Groupware Applications
Information and communications technology brought about various benefits especially in the milieu of business. Aside from automating business processes that proved invaluable in streamlining business operations and provided efficient and effective means of achieving organizational objectives, workplace and group collaboration improved via various groupware applications. These groupware applications or collaborative software are "designed to facilitate the work of groups [and] to communicate, cooperate, coordinate, solve problems, compete, or negotiate (Foraker Labs, 2011)." Groupware applications are available in various functions and technologies; however, implementing groupware applications though may not be as simple as it seems because there various challenges involved in the initiative. For instance, there might be resistance to change from some sectors of the organization and these groups may reason out that "the former business process is working just fine!" Others may deem groupware applications implementation as intrusive on the current operational tempo of the business.
The problems with regards to implementation of groupware applications have been experienced by most organization engaging...
Nonetheless, majority of groupware applications implementations have proven successful especially when the project plan thereto included detailed change management, social marketing, and user familiarization plans. These efforts ensured "buy-in" from stakeholders and gradually introduced the new system to them. In one implementation success story of "The McLaughlin Company, a Washington, D.C.-based commercial lines agency, [the company] replaced all of its workstations with new, specially constructed computer workstations featuring 17-inch dual gas plasma screen monitors, synchronized by Matrix software with both office databases. At a cost of $1,000 per workstation, the purchase was the best money the agency ever spent. (Strazewski, 2004)" The change enabled the company to "provide instant visual access to virtually all of a client's file (Strazewski, 2004)" thereby facilitating faster and efficient work processes.
The success stories of groupware applications implementations are nothing new. In our organization, we experienced the same "birth pains" but eventually overcame the challenges and ended up successful. The groupware application implemented is a document management system (DMS) that…
