Enterprise collaboration is
at the heart of radical transformation and necessity in modern business. It
creates value by modifying social tendencies and communications that are
prevalent in the non-work environment and applying them to the professional
sphere. Doing so captures the benefits of increased efficiency, cost savings,
and more effective distribution tasks among employees. Web and mobile-based
collaboration tools and methods seek to capture human social interaction within
a technology-based solution to business needs. Perhaps one of the most well
known examples of this is the International Space Station (ISS), which is a
result of 15 nations working together. People have lived in space every single
day since the year 2000. The space station has become a home in orbit from
where people do research, which cannot be done on Earth.
No matter if you’re a large
enterprise or a small startup, live in Shanghai or San Francisco, work from
home or the ISS, we all face the same challenges. We need effective
collaboration to achieve magic together.
In a raging disruptive world, it is difficult to distinguish signal from noise. That’s the exact reason why we IT team sat down to think about what trends we believe might shape the year ahead at the organisation. We wanted to use these insights internally for ourselves, as well as share it with all at organisation!
Current Trends in Industry
1. Collaboration tools move
beyond social
The last many years we have seen a disruption
of social collaboration tools. Apps such as Yammer have done a tremendous job
in connecting people. But while connecting people was an obvious first step to
go, all our work processes remain highly siloed and disconnected.
Many of the apps we use today are limited by
structure and technology. They have been developed to work individually and in
silos. The result is broken work processes and a productivity potential waiting
to be realized. A software development team might be using one system for
tracking bugs, another to invoice clients and a third to track time.
Trying to stitch legacy apps together has
previously been time-consuming and required lots of development hacks. But open
API’s and a standardized cloud are making integrations of different software
apps much more easier than before.
The next step will be to connect broken work
processes and apps.
Instead
of having work processes existing in closed apps, we’ll see new platforms
emerge, converge and work together in unimaginable ways. The collaboration
market will effectively become an ecosystem in its own right. Poject management
apps will integrate to task management apps. Task management apps will
integrate to invoicing apps. Invoicing apps will integrate to time tracking
apps etc. Connecting work holds a promise of higher productivity waiting to be
unleashed
2. BYOS - Bring your own
collaboration tools to the office
The boundaries between work and home are
blurring, so collaboration software must allow people to work seamlessly across
platforms, devices and locations. Many of our peer companies now allow users to
bring their own device to the office (BYOD). If you walk into any modern
enterprise, it’s not uncommon to see all kinds of phones being used and
governed by IT and users – something previously not allowed.
In a similar way, we foresee that 2017 will be
the year when Bring Your Own Software (BYOS) to the corporate workplace will
kick off. People are already using a variety of software to collaborate.
From Dropbox to Box, Google Hangout to Skype, Wrike to Asana, Slack to Skarpline, Trello to Pivotal Tracker and the list could go on.
Most of these products offer simple
transparent pricing plans, which are easy to administer and govern. Instead of
having IT dictating what to use, why not let users become strong ambassadors,
manage their own software and decide what’s fit for their role?
Using
software to access BYOS has several benefits to the user and company. The user
will often have access to a wide range of services. Is Lync down? Use Skype or
Team Viewer. And companies enjoy solutions that come with freemium packages in
most cases.3. The collaborative organisation
Many organisations have invested heavily in
technology over the past decades. These investments are often pursued top-down
and measured on ROI. But how do you measure ROI when implementing a
collaboration tool?
The next step for technology organisations is
to become collaborative organisations. Collaborative organisations implement
tools buttom-up. Instead of looking at ROI, they look at usage. Are our
employees actually using these tools? Do they provide a better fit for the
individual employee and his or her work process? Do these tools ‘almost’
implement themselves using smart onboarding and intuitive interfaces?
Research shows
that productivity growth only happens when technology is accompanied by
concurrent changes in how we work. In fact, technology adoption alone, without
the accompanying changes in work practices, have little or even a negative
impact on productivity.
