Enterprise social collaboration tools are really a convergence between project management, collaboration, social enterprise and document management. An article from TechRepublic provides a simple blueprint for how an organization could get started with an enterprise collaboration planning roadmap to get the most out of the available tools.
When considering collaboration tools, consider how the people in your organization currently manage projects, collaborate, interact with one another and manage documents. Use the tools that best improve processes and workflows in those four areas. Think about how to onboard collaboration tools and also consider the vendor selection process when determining which social technologies are the right fit for your organization.
Most organizations would be wise to gradually adopt an enterprise collaboration plan. For example, going from using email to share files to a collaboration platform cold turkey would scare most users. That’s a big leap. While the overall goal should be to become less dependent on email attachments and make content more searchable, a gradual transition makes most sense.
With that in mind, here are six points a collaboration planning roadmap should include.
- Goals: This may seem obvious, but simply putting the technology in place won’t encourage user adoption. Explicitly state what your organization wants to achieve with the collaboration platform.
- Touch points: What exactly will be managed through the platform? This could include project scheduling and assigning and updating the status of various tasks.
- Governance, responsibilities and roles: This includes security and administration concerns, as well as assigning user permissions, such as editor, viewer and administrator, along with responsibilities, like project manager and team member.
- Document audit: Have a process for clearing out email inboxes and stashes of project documents stored on local hard drives where no one else can access them. The process should include creating a list of final versions and storing them in a document library.
- Remote and mobile: This should be included in your plan if it’s important for users in your organization to be able to access information in the system remotely or on mobile devices. This is usually fairly simple with cloud-based solutions, but can require a bit more effort for on-site tools.
- BYOD: The plan should take into account your organization’s bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policy, including access levels and whether outside devices can be used to access certain workspaces and documents.
Keep in mind that for all of these points, it’s important to communicate and train users on any changes that will affect their processes.
What else do you think should be included in a collaboration planning roadmap? Share your thoughts in the comments section!
Source: TechRepublic, September 2013
