Define Collaboration

What does collaboration software really mean?

Over the last few weeks I have spoken with a hand-full of decision makers within independent software companies. Each of these decision makers have had their own preconceived notions and understandings of what collaboration software is and what it can do for them. Although these notions differ greatly, there is, as I’ve found, no really wrong understanding.

Instead I have come to realize that the very word ‘collaboration’ is far too broad. In recent discussions I have heard such technologies as Web Ex, GoToMeeting, Google Apps, Google Wave, MS Project Server, SharePoint, SFDC, BaseCamp all mentioned as collaboration solutions. As far as Information Systems Support, does this list look like a pretty straightforward classification of one single software solution? To each decision maker, a different type of product offers a unique collaborative solution and those solutions vary from streamlined communication to content sharing/management, to project management. But there exists one commonality whatever the solution — it suits that specific decision maker’s preconceived understanding of what collaboration means to them.

Taking a step back, all of these solutions make one or more things easier for their users and, in turn, their management teams. In a conversation I had just yesterday afternoon with a VP of Professional Services we discussed what this VP’s company does to collaborate. The VP listed 4 different solutions that they currently use to make internal and external communication and collaboration more efficient during their software implementations life cycle. When I asked him what some of his struggles and pains were, he began to explain that because of the 4 solutions they currently use, there is a disconnect and inefficiency in their process.

These inefficiencies are centered around having more then one location that he, as a VP, has to monitor in order to know exactly where his team of consultants stands on certain projects. His consultants, like him, also don’t have full visibility of where they and the rest of the team stand. Conversation notes, documents, time lines, project goals, and other important items routinely get lost in the chaos and confusion of a large scale implementation.

This got me thinking; how do you define a solution as a collaboration tool? Is it a capital investment or a business expense? For the sake of discussion, we are now identifying Central Desktops solutions as a Project Collaboration Platform and demonstrating the added valued of having a client extranet/portal.

Collaboration will not make your coffee, add cream, and stir it for you; it will not do your work for you. But it will provide a solution that makes your specific collaboration needs, whether it be streamlined communication or content management, simpler. But as my friend, the VP is coming to realize this: why have 4 solutions that don’t necessarily make your life easier when you can have an all-inclusive umbrella solution like Central Desktop?