In discussions with Polycom executives Nikki Hall, VP of Corporate Marketing, and Jim Kruger, CMO, I was struck by the clear balance of technical risk vs. business reward required when businesses consider investments in collaboration technology.
Both of these execs highlighted the promise of a more connected, social and innovative workforce, and downplayed the risks of interoperability and user adoption. Polycom's deep relationship with Microsoft mitigates these risks in many cases, and a skilled reseller like HP or Dimension Data can smooth the path forward to real business value and user adoption via programs like Dimension Data's Adoption Management Program (AMP) or HP's Application Transformation services. Jim Kruger stressed the importance of following public standards and leveraging public APIs to enable businesses to integrate collaboration technology into their existing enterprise architecture.
"Leveraging existing applications like Microsoft Exchange and Lync for e-mail and IM, companies adopt Polycom products to extend the communications and collaboration services delivered by their Lync Server to include voice and video, without upsetting existing user preferences and behaviors," Kruger said.
This is the key to successful adoption of UC, in my opinion. Integrating collaboration capabilities into existing communications processes – and often embedding it into business processes – allows businesses to collaborate and innovate at the speed of thought. With a system of engagement, like Microsoft Lync, and a system of record like Saleforce.com, connected to engage employees in valuable conversation linked to customer needs, companies can immediately innovate to advance their competitive advantage in market.
Nikki Hall highlighted the need to adapt to different user needs saying, "The people, processes, and problems at every company are different, so the innovation tools must be unique as well."
Today's CIOs must be more than just a technology expert – they must also be business savvy enough to define success strategies, and understand human factors that must be part of every solution to drive rapid adoption and seamless utilization. A high-tech startup has very different needs/capabilities than a global, market-leading consumer products company, or a regional business services provider. Investment in collaboration carries not just the "first cost" of acquiring the tools and systems, but also the ongoing cost and risk of driving adoption and utilization. Buyers of collaboration technology must consider:
• The Environment – Knowing where people work – home offices, conference rooms, huddle spaces, co-working space, coffee shops, trains/planes, private offices, cubicles, open workspaces, and more – as well as what BYO or corporate provided devices they use – HD smart displays, PCs, Tablets, Smartphones, IP Phones, etc – is necessary context to design a collaboration environment.
• The People – Identifying personas by personality/workstyle – flexible, extroverted, individual contributor, leader, etc. – allows standard bundles of collaboration capabilities to be defined, deployed and managed efficiently. Knowing how employees want to collaborate and showing them how to use the tools to speed their activities is critical to successful deployments.
• The Culture – Making certain that the collaboration environment fits into the corporate culture of a business is critical. Command and control organizations have different needs than consensus-driven organizations.
• The Workflow – IT leaders must have a deep understanding of workflows and processes, so that they can determine how to best improve the creation of business value, and demonstrate how employees can easily integrate collaboration tools and tasks into their existing routines. Integrating communications and collaboration capabilities with scheduling systems, business process applications, and partners' communications systems are just a few examples.
When driving collaboration installations, CIOs are naturally inclined to start with the technology – what are our enterprise architecture plans and solutions support capabilities? This is just a foundation, and the way to manage cost and risk. Looking for the processes with highest business value and most sensitivity to human input help identify the places where collaboration technologies deliver real business value – the reason for the investment in the first place.
Jim Kruger put it well when he said, "Collaboration investment is more than just a cost of doing business, like replacing a PBX or e-mail server. It is a source of competitive advantage that accumulates and focuses the wisdom of the entire workforce on solving customer and market issues."
In a consumer products company, it may be within the product development organization. For example, helping to bring market/consumer needs directly into product design, packaging, and retailing decision making processes to cultivate buyer preference and increase market share. For a large manufacturer, it may be logistics. The ability to bring together inventory levels, delivery schedules, and demand forecasts to optimize manufacturing floor productivity can reduce average fixed cost burdens, reducing the COGS and increasing profitability. For business services, it may be as simple as connecting remote experts or relationship managers with customers facing difficult issues, reducing time to serve (and cost of travel) resulting in higher customer satisfaction.
In short, when considering an investment in collaboration technology, CIOs and collaboration product managers must ensure harmony by balancing consideration of three equally important factors and understand the answers to the following questions:
The technical environment – What is the existing portfolio of communications and collaboration capabilities and the networks (including monitoring and maintenance) which support that capability? What are the skills, internally or through service, provided to extend and support this capability? What is the impact or requirement to support "bring your own" initiatives across the workforce and customer base? What are the road-map issues with vendors and service providers that will change the landscape within the time horizon of this investment?
The business value drivers – What are the company's critical success factors in the context of the industry/segment in which it competes? What are business unit heads being rewarded for accomplishing, and how does improved collaboration capability help them achieve these goals? What are the top line, bottom line and customer satisfaction impacts that we are trying to accomplish – and how will we track them? What measures will constitute success?
The end user environment – Who will use these collaboration capabilities? What are their roles, objectives, personalities, issues, roadblocks, and behaviors on a daily basis? How will they understand where, when and how to utilize these new collaboration capabilities? Do they have the skills and the desire to adopt this collaboration capability? How are user requirements incorporated into technical and process designs? Would it be more valuable to redesign our proposed collaboration tool set or train our workforce to adopt a new set of tools or processes?
