Workgroup and Enterprise Collaboration

Business Issues

Collaboration is an activity - it is not a piece of technology. Where the technology fits is in supporting or facilitating different styles of collaboration, each of which is focused at helping to solve a particular business problem. Traditional collaborative tools, such as the telephone or fax machine, have enabled remote users to interact at great distances, but do not lend themselves well to the scalability that modern business typically demands. In addition, the essentially unstructured nature of communication via these tools limits the ability for decisions to be documented, without which workflow processes supporting further action cannot be relied upon.

The most important business issues to comprehend when it comes to Workgroup and Enterprise Collaboration can be clarified through an understanding of what we have termed the 'collaboration paradox'. This recognises that the concept of collaboration belies the reality of actually making it work. The expectations of a collaboration solution promote an environment where individuals actively share ideas and information freely in a fluid and dynamic fashion.

However, the reality is that we are all driven by the basic premise of 'what's in it for me?' and people are generally not willing to share information.

Butler Group has identified two main approaches to the deployment of Workgroup and Enterprise Collaboration, termed the 'project-based' approach, and the 'embedded' approach.

Just as much of the value of an organisation's data is held in unstructured data, so unstructured collaboration is often of the greatest value. Structured collaboration, such as workflow, requires the hard coding of knowledge as rules. This is great in terms of improving automation and routing of information, but rules constrain and do not allow for innovation. On the other hand, ad hoc, unstructured collaboration can dramatically improve personal productivity, reducing the time spent searching for information or chasing answers. However, it needs to be encouraged at the right place and the right time and with the right tools to capture the results of such exchanges.