Collaborative work, an imperative that cannot be improvised
Perceived as the main pillar of companies, collaborative work is a key factor in their success. All of them are well aware that collaborative technologies accelerate decision-making, make processes more efficient and give employees the opportunity to express themselves, exchange, share and value their knowledge and skills.
However, this collaborative work can quickly become a priesthood for employees in the absence of a global, ergonomic and sustainable collaboration solution. In our multi-connected world, technologies are not always synonymous with trade facilitation, quite the contrary. Especially since many companies still work in silos, with compartmentalized business services, each equipped with its own solution and its own methods of sharing and collaboration, without any real openness to the rest of the organization. Moreover, while companies now encourage their employees to work together, they forget that all good collaboration is based above all on the knowledge and relationships created between the employees themselves. Technology is ultimately only a means to facilitate the forging of these links and to boost knowledge sharing.
Permanent problem solving
Today's company needs things to move quickly and its employees to be productive. She therefore thought that if their skills were better mobilized and knowledge was better shared, things would move faster and work would be more efficient. Thus, rather than seeing its employees and departments working alone in their corner, it promotes and promotes the merits of the collaborative.
Especially since the arrival of smartphones, the advent of Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest and others, employees have developed certain habits and are now trained to share and access information, with more or less large circles of contacts. Whether through a chat, a social network, a blog, a forum, you always find someone to talk to. But true collaboration cannot be improvised.
Experiences lived
You who are reading these lines, you are certainly a member of several social networks and subscribers to multiple platforms. But none of these tools can finally bring together all the people you work with on a cross-functional project. How many times have you found yourself with a partner or customer equipped with a video conferencing or file sharing system different from yours, and unable to connect to it? But is there a global solution that is simple to use and implement?
The email, a friend you come to hate
Finally, many people think that the only thing that really works, to which everyone has access, colleagues as customers and partners, is email. Except that mail can be very polluting. We spend a lot of time today processing our emails. He unwittingly distracts us from the tasks we are working on. It absorbs us. It forces us to answer questions for which we are not necessarily prepared. In short, he solicits us all day long. And the figures prove it: 79% of the companies surveyed indicate that professional exchanges between colleagues are mainly by e-mail.
Cherishes interoperability
To top it all off, not only is the mail time-consuming and energy consuming, but it also has its limits. For example, it is impossible to send an attachment that is too heavy, unless it is stored in a drive. But the recipient of the email must also have the necessary rights to access this storage space. If it's a colleague, it's okay. If it is a customer or partner, the transaction is impossible. Certainly, there are many platforms for easily exchanging large files with others. Except that the others in question do not necessarily use the same one or have access to it. 58% of the respondents indicate that they do not have complete freedom to use their IT tools.
Frustration and shadow IT
Many companies still limit access to certain sites or platforms. For safety reasons, but also to ensure that employees only use the company's official tool. But what can you do when you can't use your partner's file sharing and project management platform and he can't use ours? We waste time, we get annoyed, we tell ourselves that collaboration is only a decoy and that the perfect solution does not exist.
Morality :
To work together, we need fluidity and simplicity, not an obstacle course or a gas plant. This deserves, beforehand, a real reflection on the collaborative.
Source: Article from our white paper "Why does the future of the company necessarily depend on the collaborative?" p4-5, July 2018, produced in partnership with Archimag.
