The oil and gas sector in particular is benefiting fromthe growth in collaboration solutions. Here Jason Webb shows how the technology is being applied, the benefits it brings, and what the future holds.

Business processes are no longer just about 'harder, faster, stronger' but also interaction, involvement and inclusion.
The key to modern business is collaboration, whether it is the complex interactions of supply chain management or the simple, personal relationships between staff, customers and suppliers.
It is these personal and team relationships that add value to companies as they extend and enhance current team-based working practices without requiring wholesale corporate change.
Collaboration can often be sub-titled as involvement. For example, a team may already work together using email as the primary communication method.
However, using email to communicate with groups of people may often result in people being 'left off the list' or 'out of the loop'. Relevant files may be stored on local PCs, making them inaccessible to other team members, particularly if some of the team is mobile or not at the central site.
Solving these problems using disparate systems such as email, document management and calendaring presents a real integration and training headache for the chief information officer.
Next generation collaboration systems provide all the functionality of these disparate systems with the added benefit of one consistent and easy-to-use interface to learn.
Collaboration software extends email and is much more than just sharing calendars. It is used to involve customers and partners in the business process from simple email discussion groups right up to interactive document creation. Therefore, it can either form part of the customer relationship management process, or simply to allow more frequent engagement with customers. As any sales person knows, it is easier to make repeat sales to existing customers than to attempt to get new clients.
Collaboration software should work with your current processes and infrastructure, rather than require a wholesale change. Software purchases must add value to your current investments and should not have complex interfaces or need comprehensive staff training. With collaboration software, it should be install and go, not install and wait.

A new wave

So far, industry analysts are referring to collaboration software as being part of one of two waves:
* Wave one - existing email systems extended to add simple team collaboration and mainly used in intranet deployments only. These products typically include Lotus Notes, Novell GroupWise and Microsoft Exchange (Fig. 1).
* Wave two - designed for collaboration from day one - for intranet, extranet and sometimes internet deployment. Examples of second wave products include eRooms, Intralinks, iNovem Team Initiative and Oracle Collaboration Suite (Fig. 2).
The progression of collaboration systems from wave one to wave two may be likened to the way traditional document management vendors are now focusing on content and knowledge management as the next wave in user take up of these technologies and working practices.
This progress towards wave two is seen in the recent acquisition of eRooms by Documentum for US$100 million and PlaceWare by Microsoft for US$200 million. This gives Documentum, a traditional content and knowledge management vendor, a foothold in a growing market as companies move away from the practices of knowledge management and into a more collaborative way of working.
Other document management vendors such as OpenText and Intraspect are now refocusing their product lines to have a greater focus on collaboration as part of an overall solution including their current content and knowledge management offerings.
"We see it being used for new product development, problem resolution and in customer relationship management applications involving multiple parties from multiple disciplines working on one project," said Matt Cain, vice president and collaboration market analyst with Meta Group. "We also see it being used to expedite requests for proposals and in professional services engagements in which you need to pull people together on one common project."
Collaboration software should allow the reuse of existing infrastructure - people are not currently speculating on new technologies but are incrementally building on existing infrastructure. The message is simple: 'working smarter - doing more with less'.
Team collaboration typically includes sharedtask management, shared calendars, discussion databases and intelligent document repositories offering library services including check-in, check-out and versioning. Meeting in the software's virtual workspace, which is typically web-based, team members can find all relevant content and collaborative functionality in one place rather than having to search and use different applications spread across the enterprise.

Many software solutions include real-time collaboration applications. These are often mature technologies but corporate attitudes indicate that the market is not ready for such real-time options as the technology is seen as disruptive and intrusive. Instant messaging (IM) is more likely to be used for informal 'chat' rather than as a method of sharing information amongst team members. Recent security alerts by the major vendors have sparked major security fears as many IM applications are not centrally controlled, nor are they considered secure.
Any new piece of infrastructure should help users manage the current information overload, not simply add more to their inboxes. Users should be able to choose whether they want information pushed to them (standard email) or pulled by them (go to a website).
In teams where a senior manager needs only to check progress, the individual will not want all the information pushed to them as it occurs, but they will want a synopsis of team activity when and how it suits them. This important feature of collaboration software allows people to take control of their project and team based work, rather than for the work to control them.
A collaboration system should work along side current document management infrastructure. This is because modern knowledge management products are fundamentally document-centric.
Only a part of the corporate consciousness is stored in documents. Email between groups of people contains a lot of information that may never be stored in documents, but this important knowledge is often lost in personal inboxes. Thus a collaboration system should allow teams easy access to the information that a groups needs, whether that information is historic emails, current documents or future project tasks.
As this information is specific and relevant to the team that was created, there is no further need to chase down project documentation for new project staff or executive project managers.

Applications and industries

E-government is now a central part of the modern democratic process. Departments are using collaboration software in their consultancy processes using email and online questionnaires. This allows them to ensure everyone is involved and all opinions are taken into account.
Pharmaceutical companies rely on collaboration in their core business processes. Company employees as well as academics and partners can all collaborate on documents and presentations, as well as organise meetings between the members of the team. This level of collaboration reduces the time-to-market for new treatments. When a new drug can make millions of dollars in one day, every method of coming to market earlier will be beneficial.

Large engineering projects now rely on many companies and individuals working together as a team. Consistent and clear access to the project's documentation and specifications is a key requirement. Without the information, the project will founder: with it the project will succeed. As new partners and staff become involved in the project they can see and search all the historical information including previous email discussions, giving the managers a valuable insight on how similar issues were dealt with previously.
However, not just large corporations and governments can benefit from the introduction of collaboration software. Small and medium size companies can also benefit - it is not the size of the business, it is the construction and activities of the communities within it.
Interaction with other people is the key, as these interactions between people form bonds between businesses, suppliers and customers in a way that e-commerce cannot. Companies involved in trade associations can gain real benefits from collaboration systems as they work together to provide one voice for lobbying government and dealing with industry specific issues.
As companies come to understand more how collaboration can benefit their business, the market will continue to grow. Currently there is a tendency for some of the wave one and wave two product vendors to be 'all things to all men'. Thus, the collaboration software then becomes your corporate email solution, requiring the conversion of one expensive mail system to another.
The mobile platform will be a key enabler for future collaboration products. The need to have information always available is one of the most important goals in a collaborative environment. It ensures that everyone in a team is kept up-to-date no matter when and how they connect.
True collaboration knows no boundaries - it helps staff, partners and customers all work together for a common goal. It invariably delivers a rapid return on investment by maximising project efficiency and leveraging corporate content.

Jason Webb is Chief Information Officer of iNovem Limited, tel. 44 1488 648468,email: Jason.webb@inovem.com