca­tions are ‘com­mu­ni­ca­tion-enabled’.”

The most advanced col­lab­o­ra­tors are organ­i­sa­tions with a high per­cent­age of knowl­edge work­ers, where the need for rapid access to exper­tise and infor­ma­tion is high­est. Small­er com­pa­nies also tend to be ahead, with less lega­cy infra­struc­ture and much to gain from improved pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

The gap could close though, as larg­er organ­i­sa­tions lose their cloud inhi­bi­tions. Slack counts three-quar­ters of US For­tune 100 com­pa­nies as users of its cloud-based soft­ware, as well as gov­ern­ment agen­cies, law firms, adver­tis­ing agen­cies, restau­rants and non-prof­it organ­i­sa­tions.

Estate agent Deighton McKen­zie uses Slack to pro­vide a bet­ter ser­vice to peo­ple sell­ing their homes, col­lab­o­rat­ing and shar­ing doc­u­ments relat­ed to view­ings, ques­tions and offers. Cos­met­ics firm Lush has reduced inter­nal e‑mail by 75 per cent since using it. It plans to pilot Slack in its stores next, to pro­vide social media sup­port and enable web­site issues to be flagged quick­ly to HQ.

Gra­ham Bev­ing­ton, pres­i­dent of Mitel’s Enter­prise Divi­sion, notes that inter-organ­i­sa­tion col­lab­o­ra­tion is becom­ing increas­ing­ly impor­tant. “Col­lab­o­ra­tive net­works now con­nect doc­tors, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies, patients and their fam­i­lies, to improve people’s health, while on uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es in the US they are enabling faster co-ordi­na­tion of secu­ri­ty lock­downs when inci­dents threat­en stu­dents’ safe­ty,” he says.

Besides the dan­ger of dis­rup­tion, com­pa­nies that lag their com­peti­tors risk frus­trat­ed employ­ees using con­sumer tools such as What­sApp for work. Research by cloud UC provider Fuze found 32 per cent of work­ers using mes­sag­ing apps and 25 per cent mak­ing video calls with­out con­sent, some­thing that will increase as younger employ­ees enter the work­place, poten­tial­ly expos­ing sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion through inad­e­quate­ly secured chan­nels.

In the future col­lab­o­ra­tion will become even more intu­itive, for exam­ple via wear­able devices, and aug­ment­ed and vir­tu­al real­i­ty. Avaya Live Engage already uses avatars to nav­i­gate vir­tu­al meet­ing rooms and oth­er busi­ness set­tings. Bots, soft­ware appli­ca­tions that can per­form sim­ple and repet­i­tive tasks, are also infil­trat­ing UC envi­ron­ments. Slack uses a glos­sary bot called Gloss­bot to explain com­pa­ny jar­gon and Stats­bot to update teams on per­for­mance.

But first there is some catch­ing up to do. “Edu­ca­tion, gov­ern­ment organ­i­sa­tions and retail could ben­e­fit from increased invest­ment,” says Sheryl King­stone, research direc­tor at 451 Research. “Mid-sized com­pa­nies expe­ri­enc­ing a growth phase or man­ag­ing mul­ti­ple loca­tions prob­a­bly have the most to gain – once they under­stand a strong col­lab­o­ra­tion strat­e­gy is a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage.