"Measurement of COLLABORATION for Its Management".

(Area: COLLABORATION)

There are configurations in the relationships between people that determine "the EFFECTIVENESS OF COLLABORATION", since access to resources, information and dissemination of new ideas depend on these. Thus, the network of personal relationships ends up having an impact on the success of the organization, so that a correct configuration can increase the efficiency of the team or even strengthen relationships with customers.

Improving COLLABORATION is a goal for administrators of an organization or leaders of a COMMUNITY (physical or digital). Therefore, "it is necessary to measure this collaboration" in quantitative terms to diagnose the state of the organization / community and implement, if necessary, possible improvements.

COLLABORATION among the members of an organization / COMMUNITY arise as a response to the problems they face. For this reason, it is necessary to analyze the real relationships between members to discover where and how the activity takes place in the business processes in a company (and relationship and business in an organization / COMMUNITY).

On the other hand, while COLLABORATION can be seen as a broad topic, spanning many communication channels, including email, instant messaging, and real-time video communication, digital workplaces are fast becoming the Reference tool for employees, organizations and communities to connect and share ideas in global organizations.

With "remote work" set to stay, organizations increasingly need to find ways to improve the way essential organizational information is communicated, share local updates, help engage employees, and better support their organizational culture.

In a cost-conscious environment, most organizations would like to monitor and measure their COLLABORATION efforts more effectively.

On the one hand, one way of approaching to improve management consists of "analyzing the social network or networks of an organization / COMMUNITY". Each social network is made up of nodes, which usually represent people, which in turn are interconnected by links that can be unidirectional or reciprocal. These links are obtained from the interactions that individuals have, either by directly consulting the people involved or by analyzing their behavior based on their fingerprint (analyzing the flow of emails, etc.).

The construction of social networks makes it possible to visualize the existing relationships within the organization and allows to extract the "key indicators of social performance" that faithfully represent the reality of each organization.

Key Performance Indicators in Organizations: According to Pablo Haya from the Knowledge Engineering Institute, performance indicators (KPIs) can be extracted, such as "Influence and Scope, Role of Contribution to Processes, Group Relationship Dynamics, Reciprocity in Communication , among others, which have already been applied successfully in companies (such as IBM, ING DIRECT, ..).

• Influence and Scope: Reflects the potential impact of the employee / member on an organization / COMMUNITY, measured by their strategic position within the network. One of its applications is to locate those employees who have a large number of contacts who do not know each other, so that they can control the information that circulates between different groups, or discover those who are socially recognized as leaders or experts.
• Process Contribution Role: Measures the role of the employee / member in work processes as a generator or recipient of information, content or other materials. For example, in the processes of dissemination of ideas or Innovation, it allows to classify employees according to their tendency to be recipients, producers, both roles or neither role (that is, they do not directly participate). It also makes it possible to identify groups with profiles with great involvement in Innovation processes.
• Group Relationship Dynamics: Measures the balance of internal and external relationships between members of different groups (by department, seniority, geographic location, ...) to streamline and optimize efforts. Thus, it allows identifying the communication flow within a network of commercial teams exchanging business solutions, in addition to revealing the teams that are making the expected exchanges.
• Reciprocity in Communication: Indicates the level of COLLABORATION measured from reciprocity in the relationship. It serves, among other things, to detect employees who tend to reply to emails, or those whose emails tend to be more responsible.

These KPIs have been applied in organizations, where they studied "the impact of the reuse of sales solutions, the early detection of innovations and trends or the adoption of collaborative behavior to develop and manage COLLABORATION optimization programs. Likewise, they were used to detect non-formal groups of COLLABORATION, information flows and hidden leaders with power, influence and intermediation and also, show the real social performance within its corporate platform, highlighting the detection of isolated groups, groups sensitive to Innovation, High-level individuals impact and the definition of different profiles of involvement in the use of the platform.

Digital Communities.

Guerrero, Alarcón and Collazos argue that Collaborative Systems are computer applications that support groups of people who work in a common area or goal, and that provide an interface to a shared environment. The way in which people work in groups, and the way to support this work through Computer Systems, has been investigated for years. These investigations initially focused on how individuals functioned in a group, and more recently, they have focused on the group itself, trying to establish when and under what circumstances COLLABORATIVE Work is more effective than individual work. In this context, some independent variables identified and widely studied have been: "the size of the group, the composition of the group, the nature and objectives of the task, the means of communication, the form of interaction between the peers, the rewards and sex differences, among others". However, more recent research has given greater emphasis to the study of "COLLABORATION PROCESSES and How to Support Them" (How to Learn / Teach to COLLABORATE).

