Year 2013 is going to bring lot of new initiatives in the field of enterprise collaboration as more and more CIO are considering to deploy collaboration in their organization to reap the benefits of this technology. But frankly speaking enterprise collaboration is more about strategy building and cultural change rather than technology. Enterprise collaboration has more to offer to the organization than any other enterprise software. This is because it can be used as a common platform to integrate business important tools that can help employees to achieve more in their every work.
Though it always feels good to know about the features and what it can do but it is very important for vendors to explain how it will bring value to the organization who are deploying this software. There are two ways through which business can get value out of implementing enterprise collaboration software a) Hard value or ROI b) Soft value.
Hard value:
Hard values are financial value that a business will derive from the use of the enterprise collaboration software. Research by Frost & Sullivan and recent McKinsey survey by far support the fact that collaboration indeed has an impact on the overall company’s performance. The benefits remain constant overtime and this has been proved many times over. The long-term ROI is evident from the use of collaboration software, which includes decreased communication cost, travel expense, revenue generated through new ideas generated by employees etc. Someone of the companies yield higher results in customer support department and some get benefits in reducing employee’s onboard timing.
Soft Value:
Soft Values which most companies overlook are some of the most important benefits companies can derive form use of enterprise collaboration software. Just getting a hard values or ROI does not justify the use of enterprise collaboration software. Once collaboration becomes a part of the company culture, then it becomes one can see the soft benefits. Finding subject matter expert becomes easier, which saves time. Feeling of engagement makes employees more active and yields higher result. Improved communication can benefit employees, as they don’t need to depend on e-mail as an only mode of communication. Emergence of serendipity, which is the unexpected benefits that the company gets through idea sharing, strategy building, fostering innovation etc.
Use case for enterprise collaboration software is different for different companies and the having right strategies and long-term goal is very important to make this new tool a true success.
