Collaboration Software Evaluation and Analysis as Virtual

Collaboration Software Evaluation and Analysis

As virtual teams become pervasive in many enterprises globally, the need for stable, secure and scalable collaboration platforms becomes more and more important to organizations achieving complex strategic goals and objectives. Virtual teams can often coordinate and collaborate using personal productivity applications, yet on more complex tasks requiring orchestration of complex workflows and sharing dozens of documents at the same time, Microsoft Outlook and e-mail break down and don't deliver the level of functionality necessary. Given the rapid rise in virtual teams in conjunction with the lack of support in many personal productivity software applications for intensive collaboration an entirely new area of enterprise software has emerged. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems with social networking functionality (Social CRM), enterprise content management, knowledge management, groupware, portals and Web Services have all emerged as proven solutions to the continual challenge of communication and collaboration in virtual teams (Banker, Bardhan, 2006). Evaluating collaboration tools for time, place, richness, task and adoption by team task is the goal of this analysis. It is assumed throughout this analysis that the scenario the collaboration software is used in are virtual teams located at geographically diverse points globally, across time zones and cultures. It is further assumed that the level of collaboration that will occur is dependent on clarity, consistency and trust being attained over time (Siakas, Siakas, 2008)

Analysis of Time, Place, Richness, Task and Adoption Scenarios

The five dimensions that collaboration software is evaluated on in this report all revolve the critical need for virtual teams to create highly effective workflow processes and strategies, taking into account individual strengths while attaining often difficult shared objectives. Only until recently has collaboration software and platforms provided the agility and flexibility to align to differences in time, place, richness, task and adoption scenarios (Barthelmess, 2003). Each of those scenarios is now evaluate from the standpoint of which collaboration technologies and tools are most and least important and why.

Time-based Scenarios

Accuracy, completeness, and speed of communication are the most critical success factors of scenarios that are time-based. Given the significant variations in time zones and the urgency of completing projects often under tight deadlines, this is often the most critical factor or dimension driving the adoption of a collaboration platform. The best possible technologies for complimenting and enhancing time-based scenarios include real-time messaging and social media platforms like Salesforce.com Chatter which resembles Facebook in terms of its interface (Riehle, Ellenberger, Menahem, et.al., 2009). Real-time social networking platforms are the best at minimizing time delays. The worst possible technology to use would be blogs or any other form of static, posting technology that required several steps to get a message published and read (Barthelmess, 2003). Social networking platforms today have many supporting Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs) that allow for greater support of all forms of mobile devices, which further underscore the value of these types of interactive, real-time applications as well (Riehle, Ellenberger, Menahem, et.al., 2009).

Place Scenarios

Location-based services and the growing use of geo-caching technologies have become commonplace in social networking applications, starting with Google mapping APIs and progressing to Yahoo e-commerce services (Banker, Bardhan, 2006). These developments have had a direct impact on collaboration technologies and how companies are architecting workflows across broad geographic distances. Place scenarios dictate which equipment, supporting technology, bandwidth and level of security apply to a collaborative work session. Technologies best suited to this scenario include secured Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) running collaborative portals (Barthelmess, 2003) and the use of mobile-based devices that have secured sign-in capability. The least attractive or useful technology for place-based scenarios are those that require a significant technology platform investment to work. Examples of technologies in this category include highly secured IPSec-based transmission networks that require multi-layer sign-ins and support for authentication in conjunction with secured links to internal networks (Banker, Bardhan, 2006). Technologies best suited to place-based scenarios however are more centered on open collaboration through a shared security model with individual role-based authentication (Riehle, Ellenberger, Menahem, et.al., 2009). Place-based considerations in collaboration are often perceived as being primarily mobile-based when in fact many are often defined by the level of security and integration with legacy systems to ensure greater communication and knowledge transfer.

Richness (of Experience) Scenarios

This aspect of collaboration is more focused on how to create a highly intuitive user experience from using the collaboration platform than on just the functionality it delivers. The focus of richness of experience scenarios is on how in-depth the business process workflows are that are needing to be supported so that virtual teams will be able to collaborate effectively (Barthelmess, 2003). The focus on richness of experience makes highly integrated, graphical, real-time integration of data on thin-client-based collaboration software critical. The best possible technology for this type of scenario are Web-based, also accessible via a smartphone or tablet PC (Riehle, Ellenberger, Menahem, et.al., 2009). The least applicable technology in this scenario are those that are more focused on automating knowledge transactions and making them more compartmentalized, less fluid or open. Using legacy Web Services applications for example, with little room for customization, would not work for this type of scenario (Talukdar, 1999).

Task Scenarios