The workplace as we know it has been going through a revolution: the traditional set-up of a full-time, on-site, workday at the office is being replaced by various models of online and disperse work environments. Combining cloud computing capabilities, social media concepts, project management, and mobile applications, the future work place is becoming virtual.
At the same time, the role of the conventional human resources (HR) function is changing, too. HR is facing several new challenges: today, recruiting is done through social media channels, such as Linkedin, Facebook, and even Twitter. In addition, outsourcing models and crowdsourcing services are increasingly sough-after and influence the overall personnel strategy. A growing number of employees telecommute and HR departments need to keep in touch with them with less face time.
In utilizing breakthrough telepresence, telerobotics, and collaborative communication tools, companies experience productivity and efficiency gains. Experts note that the communication tools that are expected to have a decline in usage in the future are e-mail and landline phones. Telepresence technologies, or video calling, is expected to grow exponentially, and also collaborative communication platforms.
To read more about the work environment of the future, click on what is reshaping the future organization.
At the Net:Work 2010 conference in San Francisco on December 9, Lars Kamp from Accenture presented his enterprise case-study. Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company, helping clients become high-performance businesses and governments. Accenture has been ranked the world’s best outsourcing provider on the International Association of Outsourcing Professionals (IAOP) Global Outsourcing 100 list, a third year in a row.
Accenture employs over two hundred thousands of professionals serving clients in more than 120 countries and with collaborative teams in various locations globally. Kamp is a Senior Manager in Accenture's Strategy Practice and mainly focuses on the mobile web, digital services and devices at the intersection of consumers, media and technology. He is Accenture's Global Segment Lead for Consumer Technology.
Accenture reported cutting costs and improving performance by leveraging innovative business processes, using collaboration technologies, and by enabling a virtual workforce. With their set of communication and collaboration tools, Accenture not only reduced the overall costs, furthermore their back-office costs have been cut by about 50%. With wireless and mobile access, teams can collaborate without being physically in the same location. Kamp noted that the collaboration tools used by Accenture accelerated the trust among team members and client groups, leading to improved decision-making and synergy. Cloud computing services also offer Accenture financial benefits and they are moving in that direction.
To read more click on cloud-based workforce frameworks and business models of crowdsourcing.
Social collaborative business tools, such as Central Desktop, help businesses to manage projects, teams, processes, files, and documents, and reduce the barriers to share information and processes.
The conventional model of these collaborative software tools makes it easier to communicate, centralizes efforts, improves task management, scheduling (including shared calendars), and the sharing of information, plans, and documents throughout the entire lifecycle of the project. In addition to internal team members, these tools also enable partners, suppliers, contractors and other external workers, that are involved in the project and are outside the company’s firewall or in a different physical location, to work together.
Sharing information with others, who in the past were not able to have access to it, has become a significant change-agent for the workplace. Collaborative tools offer user-centric design, centralized and secure document sharing, and strengthen relationships among team members – all leading to increased efficiency. For example, co-authoring documents in real-time increase team’s productivity. Central Desktop offers a document merger feature, where multiple team members can make changes to the same document and have all of these merged together for a combined version.
Central Desktop, like many collaborative software tools, uses the cloud computing infrastructure, which is accessible anytime from anywhere through wireless networks - a model that reduces overall on-site expensive and multi-part information technology (IT) requirements.
RELATED ARTICLES
- Reshaping the organization - the future work environment
- The future of cloud-based workforce - models of crowdsourcing
MORE INFORMATION
GigaOm's Net:Work 2010 conference: http://gigaom.com/collaboration/network-2010-live-coverage/
Accenture: http://www.accenture.com/
Accenture's outsourcing case studies: http://www.accenture.com/Global/Outsourcing/default.htm
Central Desktop: http://www.centraldesktop.com/
Comments
Great article! I'd like to add that not the tools define the success, but more the processes and the people behind the processes who are willing or not willing to collaborate are key to success. Furtheemore I'd like to suggest a look at www.agreedo.com which applies a simple interface leaving enough room for company specific processes to take place
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