Tuesday, 21 January 2014
Monday, 20 January 2014
Saturday, 18 January 2014
The Perfect Blend of Secure File Sharing and Enterprise Social Collaboration Tool
Friday, 17 January 2014
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.
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
Wednesday, 15 January 2014
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:
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.
Saturday, 11 January 2014
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.
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.
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