About to implement an enterprise social network? Wait! Read this first.

A predicted 65% of large European enterprises will have adopted social tools for business purposes by the end of 2014, so it’s increasingly likely that if your company hasn’t already adopted an enterprise social network it will this year. Adopting social tools is easy enough, but making sure it is adopted properly is a whole different matter.
Simply rolling out an enterprise social network and expecting people to start using it is not enough. In fact, implementing an enterprise social network requires planning, strategy and careful project management which begins before the system is even in place. So how should you prepare to implement an enterprise social network?

1. Plan, plan, plan

Before you start doing anything else, you need to figure out exactly what you want to achieve from your enterprise social network. If you’ve had to pitch to higher ups in order to get buy-in for an enterprise social network, chances are you’ve planned it to the minutest detail already. Nevertheless, as with any project, planning is the most important step and it is without it that a project (and an enterprise social network) fails read more.

Enterprise collaboration enables new ways of doing business

At HighQ we love to be part of the community and contribute our thoughts to the industry.

Our resident social business expert Ben Wightwick has contributed to FreePint’s topic series, The Social Enterprise, which looks at the ways that organisations are making the most of their internal social networks and knowledge management.

FreePint produces and publishes content and offers communities of practice and consulting based on its position and engagement in the business information industry.

Ben’s blog post and extended article, Enterprise Collaboration Enables New Ways of Doing Business, looks at factors to consider when reviewing enterprise collaboration solutions and some of the influencing trends associated with social business and the future of work.

Head to FreePint’s website to have a read.

Enterprise collaboration news: February 2014 round-up

February was all about social. Maybe that’s because it’s the month of love, or maybe it’s because people finally felt like they wanted to interact with their friends and colleagues after a month of New Year hibernation. Whatever the reason behind it, connected organisations, enterprise social networks and information sharing were all over our favourite blogs and news sites, and here’s our pick of them.

An article by Himanshu Sareen in Wired proposes the idea that enterprise social networks may one day replace email. This is something we’ve been suggesting for a while, though we freely admit that email will never die completely. Himanshu explains that enterprise social networks facilitate increased interaction and cohesion among co-workers (especially in large organisations). However, he acknowledges that “like any corporate initiative, progressing toward a social business requires significant strategic thinking.” By way of emphasis, Himanshu quotes Gartner, who state that “80 percent of social business efforts will not achieve the intended benefits due to inadequate leadership and an overemphasis on technology.” read more.

How to stay focussed by centralising your notifications

When you’re busy, you want to keep your focus and make sure everything runs as smoothly as possible. When you’re getting emails here, LinkedIn InMails there, instant messages, phone calls, post-it notes and – god forbid – faxes from every direction, you are at risk of getting distracted from what you’re doing.
Whether you’re trying to find a handwritten note in a stack of paper or can’t remember if someone shared important information with you in an email or an instant message, it is time consuming to search through all your notifications and communication channels to find it.

Keeping all your notifications in one place will help you to keep your focus. Instead of alerts interrupting your train of thought, you can use your enterprise collaboration platform to manage your notifications for you. You’ll be able to search and find just the right piece of information exactly when you need it, rather than scouring through many message silos to find what you’re looking for read more.

Stuck at home due to the tube strike? HighQ Collaborate keeps you working

We’re headquartered in London, and today we’re in the midst of tube chaos as Transport for London staff hold a two-day strike. Londoners are struggling to get in to work, stuck on buses, queuing outside stations, or waiting in hour-long lines for taxis.
For those who have tried and failed to make it into work this morning, having regretfully given up after seeing the hopeless crowds attempting to make any kind of Central-ward motion (Boris bike stands empty, overground train platforms packed), working from home is the last option.
Even this causes disruptions to working folks’ day, as many businesses are not geared for home workers. For companies where all documents are hosted locally, email is the only way to communicate with the office and this relies on at least one poor soul to have made it in through the chaos to be able to email files to demanding colleagues.
Without the physical presence of the team, meetings must be cancelled, client catch ups must be postponed, and projects must be delayed. The tube strike isn’t just a mere irritation to thousands of commuters, but in fact causes thousands of pounds of losses in productivity for businesses across the capital read more.