On the other hand, the "Assessment of COLLABORATIVE Learning" has traditionally been done through exams or tests to determine how much they have learned. This is what is done in COLLABORATIVE Learning techniques such as Student Team Learning, Group Research, Structural Approach and Joint Learning, among others. However, there is little research on how to Evaluate the Effectiveness of COLLABORATION Processes.

Measurement Indicators in the Collaboration Process: To try to evaluate the presence or absence of COLLABORATION in Group work, 5 indicators are selected, based on the structure of a COLLABORATIVE Learning activity proposed by Johnson and Johnson: "Use of Strategies, Intragroup Collaboration, Review of Success Criteria, Monitoring, Providing Help ". Using an average of these five indicators, a COLLABORATION Index (CI) is established that allows evaluating the Work of the Groups. The definition given by Johnson and Johnson for each of the five indicators is presented below.

• Apply Strategies: A product must be created in which group members must achieve an achievement system where awards are based on individual previous results and on the average of the group as a whole. For example, positive goal interdependence, peer motivation, and learning support. The teams must define the strategies they will apply to solve the task.
• Intragroup Collaboration: The teams must apply the previously defined COLLABORATION strategies.
• Review Success Criteria: Success criteria are given in terms of guidelines, limits and roles, which must be defined at the beginning of the activity. They should be reviewed during the activity to see if the common goal is being achieved, and after the activity to see whether or not the goal was reached.
• Monitoring: It refers to monitoring the members of the working group during the process. For example, verify that the "desired behaviors" are met.
• Provide Help: Refers to help when someone requests it. It could be divided into facilitator help to group, and peer help.

Thus, in order to evaluate the presence or absence of these indicators in a group interaction, here, the concept of "Problem" should be highlighted, where each participant has a partial view of the problems, so they must interact closely with your group mates to solve the problem. Thus, we can affirm that "if the group manages to solve the problem, we can affirm that it creates a shared understanding of the problem". In this way, COLLABORATION is presented as "the shared understanding of the problem". The group must understand that "the problem is that the Group Coordinator does not have all the necessary information to solve the problem, so he needs the help of each COLLABORATOR". According to Fussell, "Discussing the Problem Solving Strategy helps group members develop a shared vision or mental model of their goals and tasks as a group". This mental model can improve coordination, because each member understands how their tasks fit into the overall goals of the group. In this context, and due to the complexity of the problem to be solved, and its high degree of dependence among COLLABORATORS, to recognize the presence or absence of the "strategy application" indicator, it would be enough to consider the success or failure of the solution of the problem. The "problem application" therefore has a discrete value (the problem is solved or not).

To determine the values of the remaining Indicators, it is necessary to do a semantic analysis of the messages. For this, four categories of messages are defined: Coordination, Work, Strategy, and Lateral. In the first category ("Coordination") those messages that aim to regulate the dynamics of the process are recognized, and are characterized by prescribing future actions. The "Work" category includes the messages that help the coordinator to make the most appropriate decisions. These messages are usually given in the present tense, and inform about the current status of the quadrant and the problem. All those who propose lines of action to solve the problem are classified as "Strategy" messages. Finally, the last category, "Lateral", comprises Social Type messages, comments and particular conversations that do not focus on the resolution of the problem itself.

The Intragroup COLLABORATION Indicator is related to the application of COLLABORATION strategies during the group work process. If each member is able to understand how their tasks should be coupled with the overall goals of the team, then the group members can anticipate their actions requiring less coordination effort. For this reason, the Intragroup COLLABORATION Indicator will be reflected in the set of messages in the work category, where a fluid, well-coordinated group interaction with a well-understood strategy (shared understanding) should require few messages, appropriate and accurate. To determine this Indicator, a range from 0 to 1 was considered, weighted in inverse relation to the amount of work messages sent among the group members.

Because the Success Criteria are based on partial and global scores, this indicator represents the interest in individual and collective performance, and requires the constant commitment of group members. This commitment should be reflected in a high number of queries to the scores. Therefore, this criterion is weighted on a scale from 0 to 1, in direct relation to the number of consultations to the scores.

