Developing an Enterprise Collaboration Strategy

For the companies that were not entirely ready for real time collaboration when COVID-19 hit, I would imagine you are working hard to figure out how to adjust to a remote workforce transition. Trying to implement a collaboration strategy in this atmosphere must feel like repairing a plane while it is in the air.

I actually think that there is no better time to implement a collaboration strategy than right now. Your users are targeted, contained and willing to try just about anything to improve their ability to be more productive from home. Most importantly, they are using these tools in excess and discovering where your current portfolio of tools are not hitting the mark.

So where do you start? First off, do not panic and begin buying point solutions to solve point problems. For an efficient enterprise strategy, all of these tools have to work together cohesively and when you are just looking at one facet of a problem you may miss an opportunity to solve multiple challenges at one time.

First step: Define The Collaboration Capabilities

As a guideline, here are some key capability areas for collaboration. Feel free to edit, add or take away any of these areas which do not pertain to your enterprise.

• Administration - Ability to provide administration of a collaboration systems including performance, user and system management.
• Analytics & Reporting - Ability to perform various analytic and reporting services for all supporting collaboration systems, provide dash boarding and metric reporting. This could include tools like User Behavior Analytics tools.
• Business Application Enablement / Integration - Integration enablement to interconnect core platform technologies with targeted productivity and collaboration tools. These would be API Management tools or integration tools like Tibco.
• Capture & eSignature - Ability to capture data via a multitude of sources through scanning or scraping of information across multiple data types which could be structured or unstructured. This would also include the ability to capture electronic signatures. Think SnagIt or Docusign.
• Collaboration - Ability to communicate among corporate employees which encompass the use of a collaboration platform, enterprise social networking tools, a corporate intranet and the public Internet. Think Microsoft or Cisco Teams.
• Web Content Management - Ability to create and modify digital content creation and modification of digital content for external or internal stakeholders. This would be solutions like Wordpress or Sitecore.
• Content Security - A process and/or a set of tools used to provision, maintain policies to prevent and monitor unauthorized access, misuse, modification, or denial of access and data loss prevention. An example would be a Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) or Data Loss Prevention solutions.
• Document Management - Ability to receive, track, manage & store documents & reduce paper. System has the ability to keep a record of the various versions created & modified by different users. In the case of the management of digital documents such systems are based on computer programs. Think Templafy, M-Files or Docuware.
• Information Governance - A process and/or set of tools used to manage the overall strategy for information at an organization. Information governance balances the risk that information presents with the value that information provides. Note this could also be data governance as well.
• Metadata & Classification - Ability to classify and categorized data of many distinct types such as descriptive metadata, structural metadata, administrative metadata, reference metadata and statistical metadata. Systems and process should have the ability to manage this data in accordance with the Information Governance and Content Security policies established by the enterprise.
• Meeting & Telecom - Ability to have real time online and teleconferencing collaboration with internal or external stakeholders. The system should allow the sharing of content among all stakeholders in a controlled and secured setting. Think Cisco WebEx or Microsoft Teams. You should also consider Training solutions into the fold of this area as well.
• Platform - Ability to provide an integrated set of software applications and/or systems whose capabilities and shared data can be combined to create Enterprise Business Solutions or Application. While platforms may not have an intended focus of collaboration, platforms do provide capabilities to collaborate across the platform with an objective which is centered around the business solutions targeted function. Think about platforms like Workday, Atlassian or ServiceNow.
• Productivity - Any application people use to "produce" information. Virtually any program used to create or modify a document, image, audio or video clip is productivity software. Think Microsoft OfficePro Plus or Microsoft Visio.
• Search - Enterprise search is the practice of making content from multiple enterprise-type sources, such as databases and intranets, searchable to a defined audience. "Enterprise search" is used to describe the software of search information within an enterprise. Think Google, Bing, IBM or Conveo.
• System Security- Ability for an enterprise to manage collaboration security via a set of tools and processes which will ensure that policies, procedures, standards and principles are enforced.
• Workflow, Process & Automation - Ability to manage workflows and processes which support the businesses need to understand and automate business processes associate with enterprise collaboration. These are tools that can support Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) like BiZZdesign, Avolution or Planview. Some of your platforms like Atlassian and ServiceNow can produce workflows as well. Lastly, don't forget about High-Productivity Application PaaS solutions as these solutions need to be considered as part of your overarching collaboration approach.

