Creating "the face of on demand"
Bringing human intelligence and responsiveness to the fast-moving flow of on demand business is a full-time pursuit. Goyal, Lotus Software, stated that for an organization to operate on demand, "it needs to integrate people, processes and information across functional units and its value net".
"People", Ambuj Goyal says, "are the most forgotten part of the organization".
Coming from another businessperson, that statement might sound like a reworking of the old platitude about "our company's most valuable resource".
But for Goyal, the general manager of Lotus Software, bringing human intelligence and responsiveness to the fast-moving flow of on demand business is a full-time pursuit. In our previous conversation with Goyal, he stated that for an organization to operate on demand, "it needs to integrate people, processes and information across functional units and its value net". Recently, he spoke with us in greater detail about the benefits of integrating people, helping them collaborate with each other across the organization.
Companies in a wide variety of industries are using virtual workplaces and other people integration technologies to save time, save money and provide new value to customers and shareholders. (For more information about these technologies, see our article on virtual workplaces .)
Getting people engaged—and effective
In the past, businesses have focused on integrating employees' knowledge, rather than the employees themselves. In Goyal's words, "they were trying to convert people's knowledge into automation so they didn't need people. That's the wrong model.
"Our objective here is not to take people out of the process, but to get people engaged in the process and have them make more informed decisions faster. Our objective is to make people more effective".
As an example, he talks about a customer service representative (CSR) working in a call center. When a customer calls with a difficult question, the CSR checks his database for the answer. If he doesn't find it there, he could mark the question for followup and call the customer back in a day or so—or he could use an online collaboration space to "speak" with an expert elsewhere in the enterprise, sharing more complex technical documents and even pulling in other personnel (a public relations professional, for example) as necessary.
As a result, the CSR can give the customer an authoritative response in minutes rather than days. In the beginning of the networked era, online "collaboration" meant email and possibly group calendaring. As businesses move to operate on demand, more evolved, more integrated processes and infrastructure are making it possible to collaborate in more sophisticated ways. Instant messaging, document sharing, e-meeting spaces and workflow optimization are just a few of the ways that people can locate each other, work together, make smarter decisions and develop better ideas—faster and easier than ever before.
As with data and process integration, people integration can operate across value chains, to help people in multiple organizations work together.
When the government of Denmark needed a better way to handle complex procurement processes—in one case, thirty vendors submitted 30,000 pages of information—Lotus Software helped them create a specialized workplace, combining document sharing, work flow and task management, team rooms, email and instant messaging. As a result, the procurement group was able to complete twice the number of contracts without increasing head count. Cross-Discipline Collaboration and the "Productivity of ideas"
Traditionally, collaboration has been used to facilitate specific vertical processes—product design, for example. But when organizations deploy it horizontally, it provides a range of new benefits, stretching across disciplines, businesses and entire value chains.
Chief among these benefits is what Goyal calls "ad hoc collaboration"
—the gathering of communities of interest around a particular topic, drawing people from different projects, divisions and areas of specialization. He refers to this kind of cross-pollenization as "the productivity of ideas".
IBM's own employee intranet uses a number of collaborative technologies to achieve this productivity. Goyal gives the following example: "Let's say you have a sales SWAT team trying to work on a bid for the Singapore government for, let's say, media and entertainment on demand.
Somebody can step up and say 'Look, we did a similar bid for the Japanese government.'" This "ad hoc collaboration", he says, "lets us do a better job of winning business". The IBM intranet uses collaborative team "forums", where communities of interest gather around topics that cross disciplines.
For example , a forum focused on Linux-related issues could help programmers find advanced technical solutions, help sales reps answer customers' questions, or help consultants get background information for a proposal. At the operations level, "ad hoc collaboration" gives companies new ways to improve quality and productivity.
Virtual team rooms can bring together experts in disciplines like product design, manufacturing, supply chain management and logistics. Working together, they can share ideas, experience and technical information to create solutions that improve the internal workings of the organization. "Ad hoc collaboration" helps companies of any size improve productivity by knocking down barriers.
Whether those barriers are geographical, departmental or functional, companies that reach across them will find new ways to leverage the talents and experience of their employees.
Responsiveness: "the face of on demand"
As a company evolves to operate on demand, the need for people integration can grow naturally out of other kinds of integration. When groups within organizations and across value chains work more closely together, access to data and processes often is not enough. Only people can provide the kind of responsiveness that personifies on demand business. Goyal describes how the process can begin on the Web: "A Web site", he says, "is a passive place to come to.
Billing and invoicing via a Web site to a business partner is the next level of integration. But to be really responsive, we need knowledgeable people supporting partners, using collaborative software like team rooms and instant messaging and email. "I call this the face of on demand. This is where you can feel an on demand business. You can touch it. You can interact with it". For Goyal, human responsiveness, human awareness and human ingenuity are the ultimate resources for an on demand business. And collaboration tools allow the organization to fully leverage those resources.
Getting started
How can a company begin to tap this kind of power? According to Goyal, organizations need two elements in place to begin implementing real-time collaboration: the right organizational strategy, supported by the right infrastructure.
Having the right organizational strategy in place allows you to create a single, unified set of collaboration tools that can truly suit your company's needs.
This holistic approach allows you to build your virtual workplace incrementally while avoiding point solutions—so you can develop a single integrated platform with a common governance model, responsive to your employees' roles and responsibilities.
The right infrastructure is governed by this strategy, but it begins with the basics of on demand systems. In Goyal's words, "Can you actually provide access to people, processes and information anywhere, anytime?" For most companies, tools like calendaring, file sharing and messaging are not new.
The challenge is in standardizing and connecting these point solutions to create a single, unified architecture—one that can truly bring people together across the value chain.
This consolidation has the added benefit of reducing system complexity, lowering costs and freeing up money that can be reinvested to build an even stronger collaborative environment.
Open standards and Web accessibility are key to the creation of a unified collaborative infrastructure—they give organizations the maximum flexibility to connect disparate systems without having to "rip and replace" existing hardware and software.
To develop the right organization, companies need to examine their business processes and corporate cultures.
The best IT tools in the world will return zero value if they remain unused. Organizations need to encourage collaboration and information sharing in order to create a true "productivity of ideas". A good starting point—for both infrastructure and organization—is to focus on a single process. Whether it's claims processing, e-HR or customer support, concentrating on a single function makes it easier to predict the additional value that collaboration will bring. Over time, as hardware, software and attitudes grow to support people integration, "ad hoc" collaboration can begin to take root, leading to a true "productivity of ideas". Better communication among employees, customers, vendors and partners will lead to increased efficiency, smarter decisions and improved responsiveness—the true "face of on demand".
2004-12-15 Torny Annina Berg
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