Adding value with HighQ Diligence

Back in September 2013 I wrote a blog announcing the launch of our latest product, HighQ Diligence. This generated a lot of interest from our existing clients but also from firms we haven’t partnered with just yet. In the past few months we’ve been extremely busy showing the product to over 40 organisations and so far the reaction has been excellent. We’ve shown the product to the following industries, in the UK, Europe and North America:

1. Law firms

2. Banks

3. Legal Process Outsourcing (LPO) providers

4. Accountancy practices

What’s been really interesting is that we’ve discovered a number of additional benefits and use cases that the product can generate, and so I thought I’d write about some of these in this piece. I end with an insight into what we’re considering might be in store for due diligence and our product in the future.

Quick recap

We designed and built HighQ Diligence in conjunction with several large law firms to address the common pain points firms experience when undertaking due diligence exercises for clients. The product has been built to make due diligence review exercises more efficient, transparent, less prone to errors and more standardised within a firm. We also built a document engine which at the click of a button creates a firm’s house style due diligence report, saving vast amounts of time and money, allowing law firms to report back to clients much faster. So overall, the product is all about saving money (on billable hours lost in inefficiencies) and providing a much better service to clients with faster and more accurate due diligence reports read more.

A day in the life of HighQ: Head of Operations EMEA

In the first of a new series of blog posts revealing how we at HighQ use our own system, Sebastiaan Bos, our Head of Operations EMEA, tells us how he uses HighQ Collaborate to stay in touch with our global team and the clients he works with most closely.
I am based in HighQ’s Netherlands office in Amsterdam (Schiphol-Rijk). From the Dutch office we work together with the all global regions: London, India, Australia and the USA, and on a daily basis I stay in contact with them through HighQ Collaborate.
As we’re such a global company it’s really important that we stay in constant communication, otherwise it’s easy to get left behind. Collaborate helps us to become “spiders in a web” as we say in Dutch – it connects each of us together within one network and when we’re all using one platform it makes our lives easier.
I spend a lot of my spare time checking the activity stream on Collaborate. I use it as a replacement for checking my inbox and catching up on the latest news and updates from our global offices. My email is reduced to client emails, and I do the rest of my internal communication through Collaborate. I interact with my colleagues largely through the activity stream, as I will read their microblogs, comment on their files or pages, and like their updates read more.

3 ways HR teams can use HighQ Collaborate

Human resources and learning and development teams understand the value of an organisation’s network. It is their mission to instil the company culture to new recruits. They ensure that the company makes the most of its most valuable asset, its people.
HR teams are looking to the benefits of secure and social enterprise technology, such as HighQ Collaborate, to help them manage this process. It’s vital that organisations attract, keep and develop the best talent. Here are three ways HR teams can use HighQ Collaborate to help them make the most of their network.

Writing and sharing policies and employee handbooks

Employee handbooks and company policies are an essential part of on boarding new employees and reinforcing the rights of existing employees read more.

Are paperless meetings possible? We think so.

Team meetings can take up a lot of time. Certainly at HighQ, we’re in and out of meeting rooms for much of the day, catching up on where we’re at with our global teams or brainstorming ideas for product updates or marketing strategies.

Usually, team meetings mean everyone traipsing into a meeting room with their own pad of paper and pen, each taking note of what actions they need to take or doodling their way through a particularly dull team meeting. The problem with this is that some people don’t bother to take notes, other people aren’t good at note taking, and the ones who are competent note-takers don’t tend to circulate the information among the team afterwards.

If there’s a document for discussion in the meeting, print-outs need to be made, and sometimes particularly diligent meeting-holders print out copies of their slide deck too read more.

Tuesday Tip: Mobile optimisation

Our Tuesday Tip blog posts give you some quick tips and tricks that help you make the most of HighQ Collaborate. Get more tips in our Tuesday Tip archive.

