Bennefits of Collaboration Technology

Are companies missing out on collaboration tools

What makes a good collaboration. That is a hard question. The collaboration tools are on the rise, every month we see a new collaboration software startup coming with a new tools that is suppose to magically improve productivity within your company; yet only about 20% of collaboration professionals see real business values delivered through those tools. TJ Keitt from Forrester gives us some preliminary insights into his future research into that area.

External Link: Are businesses missing the benefits of collaboration technology?

Collaborative Consumption

A very interesting talk by Rachel Botsman about new emerging trends in the way we consume goods and services. In a nice concise way Rachel is showing how we are evolving from hiperconsumption driven by the need of ownership to collaborative consumption based on the actual need of the experience or service. On average drill is used for 12-13 minutes during it’s life time, yet most of us will own one. From economical point of view it makes little sense. Thanks to the new platforms created for exchanging goods and services we can now connect to each other easier quicker and safer thanks to the recommendations systems that are embedded in those platforms. We can now share our tools cars and even our gardens for growing food. This way we can reduce the amount of waste that is a plague of modern world.

Social Media – focus on behaviours not technology

Last week I have stumbled on some very interesting Webinar from Gartner Research presented by Carol Rozwell “Develop Social Media Strategy that will improve your business” . It is really worth recommending, it does not focus on any specific implementation of the social media platform within corporate environment but on the overall goals that companies want to achieve. Among many interesting finding from within the industry there was one that I am finding especially important in social media implementation:

“It’s not about Technology aim for new behaviours”

It is very important statement, more so if the social media initiative within your company is driven by IT Department.  Technical people have natural way on focusing on technology rather than on social aspect of change. This often leads to over complication of the solution, abundance of features. Social media need to bring just the opposite; they need natural and intuitive interfaces so people can use it without any training. Social media need to bridge different areas of the business, connecting it quite often with customer base so they can better answer the needs of the market. Essentially provide platform that by its cross functional nature, uncurbed by existing business structure or culture, will connect people together. This will hopefully provide a new channel of collaboration. But deploy and pray in this case will not work. You cannot simply deploy social tools and expect people to adopt them you need to focus on solutions. A social media solution is the right tools targeted at a defined purpose. This is why if you are option for a platform solution that is feature rich you need to provide guidance in form of consulting or even bespoke development in order to leverage the benefits of social media software.