Why is it so hard to implement a successful collaboration program and quickly gain good results?Why are so many companies still lacking a holistic Unified Communication & Collaboration strategy, even though the world is changing, even though we know so many success stories (public ones) and even though their worst competitor might be already doing so? These are some questions I receive when the people I talk with challenge me regarding collaboration and digital workplace design. These are good questions and sometimes even hard to answer, to be honest. I do not know exactly and neither does anyone else on the planet might be closest to the truth. But we all have good guesses and even better opinions on the matter!
When I started to think about this a bit deeper, I first began to look what type of overall information, or knowledge, is needed in these types of projects. We all know and have heard the story about processes, technology and culture now even too many times. Am I right? But we can also take a slightly a different point of view to look at what type of k knowledge is needed in designing and implementing a UCC project. Here’s how
- Collaboration is most of all cooperation and interaction between people. It’s PEOPLE telling each other “stuff” verbally or through the digital tools. It’s people sharing INFORMATION
- Collaboration takes place inside BUSINESS processes. The most value can be revealed in the types of processes where there are communication bottlenecks or where people are not cooperating at all.
- To support interaction and collaboration within enterprise regardless of time and space, TECHNOLOGY is needed.
As Garter defines it ”The scope of the enterprise architecture includes the people, processes, information and technology of the enterprise, and their relationships to one another and to the external environment.” Collaboration can be seen as a holistic process to support the contemporary business challenges just as the Enterprise Architecture does, only on a smaller scale.
Is this an answer to the questions mentioned above? Might not be, but It’s a good beginning to a longer one. Might it be that we have not been looking at Unified Communication & Collaboration from a right point of view previously. Because we have not identified the right pieces in the puzzle, IT people and business people have left the table without understanding each other completely? That’s why it might feel difficult sometimes to get the ball rolling.
image credit to free digital photos / idea go