Mobile optimisation

HighQ Collaborate is designed to work on mobile devices as well as computers. It features a mobile responsive design that adjusts itself based on the device being used.

As the display size shrinks and changes (say switching from landscape to portrait view), the amount of information shown is altered, prioritising certain parts of a page over others by ‘hiding’ some information which can be accessed again easily.
Elements of the site are bigger to support the use of a finger instead of a mouse. And the Top Navigation Bar remains universally available, so it’s incredibly easy to move around the site.

Do you access Collaborate from a mobile? Share your tips in the comments!

Enterprise collaboration news: January 2014 round-up

The first month of 2014 has seen enterprise collaboration news full of suggestions for how organisations can work to improve their operations and make the most of their existing resources.

Leveraging organisations’ networks

Knowledge sharing and talent management have been big news this month, as enterprises look to make improvements and investments in the year ahead. In his article for Forbes, What should HR leaders focus on in 2014?, Edward Lawler explains that the main focus for most organisations this year should be on talent management and talent development, which Edward says is “becoming more critical as many organisations are doing much more complex, knowledge-based work and operating globally”. It’s essential that enterprises have the tools to do this, and knowledge management systems such as HighQ Collaborate will prove increasingly helpful.
As well as managing and leveraging the human network of organisations, it is also vital that employees are connected to one another and the organisation read more at http://highq.com/enterprise-collaboration-news-january-2014-round/

Still using eRoom? Here’s why you need an alternative.

Many organisations still use eRoom. These companies may well have been early adopters of document management and file sharing platforms who have failed to update their systems over the years. Or perhaps they don’t realise there are better options out there. Perhaps they’re afraid of disrupting the way the organisation runs by implementing a new system now after all this time.
However, there are many reasons why companies really ought to seek out a alternative to eRoom.

What’s the problem with eRoom?

One problem with eRoom is that it wasn’t built for complex user set-ups and only offers basic user groups with simple permission sets. Additionally, eRooms deployed on enterprise servers suffer from problems with syncing, caused by flaws in the fundamental architecture of the software.
Aside from the problems with the way the system runs, eRoom also requires hefty initial investment on hardware, software and antivirus as well as eRoom licenses. Ongoing costs include server maintenance and regular software upgrades.
While these may be problems specific to eRoom, there are numerous business problems that eRoom doesn’t begin to solve that its alternatives do.

What should you look for in an alternative to eRoom?

1. A cloud-based platform.

The nature of work is changing. Increasing numbers of companies are opening global offices or working with partners or clients in different offices or cities. Cloud-based systems enable individuals to share files and collaborate from anywhere in the world. Information and files are not stored on shared drives, laptops or inboxes, siloed and difficult to access. Instead, files can be securely accessed from any device anywhere in the world by any user with the correct permissions.

2. A web-based application.

Rather than having to install software on individual machines which requires regular manual updates to keep things running smoothly, web-based platforms require no installation or set-up read more.

Building ROI From Your Investment in HighQ Collaborate

During our forum in 2013 we established that many of our clients buy HighQ Collaborate to address just one single issue of challenge, despite the flexibility of the platform. Our clients said that for them the top five use cases for Collaborate were the following:

75% use HighQ Collaborate for secure file sharing
64% use it for team collaboration
64% use it for secure client extranets
57% use it for virtual data rooms
50% use Collaborate for client knowledge sharing
It’s now the end of January 2014 and all but the last few clients have upgraded to Collaborate 3 and importantly all those clients quickly realised that HighQ Collaborate wasn’t a one trick pony and could add tremendous value to their orgnaisation. Whether our clients purchased HighQ Collaborate for secure file transfer, a white label dataroom, or to provide the latest generation of extranets to their clients, all have realised the untapped potential of their investment.

Since upgrading to Collaborate 3 our clients are slowly coming to understand is that we’ve been working very hard behind the scenes bringing together a blend of those consumer grade solutions to the enterprise, a mobile optimised platform, an awesome user experience and that we’ve had you, the clients, in our thoughts along the way. The majority of us at HighQ have worked in or for law firms before. We know the challenges you face and importantly we are building solutions to help you address them. Read More

Tuesday Tip: Private Messages

Our Tuesday Tip blog posts give you some quick tips and tricks that help you make the most of HighQ Collaborate. Get more tips in our Tuesday Tip archive.

