To work collaboratively is to work jointly with others in an intellectual endeavour. Well, that is the Merriam Webster definition. But what does collaboration mean in the digital age where it has become a matter of course to do a quick Internet search for information instead of speaking to a colleague, where it is easier to take as gospel something posted online instead of checking the facts yourself?
Technology has certainly helped us to become better at what we do and has seen organisations utilise their internal resources more effectively, resulting in enviable cost-savings. But some might argue that the reliance on technology has seen us become less inclined to work together and more focused on doing the jobs ourselves. Yet, the opposite is also true, says Jonathan Collins, SharePoint Professional at Karabina Solutions.
Technology allows us to take collaboration to a completely different level and use it to work better together. And while it is not a new thing, working together remotely has become easier thanks to the evolution of technology. In the past, this was hampered by unreliable Internet connections, costly bandwidth, and software and hardware solutions that were not up to the challenge.
The ubiquity of mobile devices, the arrival of undersea cables, and the rise in the consumerisation of technology are all leading us on a path of working together more easily than ever before. But it is one thing to collaborate using technology and another thing entirely to extract meaningful information from the nearly infinite sources available to us.
So despite the fact that collaboration features are built into enterprise software, having access to the relevant information is still problematic. Part of the reason for this is that decision-makers do not want to give all the employees at an organisation access to the back-end systems. Even looking beyond the security risk, there is the not insignificant matter of the cost of licensing line-of-business solutions such as SAP, PeopleSoft, JD Edwards and the like to more than just a handful of people in the organisation.
In the Internet age, being able to make decisions at breakneck speed is not only a competitive advantage, but a business-critical imperative. If a department is therefore dependant on a single point of contact to give them the information they need to continue collaborating on a business strategy or marketing campaign, and that person is not available, the entire process grinds to a halt. A single delay has the potential to escalate into a major cost issue, especially when time to market is critical.
Thankfully, there are solutions that can integrate with existing collaboration software and line-of-business applications without requiring additional licences or having direct access to secure data. By using these solutions that allow for effective decision-making to take place, organisations are able to quickly turn a competitive disadvantage into a category leading advantage.
By delivering business-critical solutions using SharePoint, organisations can streamline business processes and give users the information they need to make decisions faster and collaborate better. The best part is most enterprise organisations have access to the software already and it is just waiting to be deployed in the optimal manner.
Welcome to the new age of collaboration.
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