Simple business communications can be a challenge. People might miss your phone calls and emails, but a live icon on their instant message (IM) application can indicate a more immediate communication path. Having that real-time sense of a person"s presence and the ability to immediately contact them can speed the process or completion of any given task.

Through "presence" technologies featured in IM and other applications, workers can see when the rest of the team is online and available. File and document sharing tools also enable real-time collaborative work to be carried out on projects without needing face to face meetings or the cumbersome "ping-pong" of email and track changes in word documents.

With tools like instant IM, web conferencing, online document sharing and VoIP-in addition to old school tools like email and telephone-reaching people and gathering the information needed to complete a given task is simpler than in years past.

Increasingly companies are looking for better and more immediate ways for people to work together to achieve their common goals. The vision is to arm workers with simple interfaces and tools enabling them to detect the availability of people they need to contact, then choose the most convenient communications method without leaving the application they are working on.

Main issue: knowledge sharing

Collaboration is a means to an end: enabling businesses to perform more speedily and effectively. While collaboration can be a complex task, according to Joe Locandro, CIO at CLP, people should not get too hung up on the word itself. Interest in collaboration has risen out of the business need to become more responsive, productive and efficient while delivering goods and services.

"The real issue is knowledge sharing and when firms look at programs and ways to redefine processes to be more productive and efficient, then collaboration is one of the tools to get moving along that path," he said. Locandro believes that collaboration tools such as IM, email, forums, portals, search engines can help allow users to collectively harness intellectual property and information.

"Collaboration is one way of unlocking the value of the intellectual asset," he added. "It can be at a personal level though personal networking and communications, or at enterprise level through forums and team-level collaboration groups."

Vendors perk their ears

A number of vendors are gearing up with more collaborative tools and more integration between these tools and traditional applications. IBM, Microsoft and Novell are aggressively pushing their proprietary communications platforms incorporating email, IM, web and audio conferencing as well as document-sharing.

Collaborative activities can be internal within organizations or external between disparate sites or offices, or between partners and customers.

According to Tony Tsang, director for Greater China & Korea at WebEx, rising interest in external collaborative tools like web and audio conferencing has been driven by: increased comfort levels with doing business over the web, and the decreasing cost of bandwidth. WebEx, which provides web conferencing services, has grown rapidly in the US and Europe and is starting to establish a userbase in Asia Pacific.

Tsang said customers in Hong Kong typically use his firm"s service to conduct meetings, training and e-learning, while in Korea, there is more advanced usage with companies using the service to interface with R&D teams and production teams from different locations. Disparate teams can share design documents and work together in real-time to ensure production goes to plan.

WebEx"s services allow not only voice and video communications via the web but also some basic file sharing where users can edit and annotate working documents while in the conference.

IBM Hong Kong also has customers utilizing similar tools. Kevin O"Connell, senior consultant for IBM Software Group, noted this type of collaboration was popular among companies with geographically dispersed offices. Manufacturing companies like Conrad Electronic International, have offices in Hong Kong and facilities in China, said Alan Chan, SMB and channels manager for IBM Hong Kong"s Software Group.

Chan said many SMBs with offices in both Hong Kong and the mainland use conferencing and file sharing tools to collaborate on computer-aided design (CAD) diagrams and files to improve the design-to-production process. Conrad is using Lotus Domino as the application development platform to integrate the administration, sales, accounting, quotation and email communications systems to help create further staff collaboration.

New tools must play well with others

IBM bases its collaboration strategy around its Lotus Notes and Domino messaging software which it integrates with IBM"s WebSphere Portal application, while communications tools like IM and web conferencing are additional options.

Microsoft is embedding collaborative features into future versions of its desktop and server applications, particularly in Office and Outlook. Dedicated collaboration tools include Live Communications Server 2005, its enterprise IM and file sharing platform, and Live Meeting, a conferencing tool. In Hong Kong, Mandarin Hotels and CiF, New World"s IT arm, have both recently deployed Live Communications Server.

Meanwhile Novell recently announced the latest version of its collaboration platform, GroupWise 7. This features integrated email and instant messaging, enhanced Outlook support and a pre-bundled SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

According to a report by research firm Gartner, by 2009, 80 percent of collaborative tools will incorporate asynchronous and real-time capabilities in the same application. Gartner said that, to achieve effective collaboration, emerging real-time tools will have to blend well with existing asynchronous tools like email and discussion boards.

This combination of real-time and asynchronous features reflects the way people actually work. Typically people meet-face-to-face or via messaging and conference tools-to set goals, inform and establish and assign tasks, noted the report. To achieve optimal results, meetings and individual efforts should take place within a shared environment with common resources, business logic, documents and workflow.

Collaboration process

Locandro from CLP said his firm"s efforts towards greater collaboration and knowledge have created processes comparable to BP, Siemens and Singapore Airlines-who represent leading best practice in knowledge-sharing and collaborative initiatives.

