Chris Heaven

My travel schedule has been hectic the past few weeks, which delayed me writing this post, but better late than never right?

Allow me to ask some questions about common communication bottlenecks.

Have you ever tried to track a person down inside your company and spent what seemed like hours, or even days trapped in voicemail tag just to get a simple piece of information? Perhaps something like another person’s contact details, or to follow up on how a meeting, or job went? How about tracking where your employees, or coworkers are so you can work around their schedule? How about where your people were on a specific day months ago because you needed the information to resolve a customer issue?

Have you ever had to delay an important decision because you couldn’t get in touch with somebody in your organization by phone, or email once again looking for details?

Have you ever searched for information that you knew was somewhere in your email only to never find it? Did you have to email, or call somebody else to get that information resent to you?

Have you ever had a phone conversation with somebody and told them you will email them the information they need when you get back to your computer, or when you have a chance?

In each of the scenarios above the information that was being sought was trapped somewhere; perhaps your email, another person’s email, somebody else’s address book, or perhaps their work log – if they even keep one. Maybe it was recorded on somebody else’s computer, or just in their head. Regardless in each of these cases the information you sought was trapped in a silo somewhere. I use the term silo because it is an apt metaphor for storage mediums where information piles up, but isn’t easily accessible by others.

Imagine how much easier your life would be, how much more productive you and your employees, or coworkers would be if everybody had access to shared address books, shared calendars, shared notes and shared documents. Then imagine being able to access all of this shared data from any device connected to the network; your laptop, your desktop, your iPhone, or even somebody else’s computer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

How much time could you save tracking down simple things like contact details?

How much time could you save by reading a shared calendar entry where all of the participants added their own notes? Or even a single calendar entry that described how a meeting one of your service, or sales people had with a client, or supplier? Could you provide them with additional insight and guidance after reading those details that you currently aren’t getting? Could you help them drive more business by adding your perspective?

How much time could you save by always knowing where your service and sales people are?

How many additional meetings, or service calls could you schedule with clients if you had a bird’s eye view of how your people’s time was scheduled?

How much time could you save by not having to email documents back and forth because they were stored in a central location accessible by virtually any network connected device?

I suppose some businesses aren’t aware of the multitude of software tools on the market to facilitate better group collaboration. However, I also see lots of organizations that have the tools, but don’t use them. You only get out of a collaboration system what you put into it. The more data you and your people record in a such a system the more you will get out of it. Getting the process started is the hardest part, but once you have consistent and immediate access to all of the simple information described above it’s hard to imagine functioning without it.

I would encourage you to look at how you store data and how you share it in your business. If you already have the tools in place use them! Define standard formats for recording certain data then let your people know they are expected to enter information in those formats for the benefit of everybody.

As you can probably gather I’m a big fan of the Zimbra Collaboration Suite. However, the software platform is less important than how you use it and doing so on a consistent basis.

Cheers,