A Vision for an Integrated Collaboration Environment

Developing the global community I talked about in my previous entry, turns out to be a little more challenge than originally expected. This has nothing to do with the community itself, but with how the developers are working together. Indeed, we are developing this with people from different companies, sitting on both sides of the ocean. So, you would think we just need a little collaboration space and everything would be resolved, isn’t it. Well wrong, first the traditional file sharing tools do not allow to share some types of files (eg. java scripts generated by our PowerPoint to Flash conversion tool), do not allow us to make documents publically available (e.g. Google Docs and PDF documents), and I could go on like this.

As the world becomes global, increasingly companies and people need to collaborate virtually. Unfortunately the tool providers (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo) are looking myopically in silos, addressing collaboration aspects in isolation. What we really need is for a company to take the problem from a different angle, starting by asking itself what is required to collaborate and then develop the integrated environment to just do that. So, let’s think a minute, what do we need to collaborate?

• Well, first we need to share documents either with a know community, with a larger group who’s names and e-mails we do not all have, or be made publically available. These documents may just be looked at, may be downloaded, may be commented upon (with notes or voice) or may be edited by particular members of the community. Obviously we would want to keep track of any activity around the documents.
• Second, we may have to interact, either asynchronously or synchronously, using text, sound or video, or any combination of those. Interactions may be private (between two people) or with a group. During those interactions, documents may have to be referred to and shared. Data may be made available also.
• Third, we may have to work together at a common task, in that process we may share real-time information, documents, and we may use a common application that can be on one of our systems or in the cloud. Here again this can happen between two people or with a larger group.

A number of supporting functions should be available. These include a group calendar (that links with the calendars of the members to identify availability etc.), action item lists, a parking lot, participant information, version control, etc.

Most of what I describe here is available in one form or another on the internet, but there is  no consistency, no easy way to cobble it all together, and even if we managed, we would spend our life login on to different systems. Why is nobody looking at the collaboration needs of globally dispersed people and addressing their needs, rather than continuously coming up with incompatible tools.

No Travel, Collaboration & Performance

We're all being told to stop traveling. However, in our international or global roles, we are all supposed to continue collaboration within the enterprise and across the eco-system. obviously, our performance is supposed to be at least as good as what it used to be, however we are not been given any tools or hints on how to do this virtually. Isn't that strange?

I had the opportunity to meet a number of industry analysts last week and asked them the question if they saw research in that space. And frankly, with a very small number of exception, the overwhelming response was NO. I believe there is a great opportunity here to innovate and contribute to the companies need to reduce costs and greenhouse gas emissions, while motivating employees and improve efficiency.

The answer in my mind is not ONE tool, as the collaboration needs are from a variety of types. In the attached drawing I tried to illustrate my idea. Let me walk you through this by taking a couple examples from a supply chain.

• If you work collaboratively with a supplier and he sees that one of the trucks will arrive late, he can easily make you aware of this through the use of an instant messaging software. A couple of interactions are enough to point out what the issue is, how much delay it will cause and how certain you can be of the new timing. This interactive conversation will obviously be complemented by data that is automatically transferred between partners (e.g. Shipment Notification), and business processes that are executed (e.g. Call-Off process).
• If, when receiving the new revision of the forecast, the supplier realizes he is unable to deliver, but has another proposal on how things could be done, he may want to have a more personal interaction with the planner. He can call him up, using regular lines or VoIP, eventually complemented with PC based video, to discuss the situation, his proposal and come up with an agreement on how to move forward. This interaction is obviously followed up by a transfer of data and the execution of a forecast revision process, and its acceptance.
• If the customer is planning to introduce a brand new product, that implies a different approach in the supply chain, he will probably not want to discuss this over the phone or instant messaging. He will probably be interested in looking at his supplier eye to eye. Video conferencing, and telepresence are ways to achieve this. The interaction is different as it needs a different way to view and understand the attitude of the other.
• If the customer wants ideas being generated by his own or suppliers employees, he will probably use another mechanism. Today a number of "innovation storm" techniques exist. But here again, they address a specific purpose.