CLP has central data repositories for sharing of documents and images to aid engineering and maintenance work. The engineering department has invested significant effort in creating more knowledge sharing and collaboration with the use of portals, chat forums and shared resources. CLP uses these tools to help share techniques and advice among its staff, with processes that help codify user knowledge into reusable information by others.

In most cases, people initially engage in collaboration initiatives as a result of embarking on process automation exercises. As processes mature they reach a point where more collaboration is required between different parties within that process.

"This is the point when you look at ways they can work better together and what tools you can use to enable it," said Locandro. "However most companies are still in the mode of automating basic document processes and have yet to mature to a level where further collaboration can take place."

At CLP, a roadmap for collaboration and knowledge sharing is clearly specified: workers start with physical collaboration and then move into more virtual means through the use of technology. "Vendors are trying to build enterprise [collaboration] suites on their own," he said, "but I don"t think anyone successfully does it because collaboration is part of a company culture."

Locandro insists the company itself should know how best to move from physical collaboration towards virtual means. "Every firm must go through these stages," he added. "No organization in my experience can go straight to [collaboration] being technology-enabled without going through the physical process first."

Changing user behavior

At the Securities and Futures Commission in Hong Kong, tools such as chat rooms, forums, and integrated document management systems are being evaluated. The aim is to help improve staff collaboration and knowledge sharing.

"The provision of tools alone will not change user behavior," said Ringo Chiu, CIO at SFC. "You can provide the best thing on earth to help them work together but users are used to their own silos and ways of working." Technology and tools are the final part of the problem, argued Chiu. "Addressing [the] culture, company direction and attitude is critical." He stressed the need to create the right culture, correct governance and proper process planning to foster closer collaboration.

Once these are in place, firms can identify areas with common objectives to build processes and workflow, then apply technology to enable the process. "But this is not a CIO problem alone," said Chiu. "It"s also up to CEOs or COOs to push this as well."

When it comes to implementing initiatives and tools, Chiu believes that past technology lacked the necessary functions to enable the required sharing and collaboration. Many companies understand that staff often view knowledge sharing as an additional administration task to their daily routine, noted Chiu. He said that tools are not usually integrated into daily operations and systems that require staff to log information via another interface or system.

"There must be direct links or interfaces from production applications like email to the central data repository or portal," added Chiu.

Embedding collaboration

This need for integration between systems and end-users" daily operations is critical in establishing any collaborative environment. "Collaboration is not something you start by clicking on something," said Peter de Zoete, real time collaboration lead for Microsoft Greater China. "It should not be a separate activity, but built into the activities and tools you are already using."

Microsoft"s integrated communications approach starts with identifying the person through the US-based firm"s proprietary Active Directory authentication. From there, "presence" information is built into all the necessary tools and applications to facilitate effective collaboration.

IBM shares the belief that having collaboration built-in is critical. O"Connell said that collaboration enables access to all the tools and information required from a single point. "By not integrating the various tools and information resources of end-users, businesses are missing out on productivity opportunities and better business processes," he declared.

According to his colleague, Chan, the majority of companies are still striving to gain a consolidated view of their data. "Intranets and portals so far have been used ineffectively as mere information repositories," he said. "To deliver effective collaboration they need to be more than that-they should integrate applications, data and processes."

O"Connell noted that all new applications must be considered for their integration and collaborative features. "Firms should look at collaborative tools that best serve them in the future and not just the one need at that [particular] time."

As for choosing the tools for the job, CLP"s Locandro advises using the packages and applications available on the shelf. "Pick what suits you at your stage of evolution," he said.

Mass coordination

The ideal collaborative scenario is to integrate tools and platforms so that users instantly communicate with each other without having to leave their core applications. For example, call center operators can stay within a CRM application and still locate an expert to answer a query via IM. Users can call a colleague via IP telephony to discuss edits to a shared document.

While the potential is great, IT organizations need to be prepared for the consequences of deploying this instant communication capability. Vendors and end-users stress the need to educate users on the appropriate use of these tools, understand infrastructure and resource needs, and set policies.

Tsang at WebEx says firms need to think about their IT resources. Is this technology right for my needs? Is it scalable? Do I have the skills to manage these communications tools? Can I manage the bandwidth and security needs? These are questions users must ask, he said.

Chan at IBM also noted the new tools will bring compliance and auditing issues. If they are to be used for business, they must adhere to the same recording standards as email and other types of business communications. O"Connell added that securing data, enabling authorized access and ensuring information integrity are key to creating effective collaboration.

Once implemented, users also need to set up benchmarks to review how the tools are being used. This will prove whether they are boosting or draining productivity. Both Chan and O"Connell stressed the need to gauge user feedback. Are they comfortable with using the tools? Do they like the interfaces?

While vendors will declare that collaboration is for everyone, companies must think hard about the needs and parameters for these tools. Otherwise the promised world of virtual and completely synchronized communications and meetings with your team members could seem more like an endless nightmare of unwanted interruptions and distractions.

-IDG staff contributed to this report