Collaboration and Communication in Business

Increasingly, employees are in transmission lines where interaction is their primary range-adding activity (Laudon & Laudon, p. 90). List and describe coaction and conversation tools that you use regularly. How do they modify your work both in cost of the process and the product? What is the approach that organisations could adopt in analogy to these tools to improve organisational per plaster castance?Fortunately (or unfortunately), I have been working with the very(prenominal) geological formation for the last 19 long time. As a result, I have been witness to the evolution of my organization globally in terms of being tech savvy towards effective use of dialogue and collaboration tools. In my opinion, the more the ancestry is facing turbulence in terms of market and/ or competitors, the higher the need emerges for collaboration and communication.In the beneficial old days of 90s, when we used to do occupation in countries, with little or insufficient IT infrastructure and capabilities, we used to still manage effectively the customer relationships and profitability of the billet do telecom links a want fax and telephones as well as F2F meetings with the stakeholders involved. Somehow, it appeared to be relatively easier to make business dealings under such circumstances.Although, it is worth mentioning, that the core value proposition of the products and/ or services during those clock were considered by our customes, to be due to the high technology and streamlined product development processes of our company. With the advent of lucre as a vi open channel of communication and information sharing and the diversification of business into antithetic market segments and geographical regions, it became imperative for the organization to look for easier ways of communication and collaboration.Moreover, the decline of experts with know-how or fellowship of the entire value chain of the product/ service, besides calls for involvement of exper ts with specific domain knowledge, who need to fall out and collaborate on a regular basis, within the framework of certain rules. St prowessing from end nineties, we started victimisation Lotus Notes as one-stop tool for both communication and collaboration. Since this was primarily driven by the operational level, scads of other strategic and operational tools for communication and collaboration were built around this tool. However, due to various reasons standardised re-organisation, diversification, cquisitions etc, this tool went on to assume a mammoth shape, lost connectivity to more up-to-date state of the art tools and was dragging down the business globally in terms of communication and collaboration. Moreover, the hierarchy of the organization was also responsible for taking a pragmatic approach towards decommissioning of this tool and creating a more flexible IT architecture, which wad be agile and can integrate with state of the art tools across the various areas of business like marketing, product development, product delivery, logistics and supply chain and after gross revenue services to customers.In the last 2 years our organization has moved to MS based office tool suite including tools for communication and collaboration. The legacy systems of LN are getting decommissioned and huge LN DBs were converted and transferred to more easily manageable and accessible DB systems. Right now we are using Passport based tool suites where individual applications communicate with each other and augment the ongoing, required collaboration among the various entities of the organization.It is true that most part of the organization is adding value to the communication flow through the effective use of tools, but at the same time, more wildness is put on sharing and storing cite, useful information to be used by anybody in the organization, who whitethorn need it, e. g. by creating internal blogs or Wikis with managers motivating and/ or incentivizing i nformation and know-how sharing. Useful collaborative tools like Live Meeting, Telepresence etc can ensure participation from different locations at different time zones, sharing the same level and content of information.Collaboration, the ability to work together especially in business is raising key concerns for organizations taking on new approaches to improve performance and outcomes. Because leaders are looking for positive signs that getting collaboration tools will impact the bottom line, an organization may also need to consider its communication and collaboration practices. According to research and best practices, the combination of several factors may help steer collaboration to achieve business results, through empowerment, culture, and technology.Some practical events of each of these factors that are causing collaboration to work in business are mentioned below Empowering People through Communication and Collaboration Empowerment is a form of approval for individuals and teams to make decisions. Starting with executive collaboration, key leaders of your organization may need to reinforcement shared goals for empowering people if they dont already, through communication and collaboration. The reality of collaboration for leadership is through empowerment.By embracing a model of operational coordination across teams and departments, collaboration can basically drive need and engagement. In Harvard Business Reviews Aligning Strategy with Technology, the chapter Empowered dives into an example of empowered sales teams to develop sales solutions using video at blackamoor & Decker. Video as a communication form is extremely popular. Because of the complexity of Black & Deckers many different products, the sales staff is able to document challenges in the field and quickly communicate how power tools are used on cable sites.As the authors Josh Bernoff and Ted Schadler pointed out, these useful bits of information also benefit senior management, co rporate marketing, and public relations. Bernoff and Schadler use the invent highly empowered and resourceful operatives dubbed HEROs as characteristic of empowered teams like this example at Black & Decker. In fact, the authors research study shows a high proportion of information workers, by industry and rail line type, especially marketing & sales in technical products and services that are empowered to create connatural customer solutions.Creating Value in Collaborative Culture The collaborative culture of an organization stems from its shared beliefs, values, and business practices. Author and business consultant, Evan Rosen says collaboration is about creating value. In Bloomberg Businessweek, Evan Rosen emphasizes every worker contributes knowledge to the business. Using an example at Dow Chemical, he writes, The days sales and inventory numbers are shared with everybody in the company, including the people doing the heaving lifting on the front lines.Dow acknowledges tha t people will do a better job when they know their actions contribute or detract from business results. Taking a step further, former chief executive officer of Campbell Soup, Doug Conant, is famous for handwritten notes to employees celebrating their contributions. Recognition through these and other high value communication practices further strengthens a collaborative culture. Establishing a Technological Framework for Collaboration Collaboration tools essentially provide a proficient framework to enable people and groups to work together.But adding new collaboration tools into the enterprise does not change things overnight. Where does an organization begin to design a technological framework? A gap analysis of workflows is often requirement and can help in redesigning processes. Furthermore, an organizations specific data, based on activity in the organizational network, including sales, customer services and support, product development, and even external resources, can be collected, analyzed, and better routed to teams.This hearty intelligence can help everyone be informed. Tony Zingale, CEO, of Jive Software sees change the way work gets done referring to the communication and interactivity of social software like Jive. And reports are showing cost efficiencies, speed to market, and greater family of ideas and innovation through collaboration, which are passed on to the customer through cost savings and better products.