Today few businesses could survive without email exchanges but the technology which did so much for office productivity, organisational responsiveness and competitiveness is now starting to feel outdated in a world seeking to squeeze every last drop of productivity out of its workforce and where nothing short of instantaneous communications is good enough. Gary Simon, FSN’s managing editor looks at new solutions to collaboration and communication.
I remember back in the mid 80’s having to convince organisations of the business value of email. Who would they communicate with? What about the infrastructure and cost? “It will never catch on” was the retort! It seems laughable now but the rapid convergence of telecommunications technology, operating systems, data exchange standards and sheer computing power made email affordable and compelling. Today few businesses could survive without email exchanges but the technology which did so much for office productivity, organisational responsiveness and competitiveness is now starting to feel outdated in a world seeking to squeeze every last drop of productivity out of its workforce and where nothing short of instantaneous communications is good enough.
For the finance function newer technologies offer better ways of communicating and collaborating, whether it is managing a complex workflow over multiple locations or harvesting monthly results from business entities across the world.
Finance professionals in particular face unique communications challenges. The complexity of performance management processes, such as budgeting, planning, forecasting and reporting present significant hurdles – especially in a multinational environment straddling different time zones where the overlap in working hours can be slender. In these circumstances the difference between real time and non-real time communications can make a material difference to operational effectiveness and productivity.
Core financial processes work just fine when everything goes right first time. But what happens when they go wrong? Experience shows that the cost of repairing a delinquent transaction can be around 80 percent higher than a transaction that goes through a process correctly first time. In the information world, for example, negotiating and agreeing a budget or investigating a variance, the cost of remediation can be considerably higher.
In these scenarios users commonly resort to email, walking corridors, impromptu meetings and lengthy telephone calls. But who is on the receiving end? How do you know you can reach the other party? Is there an alternative to emailing huge spreadsheets or getting in a car or plane to see someone? Email and voice mail are not real time communications and are no longer ‘fit for purpose’ in a fast moving environment such as the month end close or year end. So is there a better way?
The answer is “Yes”. Newer communications technologies such as, Instant Messenger (IM) and Microsoft Office Communicator, with video conferencing, live meetings, training and desktop sharing over the internet offer a step-change in the possibilities. And these technologies are no longer the exclusive preserve of very large companies. Hosted communications solutions from the likes of Outsourcery a dedicated provider of dedicated hosting and communications solutions that I visited this week means that even mid-sized businesses with around 50 to 500 employees can take advantage of these services over the web. So what is on offer?
According to Microsoft’s Emma Tomlin, part of Microsoft’s cloud computing team in the UK, businesses are missing a trick. She told FSN, “Businesses are reluctant to embrace Instant Messenger technology popularised and taken for granted by young consumers coming out university. They think that they will lose control, but the advent of unified communications and Office Communicator means that businesses can in fact have real time communications as well as control.”
Office Communicator is a particularly valuable application in improving collaboration. The ‘presence’ checking uses a traffic-lighting scheme to identify whether colleagues are available to communicate and which medium they are receptive to using, for example, mobile phone, video conference (web cam) or a VOIP call over the internet. It means that no time is wasted on missed calls and voice messaging. Users can instantly see who is available to review or discuss a problem.
But the advantages go further than the spontaneity of the medium. A budget holder wishing to discuss an issue can call one user, ‘drag and drop’ another colleague into the exchange and commence an instantaneous live meeting over the web. Furthermore, desktop sharing means that important documents, models and applications can be viewed over the web and shared by all the participants while they are speaking and viewing each other on web cams.
As a platform for collaboration it provides a break through over traditional approaches based on non-real time communications and as a hosted solution is available instantaneously to anyone who has access to the web. Throw in a virtual PABX and it means that small to mid-sized businesses can compete on a completely level playing field with larger competitors.
The application of collaborative technology such as this is limited only by the imagination of the users and the willingness of organisations to deploy it. But just as the email revolution overran the doubters three decades ago these technologies threaten to do the same again. As Microsoft’s Emma Tomlin says, “The young workers entering the force use this technology every day in their personal lives – why should they accept anything less in business.”
