As we go about our duties at our workplace every day, we all feel a little exasperated some time or the other – because of responsibilities or hierarchies that were ill-defined, information that was lost or not passed in a timely manner, mis-communication, or tasks that seem to keep piling up. And we all have that inner thought – things could be done so much better!

And once we’ve worked in enough companies, we realize that these problems are not specific to one company or boss but are universal. We are experiencing the problem of collaboration. In a sense, collaboration is the entire discipline of management – making sure people work together smoothly to achieve company goals. And the problem is not solely one of technology. It is a sum total of everything that makes a company – people, processes, culture, organizational structure AND technology.

David Coleman, famous collaboration speaker, author and consultant, who has spent more than 20 years working with anything from the largest companies in the world to small start ups, has used his experience to write a book listing 42 things that companies can do to ensure better collaboration. It is an immensely good read, with very practicable tips and real cases, and borrows from the latest in organizational design and internet technology.

We have partnered with David to provide HyperOffice site visitors with a free copy of the eBook. Be sure to grab your copy.

Technology has been taken over by the Cloud. Putting it in simple terms, ‘Cloud’ is the new meme used to describe nirvana from clogged up computers and saving files directly to the internet. So how does it work?

Essentially, instead of saving files to a hard disk or using software on a computer that is directly installed, the Cloud offers the ability to quickly and easily access these files using an Internet connection.  It all sounds very swish, but what actually are the benefits?

Services that offer Cloud storage can provide businesses with the storage space that they simply wouldn’t otherwise have access to. As storage is provided using a vast remote server, businesses can pay a relatively small amount of money (compared to the relevant cost of physical hardware) to receive a phenomenal amount of storage space.

As more and more companies rely on the Cloud, this means that the need for a contingency plan in the case of file loss can be completely eradicated. Recovery times are quick and relatively simple should anything go wrong, as all information and data is backed up onto the servers. This is great in the event of files being accidentally removed, or worse, stolen.

A huge benefit to businesses is the ability for multiple staff to access, edit and share folders and files that they are currently working on. This means that collaboration between teams of people can be greatly improved, and no time is wasted on uploading and emailing files individually. This end result for businesses – efficiency.

Cloud resources are easily scalable – they can be altered to suit growing needs, which is perfect for companies who are unsure of their growth curve.

On the topic of efficiency, it’s also worth noting that using Cloud as your storage solution will use at least 30% less energy than by using regular servers based on-site. Perfect for any companies with a strong interest in green ethics.

The Cloud has also rapidly become more and more accessible via smartphones and tablets – meaning that your documents are truly available anytime and anywhere. For people who work on the move, or do a lot of travelling, this can be a lifeline for effectively managing time away from the office.

Businesses should all be aware that mobile computing and social use of technology is still growing rapidly. Enterprises will need to keep up or get left behind.

About the author

Shelly Flaherty is a mom of two and an avid freelance blogger. She also works alongside Ideal cleaning services group. In her spare time she loves to spend time with her kids.

We tend to get carried away in the mood of the moment. As enterprise social networks started to pick up, weren’t we a little too quick to grab our shovels, prepare tearful eulogies post the “death of intranets” in the manner of “intranets were great BUT…..”, and start to drag the intranet away?

Not so quick.

Admittedly, intranets have had a rocky past, suffering from adoption problems, never quite delivering their promise. However, the objectives where sound, and lots of companies which thought through their intranet implementation, did have great success. Social software on the other hand, is beyond its bright eyed boy stage, and has to bring more than a business version of “let’s exchange likes”. The right way then, is the best of both worlds. This coming together is already underway with the assimilation of modern social concepts in traditional intranets – the “social intranet”.

Although I was going to discuss all the ways in which a social intranet improves upon a traditional intranet in a single blog entry, I realized that each area deserves its own attention. This is therefore a series.

Social intranets and knowledge management

Shortcomings of knowledge management in traditional intranets

A classical objective of the intranet was knowledge management – capturing all possible knowledge created in the organization and making it readily available to everyone else. The idea was to capture learning as problems were faced, solved, best practices developed, and share such learning across offices, teams and hierarchies – a growth and maturation for the entire organization in the process.

Although the intranet was able to capture knowledge to an extent, it was never able to solve the problem of sharing. Knowledge created and captured in the intranet in the forms of documents, presentations, or best practice sheets, never left the team, office or division “workspace”. The inherent flaw lay in the structure of traditional intranets – everything was blocked off into “intranet workspaces”, each an island of information in itself.

Another major flaw with the design of the intranet was that although it captured the information created through formal processes – documents, presentations, spreadsheets, code-bases – it was in-adept at capturing the key resource of any organization – the knowledge in the minds of workers. The workers had no incentive to, or means of, voluntarily and proactively contributing what they had in their minds in terms of ideas, suggestions, and solutions to others’ problems. One could even think of it as outdated human resource philosophy as reflected in traditional intranets – why would an employee go beyond their job role to help their colleagues and company?