Private messages

You can send and receive private messages in HighQ Collaborate.

Create and access your private messages using the Private Message button on the right of the Top Navigation Bar.

Click on the icon and a drop down menu showing your recent messages will appear (unread messages are shown in blue).

Compose a message from here by clicking the New Message button, or click on the See all… link to access the full Private Message module. You can choose to receive online and email notifications when you are sent a private message.

Do you use private messages? Share your tips in the comments!

Source : http://highq.com/tuesday-tip-private-messages/

Seven Ways Group Tasks Help You Keep Track of Projects

You might be working on multiple projects at once, working on one with multiple components, or maybe just working on a small project – either way, having a place to keep your thoughts organised, keep your team up to date, and to use as a reference point for information is invaluable. The Tasks module in HighQ Collaborate is a useful tool for organising your project and keeping your group tasks on track.

No matter what you’re working on or how many people you’re working with, here are seven ways group tasks will help with your projects:

1. Tasks help you keep track of what you and your team members are doing

All tasks stay visible within your team’s collaboration site, which means that you can always keep an eye on the status of your own tasks and those of colleagues and team members. As the task list is collaborative, everyone can see and add to task lists, and it is easy to quickly see overdue tasks, and filter tasks by assignee or due date. When tasks have been completed, they appear on the task list marked as complete, so it is easy to see what has been done and what is outstanding.

2. Tasks keep all relevant information in one place

What is so great about using group tasks to organise projects is the ability to keep everything associated with the project in one place. You can attach files to tasks and link to wiki pages and blog posts which makes it even easier to carry out the task once you start. If you assign a task to someone else, you can attach all the relevant information that they will need to complete it. Read More

How could your law firm use Collaborate?

Collaboration platforms are designed to help law firms perform better, forge relationships with clients, and share information between colleagues. Here’s how a few of our law firm clients use HighQ Collaborate to solve their business problems and help them achieve more.
Ian Rodwell, Linklaters
“We use HighQ Collaborate to share content with a number of external parties, primarily our clients and also our alliance firms as well, so we see it as a secure way of sharing quite confidential materials with a number of third parties that we deal with. Having the product range from HighQ has really helped establish ourselves in that market, and I think it’s also demonstrated to people internally the art of the possible, and seeing how their content can be delivered to clients - it’s encouraged them to produce more that we can share.”
Esther Albers, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek
“We use Collaborate as a document exchange platform for our clients. It enables us to deepen our client relationships, and to deliver added value to our projects that we run with our clients. What we really like is that it enables us to build real sites, both for ourselves for projects, and also with our clients to exchange know-how, legal alerts and events information.”
Mark Gould, Addleshaw Goddard
“We’re using Collaborate primarily for real estate clients where they serve institutional investors with panels relationships. It replaces a lot of the social tools we were thinking about implementing otherwise, so it saves us a lot of money. Our clients find it particularly useful to have one site to go to, so you might have a surveyor with several different firms he’s working with, but to be able to go to just one site, to be able to deal with documents on a whole range of different sites is great, it’s useful.” read more.

A step-by-step guide to getting your business working social

“Social” in the enterprise context means connecting people. It means associating work, content, knowledge or data with the person who created it. It means being able to see something that someone has done within a collaboration platform and viewing their profile where you can see what else they’ve done and get an idea of their field of expertise. Getting to know the people that you work with helps you to find right person with the right knowledge for the right job. Working social means that knowledge sharing can become a side-effect of working. Everything created within a social collaboration platform is visible to colleagues who have access, so knowledge is instantly shared and information is immediately communicated.

Social business, on the other hand, refers to the concept of optimising the way an organisation runs in order to benefit its entire ecosystem, from owners to employees to clients. This is done by instilling a culture of collaboration, knowledge sharing and open communication throughout the business. The goal of this is to become more effective as an organisation, help people get their work done, and leverage human capital in order to ultimately become a more successful company read more.

