Enterprise Content Management: Collaboration

Work Collaboration Under Enterprise Content Management
Collaboration is incidental to business processes and not yet a structured process by itself. In fact, most collaboration occurs through ad hoc practices. E-mails and instant messaging are popular mediums for collaborative working, and these are quite unstructured.

Enterprise Content Management software can provide more structured forums for collaborative working, like virtual project spaces, whiteboards and Web-conferencing facilities. These are, however, only tools; organizations have to use these to develop structured collaboration practices.

Structuring starts with a clear idea of what needs to be completed to achieve team goals and define who does what. With these clear ideas, a plan to use the available collaboration tools most effectively can be developed.

Collaboration Tools
    •Shared Workspaces are virtual electronic meeting places where members of a team
     can make presentations using audio, video, and graphics. They can also access and
     interact with the documents on the workspace.
    •Discussion forums allow users to review and contribute to discussions on topics of
     interest to them. Unlike Web meetings, discussion forums allow the users to review
     and post at times of their own convenience. Threaded discussion under which an
     original post and responses to it are presented as a continuous thread makes it easy
     to review the whole debate or discussion.
    •Instant messaging is a real-time, text-based conversation among persons separated
     by short or vast distances. Unlike e-mails, which might remain unanswered for long
     periods, IM enables immediate to and fro communications.
    •Web-conferencing technology enables not only group meetings of persons located
     all around the world, but also makes it possible to conduct online seminars open to a
     worldwide audience. Webinars can be highly useful for customer relations, business-
     partner education, and employee training. Conferencing products come with features
     such as multimedia presentation facilities, online polling, wikis, blogs, discussion
     forums, and instant messaging.
    •Wikis are web sites where users can add, delete, and edit content. They also typically
     contain links to other sites, which users can reference to clearly understand the terms
     used in the wiki. Wikis are ideal to tap into the knowledgebase of employees, business
     partners, and others. Marketing personnel can use them to share up-to-date market
     developments and other information. They are also ideal to share best practices
     among co-workers.

The above tools, and others like search facilities and podcasts and carefully developed collaboration routines, make collaborative working between remotely located team members a regular and highly productive feature of organizational functioning.

Some Workflow Specifics
Processes are workflows with predefined input, output, and purpose. It typically includes a well-defined sequence of activities that accept the input and produce the intended output. Processes are explained through the use of flowcharts that graphically show the inputs, activities, sequences, relationships, and outputs, providing both an overview and a look at the details.

Policies specify how given goals are to be achieved under given conditions. Both the goals and the rules and regulations are covered here.

Practices include detailed plans supported by Schedules and Resource Allocations, standard operating procedures, and documentation routines.

Work Studies identify the essential activities involved in a process to detect redundant activities and duplication of effort. By eliminating these, the process can be completed quicker and/or the intended purpose can be achieved better.

Motivational Studies add depth to work studies by considering the participants as humans instead of as robots willing to carry out repetitive tasks endlessly. Work began to be designed in ways that were more satisfying and meaningful to the workers.

Information Technology has transformed workflows, by making possible such low cost options as just-in-time inventory management and flexible manufacturing systems.

Even now workflow patterns are changing with the widespread use of the Internet and the feasibility of working together even while separated by vast distances. Enterprise Content Management is a step towards this new environment of global, distributed workflows.

Enterprise Content Management Systems
One of the key objectives of an Enterprise Content Management system is to improve workflows. ECM accomplishes this through better collaboration tools and better knowledge that helps improve business processes.

Conclusion
Workflows include the policies, processes, and practices adopted for achieving specific objectives. Workflows get transformed through work studies and have been improved through the arrival of modern IT. They are being transformed more radically with the use of Web-based systems, including Enterprise Content Management software.