The formal release of Microsoft Office 2010 is imminent but most of the world seems obsessed with the commercial rivalry between Microsoft and Google rather than the underlying opportunity that collaborative applications present for business. The breadth of the tools on offer could be as game-changing for business as the very first email applications. Businesses should now be focussing on how Microsoft Office 2010, Google Apps and related products ‘in the cloud’ can transform business productivity, says Gary Simon, FSN managing editor.
Transaction processing and information management have made great strides in the last two decades. The realization that organizations process transactions and information in business cycles that transcend functional boundaries rather than in departmental silos has transformed the way that businesses view user productivity and effectiveness. Melting the boundaries between functional areas such as credit control and warehousing and, for example, giving users visibility over the entire business process such as the ‘quote to cash’ cycle is vital to organizational responsiveness as well as competitive positioning. The ability to answer supplier, customer and employee queries without recourse to telephone calls, walking corridors and impromptu meetings is not only crucial to business success but it also provides a more fulfilling user experience.
Yet many businesses still rely on a hotchpotch of informal communication methods, such as email, fax and telephone calls to prop up transaction and reporting process when things start to go wrong. Invoice errors, unreconciled items, misclassifications, posting errors and queries over inter-company balances are often resolved by lengthy telephone calls and email exchanges. Research suggests that the cost of a wayward transaction is about 80 percent higher than a transaction that is processed correctly first time. With average transaction costs being anywhere between £5 and £12 there is every reason to invest in more dependable methods.
Unfortunately, commonplace productivity tools such as earlier generations of Microsoft Office and Microsoft Outlook sit outside of formal reporting and transaction business cycles placing the finance function at a disadvantage. In effect the finance organisation occupies two distinct and unconnected worlds, operating parallel processes. On the one hand transactional information (structured data) is communicated through the ERP and other operational applications, but the informal communications (unstructured data), which is just as insightful and important, is outside of scope. Structured and unstructured data which should be naturally combined are compelled to follow different processing paths.
The challenges are particularly great around the three “I’s” of business, namely; information, innovation and inspiration. Here collaboration is absolutely vital to maximizing progress. Take for example the budgeting cycle. The essence of budgeting is negotiation, with senior managers and their budget holders seeking to reach consensus around revenue and cost targets, each pulling in a different direction until agreement can be reached. It is an iterative process requiring collaboration of the highest order around budgets held in, say, spreadsheets, policy documents in Microsoft Word, and everything else communicated in emails. Extrapolate this simple scenario into a multinational environment spread over hundreds or even thousands of participants in different time zones and the scale of the challenge quickly becomes apparent. The need to share information, update common documents, spreadsheets and presentations is a must and applies equally well to the sales cycle, the development of a new product or the review of divisional results.
And this is where Microsoft Office 2010 and Google Apps come in because they allow sharing of essential files over the web in the “cloud” – wherever the users are. Unfortunately more public commentary appears to have been devoted to the technical aspects of ‘cloud computing’ versus ‘on-premises’ solutions rather than the collaboration capabilities that the applications provide. So what can applications with embedded collaboration facilities do for business?
Microsoft Office Communicator, available in Office Professional Plus includes the Office Communicator Application that is tightly integrated into Outlook 2010, and works with all of the familiar Office applications that users tend to use on a day to day basis. A ‘presence indicator’ or icon shows which employees are available online and this capability ripples through, for example, Microsoft Outlook, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. It means that a user can see from within the application who is around and initiate a VOIP call, telephone call or Instant Messenger (IM) conversation to discuss a shared issue, document or spreadsheet. Word, Excel, Visio, OneNote and PowerPoint allow co-authoring so that a group of finance professionals could discuss a management commentary, review a new information requirement or a change a process in Visio all together over the web. The applications allow for local working and later synchronization if needed and of course the availability over the web or on mobile devices is ideal for collaborative working on the move.
Google Apps offers similar basic functionality around their implementation of documents, spreadsheets, drawings and presentations so that users can edit and co-author works as necessary. There are significant differences in features, functions and costs between Microsoft and Google which are not covered here but many agree that these core applications perform similar tasks.
At the enterprise level Microsoft offers further collaboration capability through SharePoint. Tagetik, for example, a provider of performance management solutions, has just announced the release of Tagetik 3.0. Its new functionality for budgeting, planning and forecasting processes leverages strong integration with Microsoft SharePoint Server and the Microsoft Business Intelligence platform so that users can share information, tasks and deadlines within their teams, analyze the data in detail and generate advanced reports.
In fact the possibilities for collaboration across the finance domain are endless and to all intents and purposes limited only by the imagination of those involved. What is clear is that the finance function is entering a new era fuelled by inexpensive applications hosted in the cloud. It’s not the cloud per se that is important but the opportunities that these new applications offer for enhanced productivity, quality and speed.
