Business Process Changes are Important for Successful Collaboration

Microsoft recently delivered beta 1 of the Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile client, based on Microsoft Office Communicator 2005’s user interface. Companies that have deployed Live Communications Server and Communicator will be able to give their mobile workers integrated communication features, including IM, presence, VoIP and telephony integration, on their Smart Phones or Pocket PCs.

Microsoft isn’t the only vendor eyeing the mobile workforce with real-time communications tools. Telephony vendors such as Avaya and Nortel are also developing their real-time-communications applications for the mobile worker, for instance. And given that more than 90% of employees work away from headquarters on a regular basis, that focus makes sense.

But as companies deploy collaboration tools, they must consider their business processes, and make sure to change them when warranted by the new technology. This is especially true in the face of mobility, where both technology and human reality will affect application success. A tool like Web conferencing that works well on a PC may work less well on a cell phone, while cell phone presence may indicate something different from landline presence.

So OK, companies get the most value from collaboration tools only when they change their business processes to accommodate the new technology. But only 53% of IT executives Nemertes has spoken to say they have done that.

In some cases, that’s because no one had thought much about their business processes to begin with. “You mean, we need processes?” laughed one IT exec responsible for knowledge management at his company when we asked him this question. What he discovered when his company implemented collaboration tools was that their processes needed to be more explicit. “So if there’s a two-day activity to put together a project, we now have a process that begins it at a certain time, and describes each step along the way. The technology really forced us to discover there was something called ‘process.’”

Other IT executives report that implementing collaboration tools allowed them to re-think and re-define business processes because by their very nature the tools make process management easier and more effective. “We haven’t changed our processes much yet, but I expect that we will,” says the manager of Web strategy for a large software company. “Partly that’s because some of the tools allow us to enforce processes better—to formalize them. Templated designs around rules and such will give us a great advantage.”

And some companies use the tools to literally change the way they do business, not just their business processes. One mid-size specialty manufacturer has historically sold a product: chemicals. But because any given chemical requires manipulation by the buyer to actually be of value, the company also “sold” its support services—only it bundled those costs into the price for its products. Now the company is trying to leverage that knowledge and show its customers how much value the company really adds to the equation. That means changing its pricing models to charge separately for products and services.

“We’re trying to build new value propositions,” explains the VP and CIO. “So our goal is to increase our value to our customers by helping them learn more about their processes through us, then show them how, if we participate more in those processes, we’ll add more value. We want to manage services for them that they may be doing themselves today.”

The new effort means people in the company suddenly really need to collaborate, often with people they’ve never met before and on issues they may never have thought of. The new way of selling requires collaboration among business groups, such as sales and R&D, and among employees located across the country and around the world.

To do that, the company implemented team collaboration software that employees are required to use if they want their projects to be considered “complete.” Besides offering a unique and dependable place for project participants to meet, work together, and keep and track content, the software allows the company to build in steps along the way that direct the nature of the collaboration. It also lets the company create a structure for a collaboration room using pre-defined templates pre-constructed to the company’s design, to keep things consistent. The templates match 14 business-process steps. Workflows ensure that the right people see the project results, and that approvals happen on time.

But the company doesn’t want to discourage free-flowing work, because people are free-flowing by nature. “We think that’s what develops collaboration,” says the CIO. “Embedding the processes formalizes and institutionalizes it. And that’s what makes it a success.”

He’s right. IT executives looking for ways to leverage new technology to maximize the business benefits of collaboration, take note.