Today’s workforces can collaborate better than ever before, but several technology companies are demonstrating that we have only just begun to exploit the capabilities available to us–and that change is critical for effectively moving business communications forward.
Services from content-sharing company Box are designed to provide more effective collaboration among team members, better control of freelancers and secure sharing and uploading of files. Yet, this isn’t enough in the eyes of Box CEO Aaron Levie. He pictures a more instantaneous way of collaborating — a sinuous way of working that makes dispersed workforces more dynamic in an era of increased globalization.
Cloud is key
Cloud technology is key to this kind of real-time collaboration. As Gartner stated in its “Top 10 Strategic Trends of 2013” report, “Cloud computing continues to evolve, with new technologies emerging to support the dynamic creation of cloud services.”
To keep a finger firmly on the pulse of increasingly diversified and widely dispersed workforces, experts suggest that organizations should embrace the cloud.
“The cloud is going to drive a new way of working,” said Levie at his company’s annual customer conference. “[For example,] the ability to deliver medical research from a lab to a doctor in seconds, or from an educational publisher to a student—it’s about real-time, collaborative, synchronous information-sharing. It’s going to change work–not just the technology of work, but work itself.
Reshaping communications
Unify is working to build the collaboration capabilities of organizations, with its new Project Ansible. Two years in the making, Ansible is a secure communications platform that pulls together and manages the daily flow of communications into rich and meaningful conversations.
The power of Ansible is its ability to aggregate communications across virtually any channel into a single view. Ansible “will reshape the way businesses and their employees interact, communicate and collaborate,” said Rick Puskar, Unify SVP Customer Experience & Services.
When Project Ansible was conceived, the original approach was to focus on design through the user interface, which Eve C. Aretakis, EVP Product Management & Development. But through the creation process, Unify realized that it wasn’t just about UI, but the entire user experience. Through that process, the Ansible team determined that there were six different personas that would be using the product, and designed the workflow and user experience to serve each one.
Pierre Audoin Consultants Analyst Nicole Dufft, senior vice president, Connected Enterprise & Cloud Computing, said in a blog post that Project Ansible integrates the “bits and pieces” promised by unified communications.
“Based on [the open-source] WebRTC [(Real-Time Communications)], Project Ansible integrates and puts into context all the tools we use in our daily work routines: voice, web and video communication, team collaboration, social networking, business process applications, content management, enterprise search and even some analytics,” said Dufft.
Poised for success
Indeed, communications services today and tomorrow must offer cross collaboration among dispersed enterprise environments, bringing together users within systems that satisfy the many criteria of integrated workflow management.
As such technologies develop further, organizations that embrace them are set to thrive with a truly collaborative workforce.
The post Design and Workflow: Why Constant Change Is Crucial for Enhanced Collaboration appeared first on Unify Blog.