Webinar_ Using iSheets to manage a real estate portfolio from HighQ on Vimeo

Webinar_ Simplifying the due diligence process from HighQ on Vimeo

The Perfect Blend of Secure File Sharing and Enterprise Social Collaboration Tool

Highq provides secure file sharing and enterprise social collaboration software to leading law firms, banks and corporations.

A simple guide to easy project management

Project managers, how do you currently schedule your project timelines? Most likely you create a spread sheet or Gantt chart with each of your milestones mapped out. These charts are extremely useful in apportioning time and resource to each element of a project, as well as being able to estimate completion dates for each element and the project as a whole.

However, they hold a vast amount of information that can be difficult for someone who isn’t deeply involved in project management to follow. These individual documents are often held in one place which isn’t easily accessible for everyone involved in the project or those on the outside, and when milestones inevitably changes, it is difficult to communicate the updated time schedule to everyone involved.

Instead of struggling to communicate a complex schedule to many people on your own, you can use your enterprise social collaboration platform’s Events module to do it for you.
But how exactly can you use the Events module to boost visibility and transparency of your project milestones and help you with project management? read more.

Gartner's Nexus of Forces and the Future of Collaboration

HighQ Collaborate uniquely combines advanced document management and file sharing with leading-edge enterprise social collaboration, productivity and knowledge sharing tools that allow users to get their work done more efficiently and securely share information with internal and external users in one unified space, from any desktop or mobile device.

Find the right person for the job with smart expertise location

“Mr A meet Mr B, he has what you need.”
An online system which can make the above statement happen has the capability for expertise location.
There are multiple online systems in place which help people to find other people with specific expertise. All of these systems start with individuals’ details and aggregate information in a way that is searchable and findable.
A People Directory (a Who’s Who) is considered one of the most important resources within an enterprise. Consumer social tools like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter also serve as an important way of finding people that you know or people you want to know. In fact, these online systems have become global directories of contacts and relationships.
The way each of these social tools manages contacts is different depending on their area of focus. For example, LinkedIn focuses on professional contacts whereas Facebook focuses on social contacts.
Social software has matured in the past few years. However, companies are still not fully capitalising on the skills available within the organisation. As this Wall Street Journal article rightly points out:

Talk about a waste! Because of an inability to tap expertise, problems go unsolved, new ideas never get imagined, employees feel underutilized and underappreciated read more.

Breaking your addiction to email… It’s tough but possible.

According to the McKinsey Global Institute report The social economy: Unlocking value and productivity through social technology, which uses IDC data, workers spend 28 per cent of their time reading, writing or responding to email.
If you took email away from lawyers they would feel less productive and isolated. This feeling would be a genuine reaction because over the last ten years Outlook has become the hub of productivity (ironically). I wrote about the changing role of email in business here. I guess you could say that a loss of productivity would be true of most people to begin with, however change is a-coming.
Now, I’m not saying that email is going to be die, because it won’t. It will always have a place in business, but perhaps more aligned to what it was designed to do. I firmly believe that much of the communication that happens over email can be considered a burden on an individual’s productivity and reduces an organisations ability to leverage its human network because it is mis-used as a tool.
What are my issues with email?
1. I am forced to action every item. This is a burden, even when it is a simple delete action.
2. Email is inherently insecure and you have no control over a message once it has been sent.
3. My mailbox is a information silo. This reduces discoverability and encourages a poor sharing culture.
4. It limits my ability to find information or experts because I have to know who to ask a question of.
5. Reply all. Need I say more?
So what are the alternatives? There are many out there but a secure enterprise collaboration platform like HighQ Collaborate (shameless plug) provides all the tools required to enhance many of the existing work practices that exist within law firms. Whether that be sharing a file securely with a client, creating a knowledge community, managing your matters or just encouraging a connected organisation.
So you have identified the type of technology (and I’m making the assumption it will work), but how do we reduce the dependance on email? read more.