Increasingly, collaboration—even across different locations, national borders, and time zones, especially in companies with an international focus—is becoming the norm in the work environment of the 21st century. Robert Cross, management professor at the University of Virginia, recognized that nowadays managers and other knowledge workers spend up to 95 percent of their working hours engaging in different forms of collaboration—be it in meetings, on the phone, or communicating via e-mail. Increasingly, moreover, the members of the teams that develop solutions in a rapidly changing economic environment and advance innovation come from outside one’s own organization—from partners, suppliers, or customers.
E-mail does not promote collaboration
However, the ever closer collaboration tends to be made more difficult rather than facilitated by such classic tools as phone and e-mail, which continue to be widely used. A study by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, e.g., revealed that 93 percent of the companies surveyed resort to e-mail, which makes it the most widely used of all collaboration tools. Even so, when it comes to perceived effectiveness, e-mail places at the bottom of the list, with a score of only 45 percent.
Most people are probably familiar with the overflowing electronic mailbox and would prefer to deal with colleagues and business partners more directly than via e-mails that may not be answered until several days later. A face-to-face conversation or an informal chat via instant messaging system often yields more results in a shorter time than a drawn-out back and forth of e-mails. This is even more the case when several participants are involved.
The tool must fit
Those surveyed would like to have tools that match their way of working better and can be integrated into the business processes without much difficulty if possible. Consequently, user friendliness is of prime importance—and in that respect there has been quite some room for improvement in the past. Software and hardware solutions, such as videoconferencing or integrated speech and data communication platforms, were complicated to set up, difficult to operate, and more often than not worked better in theory than in practice. The upshot: often the standard collaboration solutions which had been acquired for a lot of money remained unused.
A modern collaboration solution, on the other hand, promotes the team culture of collaboration and improves both the efficiency of the work and employee satisfaction. Plus, it allows team members to work together as easily from different locations as if they were in the same room. It can seamlessly integrate participants from the entire company as well as from outside organizations.
It offers complete freedom in the choice of communication medium: videoconferences, one-on-one and conference meetings, direct text chats, and project- or issue-specific workspaces with chat function and document exchange are easy to set up and use right away—even by staff members with limited technological skills.
Text chats in the workspaces are persistent: all messages are saved. This facilitates collaboration among people with different working hours who may, for instance, be located in different time zones. Videoconferences and video chats can also become elements that connect people across the planet: they even offer a “face-to-face feeling” if the participants are far away from one another or do not join the project team until later in the game.
Collaboration in an ideal way
The ideal collaboration solution works equally well on desktop computers, tablets and smartphones, via the Web browser and in the conference room, and allows, for instance, to start conversations on the smartphone. The conversation can be seamlessly continued in a conference room when one of the parties arrives at the office, using the large screen and the installed cameras and microphones with automatic people tracking technology, and other participants can join in. All it takes is a few taps or mouse clicks, with no complex operating processes involved.
Wishful thinking? No, these kinds of solutions already exist and are offered by various manufacturers. Experience shows that these types of new-generation collaboration tools enjoy wide acceptance among employees. However, simply creating the technical requirements is not enough: it is just as important to establish and actively promote the culture of collaboration within the company. This applies to all employees as well as management: if the CEO also answers a chat message in the project room faster than an e-mail, the culture of collaboration has definitely arrived at the organization.
About Data Quest
Data Quest has been considered one of the leading specialist dealers and ICT service providers for over 25 years. It has approximately 300 employees at 15 branches throughout Switzerland. The Corporate Business Unit provides consultation and support for companies and schools in the evaluation, integration, and operation of the products. Throughout the corporation, Data Quest relies on new modes of working and lives the culture of collaboration. Many of the employees have no fixed but, depending on their job, a mobile workstation or can work from home. To this end the company uses the Cisco Webex Teams platform (former Cisco Spark), which has worked well in the past. Data Quest is the technology partner of Switzerland Global Enterprise and provides consultation for expanding Swiss companies on how to grow successfully—as organizations and geographically—by using the proper collaboration Tools.
“Globalization gives us completely new opportunities” - Interview with the board member of Data Quest David Gleixner.