That is what changes in a profound way in social intranets.

Employee generated content. Social intranets bring to intranets one of the main sources of the web 2.0 revolution – user generated content. Content is not created at the higher echelons of the company and handed down to everyone else. Social intranets equip employees with the tools to contribute their own content. Employees engage in open conversations by finding colleagues, posting messages on their walls, contributing articles, following and participating in existing conversations, or setting up ad hoc groups around common areas of interest. In the process they are contributing their knowledge, and gaining from the knowledge of others. And this knowledge is accessible to everyone else in the company for all times.

Sharing across silos. Another thing social tools encourage employees to do is to freely share information across formal organizational groups. For example, if you are on a cross functional group, you can simply post a message on the wall of a teammate in another division at another office, and attach a document from your groups document repository that might help them. In doing this, you actually created an information bridge across groups. As this is one more and more, group boundaries become porous and information travels freely across them. Company knowledge is now not siloed, but available across the grid.

Access people. As mentioned before, key company knowledge resides not in company documents, but inside the minds of employees. Employees have a face in social intranets in the form of profiles which detail their skills, projects and experience. You can easily locate the right people across the organization by searching for skills or experience, and approach them directly for help. More often than not, you will find they are willing to help, which saves you the time and effort of reinventing the wheel.

At an abstract level, what social intranets really represent is a shift in philosophy. They recognize people as the most important repository of organizational knowledge, and believe that employees will go out of their way, beyond their formal roles, to help their colleagues and the organization – and derive satisfaction from that (HR practitioners call this theory Y).

HyperOffice President Farzin Arsanjani and eminent ZDNet journalists Christopher Dawson and Larry Dignan will get together for a live online panel discussion on “doing business in India” today (27th June 2012).

If you are interested, you can register at the following link – http://www.techrepublic.com/webcasts/live-webcast-doing-business-in-india-a-primer-for-us-it/4285349

India’s spectacular economic growth story is widely known, and most companies either already have a presence in India, or are considering entering Indian markets. Such companies will find this panel discussion immensely useful. ZDNet felt that HyperOffice would offer some important insights on the subject, since we have a long standing relationship with Tata Communications, who offer HyperOffice communication and collaboration solutions to their telecom customers.

Be there!

It’s a closed deal. The media has widely reported the imminent acquisition of Yammer, the enterprise social network provider, by Microsoft for a whistle-evoking 1.2 Billion dollars. Everyone knows something big is happening here, and experts, in characteristic style, have quickly congregated around opposite ends of the pole – equally shrill in lauding or denouncing the move.

It is unclear as yet how Yammer will fit in Microsoft’s product portfolio – will it be used to bolster Sharepoint’s outdated and weak social capabilities? Or will it go the Skype way, where Microsoft uses it to enter enterprises through the backdoor (employees using it in small groups with or without official approval), and then upsell heavier Microsoft enterprise products like Sharepoint, Dynamics CRM and Office through integration points?

Social business is the winner

But underlying both of the above two approaches, or any other approach Microsoft might take, is an implicit acknowledgment – Social tools in businesses are here to stay. And this time, unlike Office 365 in cloud collaboration, Microsoft does not want to be a laggard in the race.

As a general rule, it suits giant companies to slow market movements and keep the status quo, and milk existing markets where they have a dominant position. Microsoft did that with cloud computing, till it was finally forced to move to the cloud with Office 365. But when an IT giant invests in and shows commitment to a new market movement, it is an indicator of the undeniable importance of the movement. Microsoft’s $1.2 billion spend on Yammer is one such indicator for the social business space. IBM’s attempt to be associated with the organizational study of social business is another. This is further supported by a flurry of merger and acquisition activity in the social business space.

But the most important indicator is real businesses using social businesses tools more and more, and reporting benefits. Email might not quite be dead yet, but it is increasingly finding a new companion in social business software.

But an important, and yet unresolved question is the best approach for a company to introduce social software. At HyperOffice, as we have argued before, we feel that collaboration software is a natural environment for social tools to be introduced. Social and collaboration tools both have something to contribute to each other (collaboration tools become less siloed, and social tools become task oriented rather than encouraging empty chatter), and moreover, both relate to generic communication and collaboration needs that exist in all organizations.

Microsoft probably plans to do the same by integrating Yammer into Sharepoint, its collaboration software. This is hinted by the emphasis Jared Spataro, Director of SharePoint Product Management, has put on social capabilities in Sharepoint’s future.

However, we feel that Microsoft is not likely to do justice to bringing the collaboration and social pieces together, given the vastly different architectures of Sharepoint and Yammer (the former is server based, while the latter is cloud native). Add to this the inertia of a risk-averse large enterprise with existing revenue bases to defend.

With most players in the market geared either as “collaboration” suites (Office 365, Google Apps), or “enterprise social networks” (Yammer, Chatter), we feel there is a gap in the market of a solution which combines the two approaches. We hope to fill this gap with HyperSocial….