INFORMATION is one of the key building blocks of any business, enterprise or SME. It allows visibility into a company's business performance and market conditions. Yet information left unmanaged, without easy access by users, can become stale and outdated. Connecting people to information empowers them to find, share and act on the right information, experience, and knowledge which is vital to the enterprise business.

In the global economy, employees need the same fast, easy access to information and people as they enjoy outside the workplace every day. Digital collaboration enables efficient and valuable connections among people and information, inside and beyond the enterprise - and harnessing the power of that collaboration can make a great impact on business performance.

Let's look at how digital collaboration helps individuals resolve a business issue across different organisations and time zones using new technologies and tools.

A global pharmaceutical company is planning clinical trials for a promising new drug. Bob, based in New Jersey, and Sharon, based in Singapore, are in charge of this project, and they have a strategic relationship with a third-party contract research organisation (CRO) that provides expertise and resources to help them conduct the trials.

After Bob reads an email on Tuesday morning from Sharon, he sees that she is still online and he calls her using the IP phone option in the email application.

They decide they need an expert who can evaluate and manage the risk that would arise from their trial. Using a communications agent software application, Bob identifies an expert from the CRO and arranges a virtual meeting with him.

Meanwhile, Sharon works from home to prepare for the meeting with the expert. She finds a de facto expert in the subject matter through the online project workspace and invites him to the discussion.

On Wednesday, the CRO expert has a lot of questions for Bob and Sharon based on the documentation they have provided. Bob answers the questions using a report that connects the document to the corporate database, which contains detailed, up-to-date information, thanks to the use of a corporate wiki.

The de facto expert that Sharon had invited was not able to make the meeting but was very interested in hearing the CRO expert's position.

Another person from the Australian office saw a note from Sharon in the project community but could not attend the meeting in real time due to her remote time zone. The conference call between Bob, Sharon and the CRO expert is recorded and synchronised with meeting artifacts, such as the document Bob found on the corporate database.

The two interested parties, who could not join live, watch a replay of the meeting and use the ability to skip to specific time sections and speakers in order to focus on the CRO expert's view.

As a result of being able to collaborate digitally, Bob and Sharon are able to maximise their focus on the business aspects of their jobs and accomplish in 24 hours what typically takes several days in most organisations.

In the process, they experience a rich social connection to their colleagues and third-party experts, which allows them to grow as professionals. They rely heavily on collaboration for the mundane tasks necessary for the business.

Tagging people and content

Defined as the use of technologies to enable efficient and valuable connection among people and information, digital collaboration unites people with information effectively in the following ways:

• Tagging: With digital collaboration, people, content and physical assets can be 'tagged'. Simply put, a full description is attached to these people, content and physical assets individually to enable broad, automated and easy searching. Specific information can be found in many different contexts, depending on how discovery is conducted, using keywords, locations, business processes, and so on. This way, users can easily access information that is of key relevance in the right context.
• Encouraging development of user-driven content and communities: Tools such as wikis, blogs and forums encourage people to process and use information instinctively and creatively, even fostering the creation of new content. The ensuing information can be harnessed by businesses to great use. The power of communities can draw upon cultural and social insights as well as the transmission of ideas and practice.
• Integrating the knowledge worker and operational environments: Digital collaboration enables the integration of familiar, easy-to-use spreadsheets, email, and virtual workspaces with information from corporate systems like enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM) and third-party services. Offering the knowledge worker visibility into the operational environments of a business, as well as relevant external information, empowers them to make informed decisions.

The right connection can be achieved with digital collaboration, bringing businesses several advantages. There is increased innovation, as new and improved products and processes increase organic growth and operating leverage. Collaboration among internal and external stakeholders generates ideas and reduces the cycle time for innovation.

Also, collaboration with customers creates truly customer-driven products and services and increases sales and customer loyalty. Synchronisation and quality control of suppliers and channel partners enable ease of management of the end-to-end customer experience. Richer interactions with external stakeholders (investors, regulators and the local communities a business functions in) can be had with increased and effective collaboration.

Finally, with digital collaboration connecting people and information, core business processes can be executed with speed and quality.

In our evolving global market, businesses must effectively bridge the geographical gaps between people and information. We believe that collaboration is an organisational capability that will become increasingly vital to business success, and further, that digital collaboration represents the area of IT with the greatest potential for improving business performance in the next five years.

To realise the full potential, IT departments will need to provide new service offerings and take a holistic and proactive view on enterprise architectures and technologies required for digital collaboration.

The writer is chief technology officer, South-east Asia, Avanade Asia.

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