Enterprise Collaboration Enables New Ways of Doing Business
Jinfo Blog

By Ben Wightwick

Abstract

As part of the FreePint Topic Series: The Social Enterprise, Ben Wightwick looks at factors to consider when reviewing enterprise collaboration solutions and some of the influencing trends associated with social business and the future of work.

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Disrupting forces such as social, mobile and rise of cloud services are directly affecting organisations and their staff and encouraging them to look at new and improved ways of doing business. 

Technology Underpins New Business Scenarios

Gartner's Nexus of Forces describes the convergence and mutual reinforcement of social, mobility, cloud and information patterns and how they are driving new business scenarios.

Enterprise collaboration is vital in the new world of business and is no longer just a blog, a wiki solution or the ability to follow someone, it offers much, much more. It requires strategic planning and careful consideration.

The Social Enterprise: a Human Undertaking

Today it is not enough to just be able to securely share files or "like" a piece of content.

Organisations are realising the importance of leveraging their human network when discussing the future of work. This focus on people is building out the foundations of the concept of the "social enterprise". 

How to Choose your Collaboration Solution?

Deciding which enterprise collaboration solution is right for your business is a difficult decision. With so many features and functionalities to consider, what are the important ones? 

The digital transformation of the workplace is accelerating at a rapid pace. Alongside the Nexus of Forces, we can attribute this to the:

• Increased globalisation and mobility of the workforce
• Desire for improved team collaboration
• Socialisation of knowledge sharing
• Accelerated rate of innovation
• Increased expectations of clients and staff who leverage great applications with awesome user experiences outside of the enterprise. 

What to Look for in Your Solution

There are many areas you can focus on when purchasing an enterprise collaboration platform.

Some of my highlights are listed below:

• Bridge multiple use cases
• Mobility and awesome user experience
• Interoperability and API
• Customisation, creation and innovation
• Caters for structured content collaboration
• Security.

Challenges & Success Factors

There are many challenges you can face when delivering an enterprise collaboration service, solution or platform.

These challenges can originate from the technology you choose, your organisation's reluctance to change or the over-dependency on technology to drive business change. 

The decisions you make today or tomorrow will lay the foundation for a new way of doing business, a business that focuses on the human capital of your organisation. It will inevitably need iteration.

Iteration is vital, I can't stress this enough. It could be the difference between success and repeated failure. If done well, it will enable your social business initiative to be a success. 

Editor's Note:

FreePint Subscribers can login now to read and share in more detail about the features, functions, challenges and success paths when choosing and implementing an enterprise collaboration platform in Ben's article What to Look for in an Enterprise Collaboration Platform.

Editor's Note: The Social Enterprise

The FreePint Topic Series: The Social Enterprise runs from January to March 2014 to examine the ways that organisations are maximising internal social connections and knowledge management.

Register your interest now for notification of new content published in the series, to get early announcements to register for FreePint Webinars produced in the series, and to receive a free copy of the FreePint Report: Buyer's Guide on Social Tools, scheduled for publication in March.

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