No professional is an island. We are always engaged in some form of collaboration, whether we are working with colleagues, customers, or partners. As AIIM members know, one of the most visible ways that we collaborate is on documents. We all work together to create budgets, improve presentations, and build sales proposals.
Collaboration has become an increasingly high profile topic in recent months. The concept of the social enterprise, or Enterprise 2.0, continues to grow in popularity. Essentially this movement builds on the fact that much of our work is social. We work with diverse, often ad hoc teams to get business done. As a result, tools in the enterprise should support the social nature of working together.
But there is pushback to this concept. Some see collaboration as a distraction to “real work.” But the reality is that it has already gained traction among all sizes of companies and is already showing its value in making teams more effective. So, what are the common myths around collaboration in the workplace?
Reality: It’s only a big company’s game, the naysayers say. Only the largest organizations have the time, inclination, and infrastructure needed to support collaboration. Plus, it is only massive groups that have a genuine need for improving how teams work together, some argue. Mid-sized companies may have smaller teams, but the need for collaboration is just as potent. In fact, it may be more relevant because smaller teams need to be more effective to compensate for economy of scale advantages at larger competitors. That means keeping team members informed about new content and important news that is germane to their position.
Reality: Collaborative tooling and practices are about saving time and effort in the short and long term. When the right stakeholders can contribute effectively early in a process, outcomes are improved, and rework reduced. Imagine a sales proposal that is going to print without input from Marketing about a new offer. Without collaboration, the proposal may require a massive overhaul.
Reality: Increasingly, we see that Enterprise 2.0 tools are cloud-based tools. The pay-as-you-go models for the cloud make it easy and inexpensive for smaller companies to launch tools and ramp-up quickly – without large and costly hardware and software deployments. That’s why we see mid-sized companies getting Rypple, Zendesk, Yammer, and other tools in place.
Reality: Professionals are increasingly on the move. You might be at your office on Monday, on the road Tuesday, and working from home on Wednesday. With so much movement, collaboration breaks down and becomes a distraction, some would say. In fact, the reality is the opposite – mobility means more than ever we need to stay connected to what our colleagues are doing.
If I am a salesperson, I need to know whether a new contract has been updated. I want to know if a colleague has won a deal in a vertical of interest. I have to know if a new statement of work is being issued for one of my clients. And I need to know if my client’s contract is about to expire. And I need all of this information in between flights on my way to New York.
That means our collaborative tools must be mobile-enabled – a standard these days. That means easy, even “one-click” functions to download key files or send status updates to colleagues. And it requires alerts so mobile workers can spot important updates even when traveling. Collaboration is not nullified by mobile; it is made more compelling. The trick is to keep it simple.
Reality: A commonly held misconception is that collaboration is task-focused. That is to say that its tools are exclusively about getting a particular job done and then moving on. One example of this might be co-authoring a document. The myth would hold that collaboration is simply about getting a defined project team together to create, edit, and approve a document.
But collaboration is a richer concept than just that. It is also about informing colleagues about important and relevant events in the organization. I don’t want to just work on a new proposal with my co-workers; I want to know that a new proposal needs to be worked on in the first place. And I want to know about previous proposals that might be relevant and useful to me.
The social aspect of collaboration means that community knowledge is surfaced to the right person at the right time – helping me to do my job better. That’s why so many of today’s established enterprise tools are themselves social, integrating with others to provide content in the right context. That requires information and interaction across CRM, SFA, ERP, or other tools.
With strong productivity advantages, it is no surprise that collaboration is taking hold in the enterprise. And with low barriers to entry and the ability to help overworked teams regain control, we’re seeing collaboration emerge in mid-market companies too.