Collaboration is the magic buzz word of the decade.  For those who have read my other articles,you should have a good understanding of some of the tools we can use, but Collaboration is not about the individual tools, it’s about the communications blueprint.  It’s not about the hammer, it is about the house.

Normally, this is the prevue of the CIO, and this is what they get paid to do.  However, the majority of the time the CIO is more the CSO (Chief Systems Officer) than they are the Chief Information Officer.  They normally focus on the systems that information is stored on, and how it gets there and how it gets retrieved.  In most cases, however, that data is only valuable if used by the right people and communicated to the correct teams.  Normal processes stop short building in the communications aspect of data delivery.  So let’s change the way we think about this process all together.

What we need is a Collaboration strategy.  In a similar way that every business is now building BCPs (Business Continuity Plans) and DRPs (Disaster Recovery Plans) I believe they should be building Collaboration Plans.  The Collaboration Plan should tie into every system, should identify process enhancement, business survivability, and data redundancy.  The two things that most companies cannot survive without are voice communications and email.  If done correctly these are key components of a Collaboration Strategy.  To build a Collaboration strategy we need to follow a few simple rules.

Rule #1:  Spend time with every business unit and department in your organization, and find out how they communicate.  I did this in one of my customers who recently spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on new state of the art IP Handsets.  After I spent some time reviewing their existing processes I realized the 47% of their staff never touched a handset.  Of that 47%half of them were sales people who lived on their mobile phones.  The other half communicated on a variety of non-sanctioned instant messaging clients. So why did they buy all of those phones? They were replacements for the previous system.  No one took the time to build a plan, they just replaced the tool…

Rule #2:  Determine what tools you have already purchased, THROUGHOUT the organization.  In one of my federal clients we found over 150 different management tools with each having a 70% overlap in some fashion with at least 10 other products.  There was not consolidated review before tools were purchased and with each change in personnel there was a change in preference with no guiding strategic document to control the tactical purchases.

Rule #3:  Identify what additional technology you need to reduce the mean “time to decision” in each process identified in Rule #1 without changing the process and disrupting the end user culture.  Take into account the findings in Rule #2 and identify what can be re-used and what needs to be scrapped.

Rule #4: Build a plan that spans 18-36 months with pre-planned technical reviews every 6-12-18 month markers.  The largest cost to most Voice over IP phone systems today is the handsets.  Two years ago vendors released tools like Mobile Communicators which ran on Mobile smartphones that supported 802.11 Wireless. You could actually have your office phone on your cell phone, which would alleviate the need for companies where 47% of the people only use their smartphones anyway.  The problem was that two years ago few mobile phones had 802.11 built in, and the applications drained the batteries so fast the application was not practical.  However, 24 months later…we have the iPhone,the Android, and dozens of phones that can connect to wireless networks and the batteries have been optimized for application use.  We can build better plans for growth and save our customers much needed money.

Using these four rules, I have a 3 step process.  First conduct a business review, Rule#1.  Second, conduct a technical review,Rules 2 and 3.  Finally, build your plan Rule #4.  Of course, the devil is always in the details, and I know this is a very generic overview.  I hope it will help you find a starting point and to understand that while sometimes the planning phase may seem like it will cost more than it is worth, it can provide you with long term savings.  It can increase your productivity and it can increase your profits. 

I recommend that you engage a paid consultant either from your integrator or use a third party.  As a part of the integrator community, I can say with certainty that you will get what you pay for.  If someone offers you free consulting to get your business, what you will get in return is a report from an automated tool that will attempt to justify your purchase of some individual tool or system.  If you pay them to spend time with your people and ask them to be your honest broker then you will normally get the best person they have, because this is where their reputation is made or broken.  Not in the free pre-sales effort.

In my top 5 list of missing investments, once companies deploy VoIP, is basic video conference integration.  In order to do Voice over IP well, we have to implement Quality of Service on our network.  Yes even on the Local Area Network not just the WAN.  QoS will even out the traffic spikes that can interrupt both voice and video.  If the network is already prepared to handle voice then it should only require some minor tweaking to also handle video.  The question then becomes, why not do video? 

The reasons for not doing video vary from cost and maintenance to just a lack of perceived value.  Mature end users are not used to or comfortable with the always on concept introduced with video.  Most vendors try to sell companies video by discussing return on investment.  They discuss hard costs and they discuss soft costs and those variables are important, but do they cause people to buy?  No, people buy video when they “see” the benefit.  How can we help them see the benefits?

