Forrester recently released its research on the top technology trends for enterprises to watch in the next two years, and not surprisingly, mobile devices and collaboration tools took the top two spots, with 73 percent and 63 percent of respondents expecting a strong impact, respectively.
Collaboration’s value proposition is forceful. It brings to bear a richer and more diverse gene pool of interests, skills and experiences on a common topic. Kevin Gazzara, author of The Leader of OZ: Revealing the 101 Secrets of Marvelous Leadership for the 21st Century, says that collaboration is a win-win for businesses and employees. “Managers should provide the structure of how to achieve management’s targets,” he says. “After 30 years in business, I’ve seen collaboration offer a faster time to market for products and services because you’re leveraging everyone’s knowledge and effort.”
Collaboration application benefits are not hard to identify:
- Reduced costs associated with travel, time out of office, meetings, information sharing and project coordination
- Creation of new opportunities
- Faster response when groups need to collaborate
- Less likelihood of mistakes when collaboration supports well defined processes
- Greater transparency and accountability.
More than 70 percent of workers will become totally mobile over the next two years. This level of mobilization is driving the need for collaboration tools that can be deployed at any time on any device from anywhere.
In the last few years, we have seen the trend of work transcending place and time—this will only continue to be a central tendency. Because of this, collaboration tools that support the “anywhere, anyhow, any device” work environment will become indispensable.
Letting work happen organically, emerging when capabilities are at their peak, is going to grow in importance. The possibility of working in harmony with others in the same “frenetic flow” can only be described as symphonic. This is the opportunity that collaboration brings—virtual or real-time. Virtual collaboration suites are just beginning to come alive within organizations.
Some of the tools being leveraged for collaboration are:
- Project management. Shared virtual space which houses overviews, timelines, analyses, contacts and schedules.
- Knowledge sharing. Tools which enable teams to build Wikipedia-like storehouses of information and organizational knowledge that can be updated by team members on the fly.
- Workflow systems and task lists. Keep processes moving swiftly by helping teams manage who does what, what step is next up to tackle, and what resources need to be in place before proceeding.
- Visual thinking and diagramming. From mind-mapping to flowcharts, heat maps to Venn diagrams, online visualization tools help teams to better understand, organize and communicate their ideas.
- File sharing. Cloud-based file-sharing platforms keep documents safe and accessible to team members via any device from anywhere they can navigate to the web.
- Collaborative editing and desktop sharing. Allows team members to view and work on the same document, spreadsheet or presentation at the same time—regardless of location—to update, discuss and deliver live document creation.
- Presence management. Enables users to communicate best method of communication throughout their shifting day, giving other users speedy interactions.
- Instant messaging. Like Yahoo Messenger or AOL Instant Messenger. Delivers immediate messaging to users logged in via mobile and desktop devices.
Back to Forrester’s research, mobile and collaboration took the top rankings. Business intelligence, virtualization and security related to wireless and mobile devices were contenders for the next three spots. These are strong indicators of the development toward Enterprise 2.0—organizations empowered via better technology. Enterprise 2.0 organizations show the dramatic impact possible from combining social computing, mobile technologies, collaboration platforms and cloud-based capabilities for rapid deployment of innovative new ideas. iBi
