MCPc Blog

It's 2010. . . Do You Have a Collaboration Strategy?

 Email Article  

Tweet  

  

  

Author: Jason Taylor 

As a sales professional, I regularly meet with customers to discuss how they are leveraging technology to create strategic benefit and competitive advantage.  While most business professionals agree that effective collaboration increases organizational agility and efficiency, many are unclear what steps need to be taken to positively affect collaboration on a systemic basis.

Webster's Dictionary defines collaboration as "to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor." In today's global environment, the convergence of secure voice, data and video communications has been leveraged to accelerate sales and delivery cycles, regardless of time or geographic location.  But it isn't simply about converged communications infrastructure, as collaboration is ultimately driven by your organization's corporate culture, management practices, business goals and values.

The Benefits of Collaboration are Clear

Organizations that successfully adopt new collaborative strategies:

• Move faster
• Make smarter decisions
• Draw from a deeper well of knowledge
• Operate more effectively across time and distance barriers

So, what other technologies represent collaboration?  In fact, many of today's current technical hyperboles (cloud computing, social networking, crowd sourcing, workflow/document management, borderless infrastructure, mobile workforce, virtual presence) all have their roots in collaboration.

Taken individually, each of these technologies represents some limited value to an organization from a collaboration perspective.  Taken as a group and coordinated to create a strategy, these technologies can be game changing for businesses that employ them properly.

According to a Q4/2008 Forrester research survey, 37% of enterprise and SMB organizations indicated they were working to develop a formal collaboration strategy in 2009.  Twelve months have passed since this survey was preformed, and I still see many organizations operating without a collaboration strategy.  It is the duty of IT professionals and corporate management to work together and understand how these new technologies can dramatically impact business profitability.

Resolve to Collaborate in the New Year

This takes hard work, as most of these technologies are relatively new and in many cases can be hard to measure from an ROI perspective.  At the end of the day, there is an element of faith involved in the construction of a collaboration strategy.  The belief that a well-coordinated collaboration infrastructure will empower an organization to run faster, better and cheaper goes a long way to making this technology effective.

Whether you have faith or not, most technology professionals believe that sometime in the near future, those organizations that proactively manage and synchronize the appropriate use of collaboration technologies with sound business practices will gain a competitive advantage over those who do not.

So... What is your collaboration strategy, and how is it working for your business?

Jason Taylor is Senior Vice President of Sales Operations and in the past has served as an IT consultant for several major enterprise-level organizations throughout Northeast Ohio. Connect with Jason on LinkedIn.

Are you a business leader in Northeast Ohio interested in learning more about collaboration, cloud computing and other advanced technologies for your organization? Join us for the Modern Technology Lessons Summer 2011 Roundtable Series. This three-session series includes Path to the Cloud (7/19), Mobile Device Explosion (8/10) and Intuitive Collaboration (9/29). All three events will take place at our future headquarters, 1801 Superior Ave. in downtown Cleveland. You can attend all three or any combination of sessions. Click here to learn more and register.