Monitoring refers to a regulatory activity. The objective of this regulation is to ensure that the strategies defined by the group to solve the problem are met, and that the pursuit of goals and success criteria is maintained. In this sense, it is considered that this indicator is reflected in the least number of coordination messages (fewer messages, better coordination), and is weighted on a percentage scale from 0 to 1.

The main indicator of Provide Help is the relationship between the number of work messages and the total number of messages generated. This relationship reflects the degree of participation and interest in the exercise of the roles of collaborator (assistant coordinator). This indicator is weighted on a scale from 0 to 1, where 0 reflects little interest and delivery of help (little information from the state), and 1 reflects a high degree of involvement in the tasks of the coordinator.

As conclusions in this regard, the "COLLABORATIVE Work Process" is largely influenced by the individual styles and behaviors of each of the people who make up the group. The authors argue that a regularity and consistency can be observed in the performance of the tasks performed by each of the team members, both in their roles as coordinator and coordinator or collaborator. This regularity and consistency is also observed in their communication styles and skills.

The results suggest that the construction of solution strategies well understood by all, is associated with the successful outcome, the cognitive context and the set of similar experiences in the group members, which facilitates the rapid development of strategies, as well as their application. This fact is observed in the use of a homogeneous, direct and unambiguous language, when referring to the characteristics of the problem.

There is a direct relationship between the control of the task (coordination message) and its execution (work message) independent of the final success or failure of the task. This suggests that the gross measurement of these variables does not anticipate a satisfactory result for the group. It is the thorough understanding of the problem and the maintenance of the solution strategy that leads to a successful result. Similarly, if the participants fully understand the problem, they do not require a great burden of communication, but, on the contrary, the information overload has a negative impact on the achievement of the proposed objective.

Finally, it is interesting to note that the four categories determined in the research (coordination, work, strategy and lateral messages) are enough to give significant indications of the processes that underlie a group interaction that aims to achieve a specific objective, and that requires the attention and participation of each and every one of the members of the group.

Other 10 Ways to Measure the ROI of a COLLABORATIVE Platform: The ROI of COLLABORATION.

Let's start by measuring the ROI (Return On Investment, or Return Over Investment, for its acronym in English) of the COLLABORATION, measuring how it could increase the speed of a task.

• Speed of an Existing Process: Every organization has processes that involve multiple steps and numerous people. All organizations think that at least one of those processes takes too long. Complaints that it's too slow tend to revolve around publishing a Press Release, Editing News Articles, or Onboarding New Employees. The easiest way to "measure the value of a COLLABORATIVE System is to see if that system can speed up an annoyingly slow process". "Pick something that is particularly annoying in your organization and measure how long it takes to complete. Then move that process to a COLLABORATION platform and tell staff that you are looking to reduce time spent. Measure and repeat."
• New Product Launch: How long does it take you to bring something new to market now? When engineers, marketers, legal departments and other teams touch something, the time to market can be extraordinarily long. The average time to launch a product in the communications industry is six months. Calculate the length per month of your existing Product Development Cycle. Then recalculate it after you've moved to a COLLABORATIVE platform.
• Volume of New Products: COLLABORATION is nothing more and nothing less, than an attempt to obtain the most creative energy from a group of people. Compare the number of products that are launched per year before and after the launch of a COLLABORATION platform.

Calculating the ROI of using a COLLABORATION platform in connection with a geographically diverse workforce is a fairly easy process. Some version of this metric is likely to work for your organization / COMMUNITY:

• Real Estate Cost: A COLLABORATION platform helps reduce real estate costs that involve opening a remote office abroad or in another part of the country. Additionally, moving a percentage of the workforce off-site allows an organization to reduce the footprint it needs to house employees. It may take an organization some time to sell office space. But there are other metrics (cost of office supplies, utility bills, etc.) that can be tracked in the meantime that will suggest if things are moving in the right direction.
• Absenteeism Rate: People who work from home (or cafeterias, co-working, etc.) should have an easier time "going to work" than people who are always forced to move. Your organization's absenteeism rate (number of work days lost due to absences / (Number of employees) x (Number of work days) x 100) should steadily decrease as your percentage of off-site workers increases. By allowing everyone to work from home at least some of the time, you should end up with a simple inverse relationship (the higher the number of people who work at home, the less the number of people who are not working). Absenteeism is only one part of a total productivity metric. You should plan to measure the total productivity levels of your distributed team. Dow Chemical saw a productivity increase of 32.5% when they moved their sales teams off-site more than a decade ago (10% due to a decrease in absenteeism, 16% when working at home and 6.5% by avoiding displacement). Nortel, an early leader in the "work is something you do, not a place you go" movement has reported productivity increases of up to 20%.
• Cost per Employee: There are several ways to calculate this, but whatever particular metric you choose, the goal is the same. By allowing people more freedom and by expanding the pool of available recruits, you can spend less on salaries and infrastructure. Your organization's full-time equivalent costs should decrease.