These are just examples, but they illustrate the variety of technologies that are required and the different skills that are required to interact with each other. It used to be so simple just to drive or fly to a common location, discuss things face to face and end in the bar,.... where a lot of issues were washed away with a couple pints. Haven't found any techniques to address that one unfortunately.

Teleportation for Collaboration?

Many of you may remember the Star Trek Transporter beaming the crew from the USS Enterprise to remote locations. Obviously, this is film, you will tell me. What does it have to do with collaboration and the subject of this blog.

Well, maybe more than you think. On November 4th during the US election night, CNN used hologram technology to beam their remote reporters straight into the study. To do this, they used equipment developed by Hollywood. The remote reporter was surrounded by 35 cameras that shot him/her from all sides. Didn't sound very practical to me yet.

Last night, I was in London and switched on TV. On CNN, Richard Quest met with a British entrepreneur who was located at the other end of town. Seeing both of them on screen I really had the impression they were in the same room and it took me a while to realize what was happening. They were, here again, using holograms to beam the image of one of them to the place of the other. They even managed to take a group picture and virtually shake hand.

The images were beamed across town using fiber optics told the entrepreneur. And he then added that he expected this to be available for sale within 6 months from now. When asked whether there was a market for this, he felt that CEO's would be interested in having such a room near their office to be able to give a keynote speech somewhere in the world while loosing a minimum of time.

Now Richard himself pointed out it is not as good for true collaboration because when you are on stage you do not see the hologram, but rather a screen view. To have the full effect, you need to be in front of the image, looking at the stage.

Interested in looking at how it appears, take five minutes to look at the video.

The financial meltdown, a trigger for remote collaboration

Everywhere I keep hearing about travel restrictions. Amex just released a study pointing out three quarter of corporations intend to cut or freeze travel budget. In the current circumstances, this is probably the right thing to do for businesses, and, although it may not make airlines happy, it will help the bottom line of many of them. However, the question remains, are businesses ready for large scale remote collaboration and do they have the tools and experience required to do so. Are we also increasingly going to see remote visits to customers. This is going to be interesting, and we all have to experience and learn a lot in the process.

Being in a global role, I am often ask to go and meet a customer to share best practices, to update him on new technologies & processes, or to discuss key processes with him. Up till now, these meetings have happened face to fact, but with the current clamp down in travel, we are highly motivated to do this remotely. Well, I have two hurdles to overcome. I first need to convince my sales teams that this can work and that we can have the level of discussion we used to have face to face. I don't know how your sales people are, but I can tell you many of ours do not like surprises, so when they are confronted to the idea of doing a remote sales call, many of them get extremely frustrated.

Once the sales people are convinced, it is time to go and suggest this to the customer. And here we have two types of reactions typically. Some customers (typically the ones that have similar travel bans), understand and are prepared for the experience. Others have the feeling they are not important because we do not travel to their site. And you may have to discuss the policy with them, the reason why we do that etc. some of them will never understand. It's up to you to judge how important this customer is and whether it is necessary you circumvent the travel ban.

How the meeting takes place and how to make it work is dependent on the technology used. If you are able to use telepresence, you can just run the meeting as any other. The only thing you will nit be able to do is exchange business cards and shake hands, but frankly, you can do without that.

If the meeting happens over the telephone, I would suggest you put a couple things in place. Here are some suggestions:

• If you present something and the customer does not know you, put your picture in one of the first slides. This will allow the customer to see how you look like and to imagine the person behind the voice.
• Try to have your local sales person in the same room as the customer, allowing him/her to capture the body language of the customer and the dynamics in the room
• If possible, use an instant messaging tool for the sales person to communicate to you some of the reactions in the room
• Be extremely sensitive to the tones of the voices, as they may tell you how your message is being received and may allow you to correct things quickly.

In any case, do a debrief with your sales team to understand how well the meeting went. They are your eyes with the customer and you need to rely on them to understand the dynamics. You may want to discuss with them before the meeting about what you expect them to do and how they can communicate with you. If you cannot use instant messaging for example, you may want to define some code phrases to be used to warn you about the way the customer reacts.

These are just some ideas on how to make the best of having to work without traveling. Some more can be found on Ken Molay's " the webinar blog".  I do hope all these are useful.