The first step is to understand video conferencing.  There are two major implementations of video conferencing.  First is video conferencing via ISDN (integrated services digital network) from the telephone company.  ISDN lines to each video unit (called a codec) can be extremely costly.   Second is video conferencing via IP (internet protocol) either by using h.323 or SIP (session initiation protocol).  IP based conferencing is much more cost effective when deployed on a high speed network like a LAN or well designed WAN. Those are the basics, now lets add a few more elements.  Video conferencing can be point to point (codec to codec) or Multipoint (multiple codecs to a video bridge also called a Multipoint Control Unit).  We can combine the best of IP and ISDN by centralizing ISDN trunks at the edge of the network and then use IP conferencing internally to the network by using an IP to ISDN gateway.  An h.323 gatekeeper/SIP registrar is very much like a DNS server in that it maps names to IP address to make calling from one codec to another much simpler for end users.  While by no means complete, this paragraph should give the reader a basic understanding of video conferencing components. 

When VoIP was deployed, the network infrastructure was most likely revamped to accommodate the voice traffic by adding a separate VLAN to isolate the voice traffic.  PoE switches were added, a phone was placed on each persons desk and maybe software on each users machine to act as a soft phone.  Many people have some form of instant messaging, at home at least.  IM is overcoming security and legal issues and is moving into the workspace.  We have prepared the end users for communication and are on the very short path to collaboration.  The network is 98% of the way to supporting video, a few changes to the QoS policies locally and with the WAN provider and bingo, video ready network infrastructure. 

Now, where are the benefits?  They are different for each company and can revolve around feeling a need, satisfying the fear that they are not being left behind the competition, vendors and partners.  Executive decrees to meet green initiatives, provide face to face meetings with their peers.  My goals in collaboration are very simple, presence, voice and video.  If I can enable a corporation’s existing business processes with presence, voice and video, then I have helped them take the technological step to collaboration.  Collaboration is really a combination of three things Technology, Culture and Process.  Changing technology and process are simple, but culture is what will make or break any technology and / or process change.  My objective is to insert the new technology into the existing culture and process to limit change and increase adoption.  I know what you are thinking, “but what are the benefits?” Ok, let’s get to those. 

Benefits of video (collaboration) enabling your business processes are:

• Increased efficiency, which leads to…
• Increased productivity, which encourages…
• Reduced overhead, which allows for…
• Fewer employee related expenses, and causes
• Increased profits.

 By presence enabling your existing process you reduce the time to action, by identifying which team members are available immediately and how you can reach them.  By reaching the team members by IM, Voice or Video, decisions can be made on what discussions need to be reviewed as a group and which does not.  Documents can be shared and reviewed in minutes instead of waiting until the conference room is available.  By video enabling these meetings you can see the team’s body language, which of them is comfortable in the decisions, being made and who is not.  When team members see each other they are culturally more respectful of each others opinions and time.  When you bring remote team members together you can hire the best and brightest people for the position regardless of where they are located in the country or the world for that matter.  Utilizing document sharing and video conferencing and content sharing fewer employee related expenses are incurred.  I will caveat that statement with the fact that infrastructure requirements will increase but technology costs tend to reduce year after year as the given technology, in this case bandwidth becomes a commodity, while employee costs seem to continually rise year after year.  These benefits combined will lead to a higher bottom line and hopefully drive a more robust top line as well. 

There are of course a million other reasons and a million other benefits because there are at least a million different situations, but video enabling collaboration on a VoIP network will pay off.  It will pay off, if your company actually has processes and actually takes the time to improve and follow them.  Technology will enhance the Process, but if the Culture is not in place then, Collaboration can not be successful.

The second most common error, in my list, when deploying voice over IP (VoIP) is ignoring business process improvement.   My original supposition was that customers were foregoing the integration conversation because of the huge capital expenditure on the new phone system, I was wrong.  I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to my readers and my clients; you were not ignoring this opportunity to improve your business communications.  You were not choosing not to spend the time and money to increase departmental productivity and boost overall profitability.  Nope, I have realized in the recently that your integrators and vendors simply have not been capable of explaining to you the process concerning “how” your new VoIP system can improve your business processes.  I realized this when bringing up the concept of business process improvement to those vendors and integrators and getting a blank look from them.  The most repeated comment I hear is, “who are we to tell a customer that we understand their business, let alone that we can improve their process, we aren’t a business consulting firm, you know….”  No, you are not, is my only reply.  To my clients and readers I apologize for the industry’s lack of comprehension, and hopefully some of them will read this article. 