Don’t
pursue collaboration tools for the sake of cool technologies. Pursue it with an
intention to improve how you work. Most solutions offer freemium or trial
version to get you started. Measure the usage. If people are using it, you’ll
see an increase in performance, productivity and happiness at work.4. Bots everywhere
Bots are ‘conversational software robots’,
which have exploded in usage the recent months. They are mostly found in
messaging and chat applications, but given their collaborative nature, we
expect to see them across a variety of collaboration tools in the near future.
Bots help us automate conversations and tasks.
They can help us get started with an app, reserve dinner appointments, schedule
meetings or pay online. Without interacting with another person. Instead of you
typing a command, a bot is typing commands for you. All you do is having a
conversation with what seems like a real person, but in fact it is a ‘bot’.
2017
will bring us a variety of new use cases centered around bots, and some will
come to feel like artificial intelligence. We’re already now seeing several
open platforms offering platforms for other platforms. It truly is an open
world of collaborative platforms!5. VR and Visual Collaboration
We’ll increasingly see new collaboration tools experiment with new user interfaces to simplify and make collaboration more intuitive.
The next wave of usage onto less technical
people will bring a new wave of user experiences to the market. Many
collaboration tools have been embraced by technical communities. But just as
Windows took over MS-DOS and became an intuitive operating system for a larger
audience, we’ll see collaboration solutions do the same.
Imagine using virtual reality headset to
collaborate. Or gigantic touch screens in every office room from where you can
manage your project with a single touch. Several products are already highly
visual and capable of this transformation. From project management solutions
such as Trello and Asana, roadmap and process solutions as Aha! and ProductPlan, recognition tools as DaPulse to communication tools as
Skarpline.
Improved
visualization and usability will lead to companies not only purchasing online
collaboration software but an increased number of employees actually using the
software and hence achieving the benefit of a higher productivity.
Best
Practices and Way Forward
1. Tightly integrate people for resultant productivity
Introducing SharePoint online, Microsoft Teams,
Yammer and Lync at workplace gets you rich picture of the people behind the
work and rich productivity dividend. The way work gets done is by people
working with people, “bouncing ideas” off each other, tapping into each other’s
expertise, leveraging each other’s knowledge and insights, repurposing each
other’s output. Yammer gives a rich picture of the people behind the work and Microsoft
Teams enables you to gauge self-productivity at work place. It connect people
and give them a full picture of each other. When people have the context of the
who, what, when, where and why of the others they are working with, it builds
the level of trust they have in each other and results in greater teamwork and
higher quality work.
SharePoint
Online: Sharepoint Online of Office 365 helps you to access intranet
anywhere, anytime with seamless collaboration, enables intelligent insight
along with enterprise grade security compliance
Microsoft
Teams: A hub of team work. The chat-based workspace in Office 365 brings
together all the people, conversations, files, and tools your team needs to be
more effective
Yammer: Connect people across your organization and
keep teams engaged. Helps in Crowdsource ideas, tap into collective knowledge,
and get the pulse of your company. The group feed fosters open discussion and
encourages team members to collaborate and share best practices. Actionable
updates and alerts keep everyone up to date and involved in the process.
2. Make sure it fits the way
people work
Email
Integration: Putting Outlook and Active Directory together on Office 365
gives a great opportunity to reduce your investment and maintenance cost
heavily. Since employees rely heavily on email, email integration is critical.
Office 365 solution allow users to easily create a tasks from email for team
member, share information on personalised mysite
Mobile
Support: Today’s workers rely heavily mobile devices. People are
accustomed to being able to get work done on the go. For a collaboration
solution to get high adoption, it needs to work seamlessly with mobile devices
so people can continue to collaborate on the go. Office 365 gives immense one
stop solution for such road warriors.
Office 365 outlook, AD and Lync:
All these tools together can create a workplace magic for any organisation.
Keeping all of them on Office 365 cloud, gives a clear organisational edge for
collaboration, accessibility and high user experience with very less cost of
ownership, zero/low maintenance activity, heavy reduction in overheads on managing
on-premises assets, resources and heavy datacenters.