There are organizations that are extraordinary not for their product, but for their Customer Service. There is a constant emphasis on being able to answer any question from any customer at an astonishing rate. Many times, this speed is based on simple COLLABORATIVE Processes that the organization builds. No matter what organization you are in, customer service is crucial. You can choose from any of dozens of customer relationship management (CRM) metrics when calculating the ROI of COLLABORATION, or you can simply borrow data from the following:

• Complaint Resolution Time: Not even the best customer service representative in the world can solve all problems. Rather, the success of a representative is related to how well he is connected with the key people in your company. Calculate the current resolution time. Introduce a COLLABORATIVE platform that facilitates questions and answers across departments, then measure over time to track a reduction in measurement.
• Customer Engagement Level: Sure, it's warm and confusing. But there seems to be considerable evidence that customer engagement levels are an important predictor of repeat sales. In the media world, engagement has become the Holy Grail of measurement ... largely replacing customer satisfaction metrics. You should now be tracking your organization's engagement levels. If they don't increase with the launch of a COLLABORATIVE platform, use that platform to get everyone in your organization thinking why. Also, speaking of fuzzy warm metrics, let's talk about "Staff Satisfaction." A COLLABORATIVE platform fosters an environment in which people have more freedom, while at the same time making it easier for them to obtain the information / collaboration / access they need to be successful. That's a recipe for a happier workforce.
• Rotation and Training Costs: Money is needed to hire a new worker. There are hiring costs, training costs, and more. Studies from Mellon Financial have found that the time for new hires to reach full productivity ranges from 8 weeks for clerical work to 20 weeks for professionals and more than 26 weeks for executives. There are few easier ways to cut costs than to reduce employee turnover and / or reduce the amount of time spent on employee onboarding. Measure your current rates and then look for the decrease over time as employees move to a COLLABORATIVE platform (look for a drop in turnover) and as the hiring / training process moves to a COLLABORATIVE system (look for a decrease in productivity time, particularly through increased use of internal knowledge bases). But look, don't take my word for it at face value on any of this. Instead, embrace the spirit of COLLABORATION and ask the people around you what to measure. Your coworkers and your boss may not be very interested in the first nine ROI tips. But they will like this one.
• Your Department's Favorite Metric: Do you work for the engineering department? Are they Six Sigma folks looking to minimize errors and variability? Or do you respond to a CFO with a love for top-line growth and an eye on employee revenue? Are you in a human resources department with the need to reduce costs per employee? Or do you report directly to a CEO who is focused on net income? Whatever the situation, look at the weak points of the people around you. Focus on those. Then look at everyone else in the organization. Believe in them, know that if you give them the power to COLLABORATE, they can move any metric. Better yet, look at the people around you and let them know that your business is considering moving to a more COLLABORATIVE environment. Ask them what they think, ask them how you could benefit them. Or look at what others have said about COLLABORATION.

Define Success with COLLABORATION Metrics by Applying Technology for It:

Larraine Solomon argues that "COLLABORATION metrics can be difficult to get right. As a result, it is common for organizations to set goals and embark on new strategic initiatives, without establishing adequate data points, monitoring mechanisms and measurements, as we have already done. seen. Without metrics, it can be difficult to determine success or failure".

As plans and resources are established and money is spent to improve adoption and engagement, organizations often fail to create a baseline for these activities before they actually start. The result is that organizations may not have a realistic estimate of the time and cost it takes to drive employee / member (of a COMMUNITY) productivity through COLLABORATION, or even derived business value.

As organizations consider developing their COLLABORATION capabilities through enterprise COLLABORATION software, it is important to define the metrics necessary to understand and gain visibility into what success looks like and to quantify the ROI and benefits of COLLABORATION.

One mistake organizations make is thinking that the more intuitive the technology, the more obvious the business value and employee / member engagement will follow. While it is true that implementing smart intranet software, such as Social Intranets and digital workplaces, will generally help improve communication and team cohesion, work remains to be done to optimize the corresponding increased business value.