Collaboration is the new buzz word.  What collaboration should mean to you is pretty straight forward and I am saddened by the lack of awareness in my own industry of its definition.  Collaboration is the integration of enhanced communications into your daily business practices.  If that is the definition then to understand the definition we need to only clarify two concepts and then everyone should be able to implement collaboration.  First, what do I mean by enhanced communications?  Second, what are your daily business practices?  Let’s look at each of these questions. 

How do you communicate today?  Here is the list of normal communications within and between companies.  Email (no surprise it’s first in the list), phone, corporate voicemail, mobile phone, mobile voicemail, IM (AOL, MSN and possibly Corporate IM), Conference room video, person to person video, facebook and myspace.  When we work in work groups we may share data files, such as presentations, spreadsheets and the like on a shared drive or maybe even a web based workgroup portal like Microsoft Sharepoint.  But let’s face facts the way you really communicate that data is in an email.  So does this sound familiar?   

What is enhanced communications?  Enhanced communications is the ability to evaluate the preceding paragraph and actually tie them together seamlessly.  Your business has already invested in a voice over IP system, which means they have upgraded the network and designed it to carry voice without degradation, right?  Guess what, that means you can most likely do video as well.  Most of the competent VoIP systems have plug-ins to your email client so that you can select a user and choose click-to-dial while preparing an email.  Corporate instant messaging clients like Cisco’s WebEx Connect, Microsoft’s Office Communicator and Lotus Sametime all support sharing presence information, and controlling either a softphone (computer based IP Phone) or your actual deskphone to make calls from your VoIP system.  Most of those “presence” control panels will allow you to check someone’s presence, send them an instant message, convert that to a phone call, upgrade it to a conference call or engage multiple participants in a WebEx style conference that will allow you to converge audio at the same time as you share your desktop, share files, and engage in better communications.  How about the simple act of getting your voicemail’s delivered to your inbox so that you can listen to it on your Black Berry, or having a single number to call and have it dial both your office phone and your cell phone simultaneously.   These are not really enhanced communications, many of the VoIP systems on the market provide these as standard features.  So let’s dive deeper.  Let’s throw contact centers into the mix.  For those that are unfamiliar with this term think about what you hear when you call most banks today.  The system answers with a list of options and most of them sound life like enough to not irritate everyone.  What if you had those options in your day to day operations, would it help?  Or how about being able to dial a phone number and the system automagically calls each of your team members in an emergency situation?  What about we combine those two and have the system call your employees to check on a process, and the employee is asked to confirm a status by pressing 1 or 2 and based on the response the system calls the next person in the list until you have a resolution at which time the system generates a report and emails it to you.  You should be starting to see what you purchased when you invested in that VoIP infrastructure and system.  It really is a lot more than just some really cool phone.  If you look at the next question critically, then that phone system can turn into a profit center, a cost reducer and method for business process improvement. 

On to the second question, what are your daily business practices?  I ran into problems here.  I started my first business my freshman year of college, and it failed.  I started my second business with a friend of mine 2 years later and it had a successful 8 year run, with over 20 employees.  The differentiator was that I had learned team organization and process.  By applying good old fashioned common sense and with no formal training in management I found, what I now know to be, the most public secret I’ve ever seen.  Plainly stated as, advise your people what you want, ask them if they can think of a better method, and try it.  If your results are not optimal, get additional feed back, make modifications and try it again.  Finally, document it. That’s the short version of most of my success.  For 15 years I’ve been operating under the assumption that “it is so simple everyone must be doing it that way”.  But they don’t.  Large companies pay consultants outrageous fees to analyze existing processes for improvement instead of asking the people doing the job “how” they believe it should be enhanced.  Of late I’ve realized most corporations don’t invest in processes management, unless they are in the manufacturing sector.   I know there are ITIL initiatives, Six Sigma, and process management programs that hinder productivity and I am not promoting those programs for anyone that doesn’t envision a business case them, but for goodness sakes spend a little time with a piece of paper and write down how your business should function.  Then take a hard look at how it “does” function and I’ll bet you’ll be, at least, a little surprised.   I don’t know what your business processes are, but you should.  I can tell you they are categorized as either management, operational or supporting processes and that the internet abounds with business process information.  I can not improve your business process with collaboration.  I can help you improve your business process with communication.  As a consultant I have developed workshops to help you conduct a self analysis.  Start by defining your stakeholders in any given process.  In my case, as an integrator, it is the vendor, the account managers, the inside sales group, the project management group, the engineering team, the logistics team and the customer.  My goal is to improve the existing process as it is currently implemented by adding enhanced communications.  My intent is not to change the existing process, that is an entirely different model of consulting, and I am not an expert in your industry and I will not insult my customers by pretending to be.  Let’s review how we can improve my process and maybe that will present you with some ideas. 

