“When you work in a global
organisation, chances are that networking with a colleague turns into a
nightmare. Here’s our list of collaborative applications for starters.”
When we think of a global workforce, the first thing that comes to our
mind is communication between teams. There are a lot of hurdles such as
cultural differences leading to different slang being used and conversations
happening across different time zones. There is also the difficulty in expressing
oneself and understanding the other person because you can’t see the person.
What might be a simple five-minute explanation in a meeting room could turn out
to be an arduous task with employees situated across the globe.
The problem is not
only about communication but also about sharing knowledge and managing projects
across different locations. The software used to bridge this gap fall under the
category of collaborative applications. The most basic of all is a corporate
messenger service that enables employees to connect with their colleagues
through the local network (intranet) and helps companies avoid expensive
telephone bills. Challenges other than communication that arise in a global
workforce are training and managing knowledge.
There are different
collaborative applications that help with different aspects in a corporate
world:
• Offline communication – e-mail clients and servers
• Instant communication – messengers
• Knowledge sharing – online forums
• Document management – version control software
All these are hosted on the company’s local network for employees
alone and are not meant for the public domain.
Knowledge
sharing
As a company grows, the way it manages knowledge can determine how it
progresses. With people joining and resigning, it is very important to have a
knowledge base that makes it easier for new recruits to quickly come to speed
in work. There are numerous instances where trainings are repeated just because
the person who was initially trained, quit. And in case these trainings are
imparted by employees in other countries, then the cost of training is high and
the frustration of the trainer when a trained person resigns is even higher.
Wikis: Wikipedia has become a source of daily reference
as many people and companies are trying to replicate the success of Wikipedia
within their organisations. But a wiki with the purpose of the upper management
wanting to interact with employees would probably not work because wikis are
meant to encourage people to share knowledge easily. A wiki established within
smaller units, of around 40 people, would help in consolidating the knowledge
of that unit – it can help the team to quickly publish articles about the
processes they follow and any how-to articles related to their regular job.
Example: MediaWiki (this application can support a
huge number of users).
Blogs:
People love reading blogs but most of them would never write one.
Surveys have found
that less than 5% of an organisation writes blogs even in large corporations.
Blogs are a good forum to post news items and insights from the management.
Blogs require focus so that new content is posted regularly. And remember that
not everyone is good at writing articles.
Example: WordPress
Document management:
With the amount of documents produced every day – presentations,
minutes of meetings, status reports, metrics etc. – it is important to have
them archived in one place where they can be accessed easily and searched for
as well. And with a global workforce it is important that the same material is
not recreated. Rather than mailing documents back and forth for editing, it
would be handy to have the document available in one place from where it can be
edited by anyone. Document management software helps provide a repository where
documents can be uploaded, versions of the document can be maintained and
history of changes can be tracked.
Example:Microsoft Sharepoint
Sharepoint has the extra advantage of providing a content management
system as well.
Content management:
Depending on the type of content, it might be more relevant to have
process documentation maintained on an intranet website rather than a wiki.
Maintaining an internal website has its own share of maintenance problems. But
to simplify this, there are content management software available that make it
easy to create internal websites and also provide inbuilt search features. Just
imagine how it would be if each team had their own website that explained all
about their work. The task of training is simplified and many hours can be
saved. It also improves the morale of the team since they wouldn’t need to hunt
for information. It would also be handy to have features like an online
calendar, vacation planner and surveys. Many content management software come
with all these.
Example: Microsoft Sharepoint
Bulletin boards:
We’re talking about electronic bulletin boards hosted on the intranet
– a place where employees can post on diverse topics from technical to travel
questions. An employee might be travelling to another office for a week and
would be happy to get accommodation along with a fellow employee. Or maybe they
would like to know about transportation there. Bulletin boards are very
important as the organisation grows larger and across borders. A lot of times
they are used for unofficial purposes as well but as long as no corporate
policy is being violated, this is a good forum where employees can network
across the organisation.
Implementing a bulletin board is pretty simple and can be integrated
with the e-mail application being used.
Example: Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook – public
folders can be created in which employees can post messages which can be read
by everyone else who is subscribed to that folder.
Instant
messaging and e-mail :
Even within the same building, people feel more comfortable messaging.
Telephoning the other person or walking to their area and talking creates noise
that others would not like. And in a global environment, instant messengers
makes it easier for employees to interact. What started out as a messenger
service has now gone beyond plain messaging. The messaging service now permits
screen sharing, messaging conferences and some even provide for video
conferencing although it could eat a lot of your communication bandwidth.
Google
Apps:
Companies that do not want to worry about the hassles of maintaining
e-mail servers can opt for this. Google takes care of the administrative
burden. Most employees would already be familiar with Google Talk and GMail and
won’t find it difficult using Google Apps. The problem with this is that a lot
of sensitive company data ends up residing on a server that is not under the
control of the organisation. This option is good for smaller companies but
larger ones would not prefer this because of the security issues.
The two Goliaths in the computer industry are competing to cover the
entire gamut from providing e-mail server software to collaborative tools for
corporations: IBM and Microsoft. Microsoft has always held an edge because most
organisations use some form of Microsoft Windows as their operating system. And
for word processing and spreadsheets, Microsoft Office is still the most
popular application in organizations. IBM established a place in the
collaborative software world when it acquired Lotus Development Corp in 1995.
Both these companies are constantly striving to provide new features in their
instant messengers and e-mail clients. Web access to e-mails enables employees
to access their mailbox from anywhere via an Internet connection.
Software:
IBM Lotus Notes for e-mail and Lotus same time for messaging.
Microsoft Outlook for e-mail and Windows messenger for messaging.
In the past, people
would get bogged down with the number of choices they have in picking
collaboration software for different purposes. But what we are seeing lately is
applications that are providing multiple features. The day is not far off where
you will find one application having most, if not all, the features we have
discussed. Efficient use of software can help employees work effectively when
they are spread across the globe and this in turn will help the organisation
scale quickly.
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