e-collaboration tools
They offer convenience and savings but will workers actually use them?
Garrett Wasny, CMC | August, 2000Involved in a group project? Share documents with colleagues down the hall, across town, or even around the world? A swarm of new collaboration services are available online which can greatly simplify and expedite these tasks. Using only your web browser, you can create your own private Intranet or Local Area Network in minutes, and share contacts, documents, calendars, and more online at no charge. The major problem with these e-tools is not their functionality or performance. They work just fine. It’s the people using them. Old habits die hard, especially under tight deadlines. Many workers – especially those 40 years or older -- may be reluctant to use these services for a variety of reasons, and instinctively reach for plain-old telephones, fax machines, and courier services to communicate and collaborate with colleagues.
At least a dozen websites focus on providing e-collaboration tools on the web. These include:
- eGroups (http://www.egroups.com),
- eRoom (http://www.eroom.com),
- HotOffice (http://www.hotoffice.com),
- Huddle 24/7 (http://www.huddle247.com),
- Intranets (http://www.intranets.com),
- Magical Desk (http://www.magicaldesk.com),
- MyEvents (http://www.myevents.com),
- Opendesk (http://www.opendesk.com),
- Teamon (http://www.teamon.com),
- Vicinities (http://www.vicinities.com),
- Visto (http://www.visto.com), and
- Vjungle (http://www.vjungle.com).
Most offer an impressive menu of features including free e-mail, group scheduling, message boards, contact directories, instant messaging, and news bulletins. Also included are document management libraries which allow you to store and swap any digital file from sales brochures to presentations to form-letter templates. If you wish, you can allow open access to the site, and enable anyone online to view its contents. You also have the option of password-protecting your virtual work space, and granting access only to team members or colleagues of your choosing. The services are ideal for independent consultants, particularly one-man or one-woman shops, who provide management consulting or other professional services. The e-collaboration services make it easy to assemble a team to bid or work on projects, distribute key documents to all members, and share progress reports. Fast-growing start-ups – especially those with employees who work on the road or from home – will also find these e-tools highly valuable. Using these e-tools, employees can stay in constant contact with the head office anytime on any web-connected computer without the hassles and six-figure costs of a corporate intranet.
What’s the catch? These sites only provide the outside shell – the virtual real estate – on which the collaboration and meetings take place. The real challenge is how to deal with people, and how to get them to use the e-tool to achieve your objectives. This is no easy feat. For starters, you and all your colleagues will need to budget at least a morning or afternoon to register on an e-collaboration service. You’ll need time to fiddle around with the hyperlinks and buttons, and figure out how to upload and download files. Next, you’ll have to transfer all your key content – documents, presentations, spreadsheets, graphics, contact lists, and other files related to your group project – on the site. This sounds simple enough on paper, but in reality is asking a lot -- maybe too much -- in today’s frantic and cynical business world.
Based on my online experience, people working on web-based teams can be classified into four categories: digital dunce, digital distracted, digital disingenuous, and digital dynamo. Every team has at least one digital dunce: someone who lacks even the most basic web skills. All too often they are senior executives and managers who, by some quantum leap in self-delusion, fancy themselves as new economy visionaries. Fact is, they know squat about how to get online and use simple e-mail. These e-emperors with no clothes have trouble enough logging on to the web, let alone actually finding the e-collaboration service and registering. They will be marginal producers, at best, on your web team. Next are the digital distracted. More humble and earnest, this group is techno-savvy enough to log on, find the website, and register on an e-collaboration service, but won’t do much beyond that. With a nano-second attention span, they will take a quick look at the site, and expect to master the features in a few minutes. They never do of course, and soon chase after that next hyperlink or flashing banner ad like a greyhound at a dog race, never to return. Don’t expect much either from this group. After them are the digital disingenuous. Web savvy and crafty, this group can easily register, navigate, and use the e-collaboration service, but will feign ignorance and not readily share files or other information, even though they can. Their top priorities: protect their self-interest, and build their careers. If this be at the group’s expense, so be it. Watch your back when they’re around. The final group are digital dynamos: people who are fully Internet literate, and totally committed to sharing information, and truly collaborating on a project, online or off. You can never have too many of these on your team.
Customizable, password-protected, and easy to set up, e-collaboration tools offer small businesspeople an excellent way to share information and work together with colleagues from all over the world. How well a service works for you will largely depend on the commitment and character of the people involved, and their level of web literacy. To be truly effective, all members of your team must know how to use the e-services, and routinely visit the webspace to post and view updates. Without this, the virtual work spaces will yield little, if any, productivity pay-offs.
Based in Vancouver, Canada, Garrett Wasny, CMC, is an e-commerce trainer and author. His latest book is World Business Resources.com. Mr. Wasny may be reached at gwasny@direct.ca or Tel: 604/878-4555.
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