Cisco is one of my chief sales partners and they bring leads to our account team.  Many of those leads, a Cisco account manager and system engineer have already been engaged in and have historical data that they could share with us as an integrator.  Cisco has a Corporate IM client and workspace tool call WebEx Connect.  WebEx Connect combines VoIP call control, audio and web conferencing, desktop sharing, instant messaging, presence sharing and project specific workspace portals that can be used to mash up data from multiple web-based or database applications, store data files and maintain discussion groups within the portal.  The benefit WebEx Connect has over free products like Google, MSN or Yahoo, is that the data is stored on the privately secured WebEx MediaTone network.  This allows my company to use the service with assurance that sensitive customer data can be maintained securely.  Cisco has inserted WebEx Connect workspaces into their process for sharing data internally, by doing so they have allowed me the use of an exciting tool for collaboration.  My company uses WebEx Connect for internal collaboration as well and because of this Cisco can invite me into the existing space that they have established for the customer lead that they would like us to run with.  That workspace could already include the customer and Cisco or just Cisco, but I know have the opportunity to work the deal with all of the information that Cisco has already collected.  My account management team and presales engineer can upload their design work, notes, and discussion points to this workspace during the presales process, so that all parties can see the data, raise discussion points and make corrections.  We have eliminated, in this process, the thousands of emails with huge attachments and the time searching through email strings to make sure that the design is correct and that nothing was missed.  We have collaborated.  When the deal is sold, I can then invite my project manager and my engineering team to this same workspace so they can see the history, review the SOW, understand the politics of the client, and upload the project notes, system design and testing documents.  The inside sales team can be invited so that they are working from the final design and can upload the actual order information for tracking.  The logistics team can review the order and the update shipping and delivery information.  The customer can be invited to ask questions of the entire team for clarification, keep track of discussion points and to make sure that all parties have the same information during the project execution.  The tool will allow you to see the workspace specific presence list of anyone who has been invited into the workspace without adding them to your buddy list.  Presence information will allow you to know if you should IM them, send them an email, Call them pc to pc, video call them pc to pc, or click to call via your VoIP solution.  Of all the tools we explored earlier in the enhanced communication toolbox I have only introduced one into this existing process.  This one tool has saved physical disk space on multiple mail servers, increased productivity by eliminating the classical email search, and has presented all parties in the process with a common easy to use portal from pre-sales to project delivery.  I can now turn the portal over to my maintenance and monitoring team, so that they will have a historical perspective of the client as well as all of the design and as-built documentation. 

Collaboration is the integration of enhanced communications into your daily business practices.  To further clarify, collaboration is the enhancement of existing processes by using an enhanced communication toolset.  Talk to your stake holders and ask them what applications they are using, CRM, ERP, and / or custom databases.  Then begin to at least have the conversation with your integrator about how they can help you enhance your daily processes with the equipment and infrastructure you have already spent so much money on.  If they are unable to help, feel free to drop me a line. 

Dan Stephens is the Unified Communications Practice Lead for Presidio Networked Solutions in the Mid-Atlantic Region.  He has over 20 years of network, systems, security and voice experience.  He holds many industry certifications including CISSP, CCVP, and the MCSE + database + messaging. He is also a CompTia CTT+ Certified technical trainer and has been certified to conduct Netware, Microsoft and Cisco courses.  He can be reached at dstephens@presidio.com or Stephens.dd@gmail.com