Second Step: Challenges, Risk & Tactics

For each capability, document the current challenges you are facing across each of these areas. Next, list out what risks your enterprise faces by not addressing the challenge in a timely fashion and lastly, look at what current activities are happening to address the problem areas and any future planned work which would address the concerns your organization is facing.

Third Step: Document The Requirements

Now this may seem like a daunting task but don't stress, I will provide a list of these requirements upon request. I encourage you to take this list, visit with cross functional teams and take time to ask if any of these requirements are needed. Sort these requirements by capability, must have, nice to have and low. Low essentially means, it is not needed for the enterprise now, however there may be a need in the future. Feel free to delete any requirement that doesn't apply to your enterprise.

Fourth Step: Define Your Owners

This one is tricky for most organizations because collaboration is one of those areas when there are lots of cooks in the kitchen. Collaboration is probably the most important capability an enterprise can drive. The capabilities should be owned by the highest levels of the organization, generally folks in the C-Suite or VP level.

Each Application or Service Area should have a Business, Development, Service Owner and Business Relationship Manager (Vendor Management).

For each of these capabilities, document what governance body is permitted to make authoritative decisions about what happens in this service area. This could be IT Governance, Architecture Review Boards, Domain or Information Governance etc. Avoid any departmental type governance if you can and ensure governance decisions are made cross functionally and provide regular, bi-annual updates to the senior executive leadership team on progress.

Fifth Step: Inventory Your Tools

For each of the capability areas, list out all of the tools that are being used to service this capability area. Categorize these tools as existing tools, future planned tools or point solution tools. I would also recommend adding an attribute which would rank the tools, technology and business fit (Low, Medium, High) and what the assumed criticality is of this service. Meaning, if your enterprise didn't have this service, you could not operate the business. A great example of this would be Meeting Telecom Services, these services would generally be considered critical versus Training Collaboration Services which may be considered a medium criticality.

Sixth Step: Road Shows and Surveys

Take the data and start communicating this cross functionality, gather feedback, and fill in the gaps of your framework.

Consider a enterprise survey to gauge how satisfied users are with these tools, use this data as well to fill in your gaps.

There is no last step: Ongoing Continuous Improvement

Once your roadshows are done, now it is time to analyze your data. Here are some guidelines on where to start and how to act:

• Attack the highest criticality, poor technology and business fit services first
• Leverage the employee surveys, a bulk of the challenges your organization may be faced with can be solved with training and education with tools you already own
• Expand upon your platforms and maximize their use. If your enterprise is using Office 365 or WebEx Teams, make sure you are leveraging its capabilities to the fullest. Engage with these vendors and assess the gaps against the strategy you have built.
• Make sure Cyber Security, Compliance, Marketing, Digital and Information/Data Governance build this strategy and maintain it with you. If you adhere to ITIL, make sure your Service Owners are engaged frequently. Ensure all major platform owners are including and have a voice at the table.
• Develop and continuously maintain a User Impact Road Map. Road Maps need to capture current and planned activity, operational and capital. Make sure the road map clearly dictates how the users will be impacted by this change.

This strategy is a living, breathing piece of work and it should never stop advancing and improving. I encourage organizations to consider establishing an Enterprise Collaboration Council (ECC) with outspoken, innovative voices young and old, highly diverse including race, age, nationality and gender, diversity of thought and they should meet regularly to discuss and update your challenges, risks and tactics, review road maps and update requirements. I would also suggest that once a quarter, this body invite new and innovative vendors to present upcoming innovations which are happening in this service area.

If you would like a template for this collaboration strategy, feel free to engage with me and I can send to you. I welcome feedback on this approach so I can continue to hone and optimize as technology and processes mature.