Working as One

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Is the firm that you work for a ‘joined-up' company? Do people, processes and information integrate seamlessly at all times and in all situations? Are you and your suppliers, partners and customers ‘working as one'?

In all likelihood, you've probably not reached that nirvana yet - but getting there is firmly on the boardroom agenda.

That's usually because the company needs to fulfill one (or more) of the following goals:

Improve research and development and cutting time-to-market.

Enable more flexible production and reducing product error.
Create new product and service offerings in shorter timescales.
Ease partnership and business-to-business collaborations.
Open up new markets and access to new consumers.
Tap into rich new resources of globally located skilled workers.
Deal with major business impacts and crises and aid rapid recovery.

The pressure to ‘work as one' will have huge implications for the integrated technology communications projects your firm undertakes in 2008 and for several years to come, says Chris Gough, a Microsoft specialist at Logicalis.

"For IT to be of value to the business, it needs to deliver usable, flexible services that accurately reflect the way the organisation operates," he says. "Only then will you truly be working as one."

Unified communications play a huge role in getting to that state, he says. That's because, if people within your business can't communicate and collaborate with others, both inside and outside of the corporate four walls, then latency is introduced into vital business processes - whether that's processing an order, reporting on last month's sales performance against targets, or working with others to create the company's annual report.

And not only that, employees increasingly expect to be able to perform such tasks whether they're in the office, working at home or out on the road.

"Organisations are increasingly process-focused, for reasons of efficiency, compliance and continuity," says Gough. "And where you have more processes, you need to squeeze out more latency in order to achieve these goals."

In essence, that means bringing together unified communications and business intelligence technologies and enabling employees to access them via a common point of interface - in essence, an integrated portal - that is accessible by employees any time and anywhere, as well as authorised third parties.

In the ‘working as one' scenario, unified communications plans incorporate all the different ways that employees conduct these interactions, whether it is via voice, email, instant messaging or even video.

"Working as one is all about ensuring that users can get what they need - information and advice - when they need it and that there are no obstacles to doing so," says Gough. "Over time, that kind of efficiency will be critical to business success."

Your Comments and Questions

Mandy Shaw, about 1 month ago

Tyler, I think that, while attractive from the user's perspective and clearly beneficial to a business, there are two fundamental problems with the approach you describe. The first is that the mobile companies still have us all over a barrel concerning data costs - while these are particularly horrific when roaming abroad, they're expensive enough domestically to be a big barrier. The second is that, to use a mobile device effectively for other than simple applications, you need 20/20 vision. I would personally far rather switch my laptop on and use Bluetooth to transfer stuff to my mobile than type more than a few sentences on my horrible almost invisible mobile keyboard (complete with blue backlight that makes it even harder to see). Technology and pricing will catch up, without a doubt, but we aren't there yet.

Tyler, about 1 month ago

Absolutely. The author touches upon the fact that workers are now out of the office, in the field, at client sites etc. The humble text msg on the mobile phone has seen tremendous use in the business sector for this reason as it's quick, easy and cheap. Businesses need to consider providing mobile access that is just as easy for workers to use and access as the same applications would be in the office.

Mandy Shaw, about 1 month ago

Good point Victoria. A few thoughts on wikis. I think there are both technical and cultural issues with wikis that need ironing out before editing the text (rather than just reading it) becomes a mainstream activity. Almost all the wiki technologies I have used divide into the over-complicated, using arcane (and differing) wiki markup languages, and the over-simplified, hiding much of the power of the wiki as a collaborative tool. (I would recommend www.pbwiki.com as a pretty good example of a halfway house.) The cultural issues with Wikipedia are well documented. In a business context, there's also the problem of getting a peer-to-peer collaborative tool to coexist with a hierarchical organisation. People may need a lot of reassurance before they give it a go. While I obviously support anything that encourages improved communication and collaboration, it's also essential that people know how far they can trust what they are reading - accountability, including accurate profile entries, will surely be key in a business context. Anyway, if anyone has an example of genuine business benefit from wikis, do post a comment. (I would say blogs were a different case with far clearer business benefit.)

Victoria, about 1 month ago

A great idea - and like the author says at the beginning, one that businesses have been trying to achieve for years without much success. Besides unified communications, I think the prospect of using Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis in the workplace to enable rapid and easy collaboration amongst employees is a really exciting trend. What perhaps makes it more workable than the types of technologies Chris mentions here, is that people are already aware of how to use them, having done so as consumers of services such as Wikipedia.