Qualitative improvements are important, such as building an improved user interface that makes COLLABORATION between teams easier and easier to use, but successful COLLABORATION must also be measured in terms of its quantitative business benefits. The ability to achieve faster product release cycles or the reduction in the time it takes to resolve customer issues (as we have already seen) are good examples of this. Deciding which COLLABORATION metrics or KPIs are suitable for your organization largely depends on the goals of your platform and the Culture of your Organization.

The advice is "take it easy." If they have well-defined COLLABORATION metrics, that's great. But most organizations benefit from a more incremental approach that includes testing intranet software along with business KPIs. Get started with a few high-level measures in place and prepare to adjust them as you learn more about how your employees / members actually use the platform.

Some Ways to Measure COLLABORATION in these cases: Where to start? There are several ways to capture data from your solution so that you can identify an activity baseline. Measurement of COLLABORATION should be done in two ways, as both QUALITATIVE and QUANTITATIVE measurements are needed to track progress over time. For example:

• Create and Publish a Common Vision for COLLABORATION with executive support and lead by example: Share what success looks like and invite employees / members to become Pioneer Users. Measure the number of people participating at the beginning of your trip as a benchmark.
• Conduct Initial and Periodic Pulse Surveys: What do employees / members think about the new platform? How does technology help you manage your workloads and improve productivity? If it's a digital workplace, how easy is it to create and find everything in one place? Are you getting the information you need to do your job at the right time? What requirements are not met?
• Create Consistent Communications, including New Communities with the Goal of Improving Education and Training, and Getting More Information in Front of People: Make it clear that you are listening and be receptive to their suggestions.
• Review Your Change Management Policies and Make Sure People Understand the Process for Suggesting System Improvements: Make the prioritization and status of these changes transparent.
• Develop Reward and Recognition Programs to Encourage Exchange and COLLABORATION.

Clearly defined governance, consistent communications, engaging content, and global COLLABORATION are critical to improving end-user adoption and engagement. Demonstrate progress against your KPIs and provide a clear line of sight between COLLABORATION activity and healthy business growth.

5 Metrics to Measure the Success of the COLLABORATION: The following are 5 key metrics that should be tracked when measuring the success of the COLLABORATION with digital tools:

1. General Use: Specific metrics like "Views, Visits, Likes, Comments, etc ...", provide a general indication of how many people are using the tool and can be tracked over time. This data makes it easy to see employee usage trends and the type of content they are viewing, which in itself is an indication of employee engagement.
2. Top Users: Many organizations find that some workers use COLLABORATION tools considerably more than others. It's important to leverage your skills and enthusiasm, as these employees are likely to influence others and are often proactive in helping drive local adoption.
3. People-Related Business Metrics: A very tangible way to measure the ROI of your COLLABORATION tool is to track the metrics that relate to people within your organization, for example, employee engagement scores and access to learning opportunities.
4. Cost-Related Business Metrics: Finance departments are likely to be very interested in understanding the metrics related to COLLABORATION tools. Measuring efficiency is a good way to bring these important stakeholders together, tracking metrics like IT Costs.
5. Customer and Sales Related Metrics: Customers are the lifeblood of most organizations and their COLLABORATION tool is a great way to ensure that information is available to provide a good customer experience and generate more sales. Customer metrics worth tracking include the confidence of sales teams to create a good customer experience.

The truth is that, I consider that Management of COLLABORATION and its metrics are "an art" that can be learned, where Culture, Leadership, Management, Vision, among others, are mixed. These metrics that have been presented are just a sample of what can be done and what has been carried out in different organizations around the world. In the same way, from now on you will find various methodologies for COLLABORATION Management, which each of you must envision if it adapts to the requirements of your organizations, based on the objectives sought, added to the variables mentioned before. In this way, I consider that Creativity also plays an important role in Collaboration Management and its measurement, where Data and Technology for Collaboration (as I mean) become preponderant for the achievement of the objectives sought and proposed in advance.

As time goes by, I will go deeper into the matter later, and I assure you that we will return on several occasions to touch on the subject of "COLLABORATION measurement and management".

(Note: For those students of the course, go back to the course and follow the instructions to assimilate the knowledge delivered).

Original Article: "Medición de la COLABORACIóN para su Gestión " (In Spanish), Hugo Céspedes A.