The Impact of Social Collaboration in the Workplace

The current economic climate brings new challenges to organisations. Improving efficiency by breaking down internal barriers, sharing information more effectively, and connecting people across multiple sites are major organisational drivers, and traditional IT solutions can only play a limited role in supporting these advanced collaboration goals. Organisations are starting to recognise that unleashing the untapped potential of a fully joined-up workforce is a key driver towards increased efficiency and improved financiial performance.

But there is confusion in the marketplace, for every organisation that embraces the use of technology such as Facebook, there will be another that tries to ban it's use in the workplace, fearing wasted employee time and uncontrolled disclosure of sensitive information. Above all, there is are two simple questiion that are increasingly being asked:

1. What can social collaboration actually deliver?

2. How can it drive improvements for my organisation?

Imagine how much you could accomplish if you could seamlessly collaborate between departments, with suppliers and customers. Imagine how you could improve services by tapping the full potential in your organisation. Imagine effective project teams, who draw on the whole organisation for knowledge and support,

If you can imagine it, we can help you achieve it.

IBM Connections is a cost effective way to collaborate on projects, share expertise, improve processes and discover opportunities, powered by the internal social network you already have.

Just add people, imagination and stir.

Overview of Connections 2.5

Lotus Connection 2.5 provides the following set of capabilities, integrated to support business collaboration.

 

Home is where individuals can manage their priorities using this consolidated, customizable overview of their colleagues and activities. Home is also a place for a user to post project status and receive information from colleagues

These modules, taken together, make IBM Connections the most comprehensive social collaboration offering currently available. But there is no need to be daunted by the breadth of capabilities. you can start simply, perhaps with Profiles, then move on to discover the functionality of other modules such as Activities and Communities, before fully exploiting the power of all the other modules.

How we work with customers

IBM Connections is not like other software. If you Install it and wait for it to be used, or don't think about where value lies for your organisation, the chances are that your deployment will have limited success and impact. At Portal Partnership, we understand that the key to success with a connections deployment is linked strongly to the active involvement of senior management, and the early identification of processes and tasks that can be facilitated by using the software.


We work with users and managers, using a structured process to make sure that your IBM Connections deployment is a success - this process is described here. Of course, we are also help you to evaluate the technology, either via a quick and simple Proof of Technology or a structured Pilot. We can install and configure the software in your environment, or we can host it for you, and of course we offer a range of ongiong services to support and manage your environment for you, and to help you to drive continued benefit from your deployment.

When you need to connect people globally, address generational shifts, break down barriers, better utilise expertise, innovate new products/services, or advance organisational learning, Portal Partnership can help you meet your objectives.

We have been helping customers provide web based collaborative solutions for over ten years, and in our experience, successful collaboration initiatives must solve real problems for both the organisation and the individual.

This is because people participate when It's important to meeting their personal and professional goals, participation has value and recognition in the organisation, or they see benefit from other people's contributions.

Getting the right balance between organisational and personal goals is critical, so it is important to have tangible senior management involvement, allow users to drive how it is used, make it a part of their daily routine, provide personal incentives, include peer leaders in key roles, and find the right mix of freedom and control.

These principles are central to the Portal Partnership collaborative design process which uses participative techniques in a series of workshops to help you design a solution which puts social computing to work for you.

Appraisal

During our appraisal workshop, we work with senior managers or process owners to identify achievable, measurable goals and then define a set of initiatives which address these real world issues.

Assessment

Once we have identified initiatives, our assessment workshop helps project leaders to refine initiative goals into a project brief, and select steering group members.

Choosing the right steering group members is critical to the success of these initiatives. Members represent various project stakeholders. They design use patterns, determine success criteria, advise on changes, become key contributors, and train/mentor system users.

Design

During our design workshop, we work with the steering group and the project brief to understand user motivations and process strengths and weaknesses. Then we adapt collaborative capabilities (e.g. blogs will be used for...) and define patterns of use.

Review

Our review workshops provide effective governance, allowing steering groups to periodically evaluate behaviour, measure effectiveness, and adapt guidelines to encourage or discourage observed trends.

Critical Mass

Since users derive greater value with broader participation, Portal Partnership is available to continue to work with you, providing insight and ideas, as you build on your success and extend your collaborative skills.

As you attain critical mass, these social collaboration tools will allow your staff, partners and customers to work together to create even more effective ways to deliver results.

 

Getting started with Lotus Connections

Portal Partnership has a number of services to allow you to get started with Connections, whether this is to demonstrate, get a Proof of Concept or full deployment.

• Demonstration which provides a dedicated Connections service for a longer period of time. Gain insight into how your organization may benefit from Connections. Focus on real use of the tools and not on the infrastructure build and integration.

• Proof of Concept which provides a dedicated Connections service for a longer period of time. Gain insight into how your organization may benefit from Connections. Focus on real use of the tools and not on the infrastructure build and integration.

• A Pilot, which delivers a Connections environment tailored to your needs. One which integrates into your directory and is fully supported, where you assess and implement real world use cases. This Pilot helps you plan for deployment.

• Deploy Connections with a deployment infrastructure designed for your needs and integrated into your environment. Experience shows that success of Social Computing requires a critical mass of users and activities to be delivered before it is perceived by others to be useful. It is critical that project focus moves to use cases, work groups, activities, business objectives which may be supported by Connections. Our consultants will work with you to deliver the workshops where these areas are identified and supporting Connections tools engaged.

The Figure below provides examples of the deliverables within each engagement model.