The ROC Concept
In a world where doing more with less has become a business survival mechanism, collaboration remains critical to success. Collaboration is now a daily requirement for organizations of all sizes as they extend the global reach of their products. The trend applies not only to Fortune 1000s but also to small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs), from single owners to operations with less than 500 people.
Face-to-face meetings are often seen as a critical part of the collaboration equation, historically requiring expensive travel within a global enterprise or to meet customers. But flying and commuting both generate costs that can add up quickly.
With the rapid adoption of social media by both consumers and businesses alike, more professionals are looking to technology to make connecting remotely more efficient. Companies seeking an edge in 2010 should get acquainted with the idea of “Return on Collaboration,” or ROC. ROC is essentially the benefit companies realize from giving employees the tools they need to collaborate efficiently and effectively. Today’s collaboration technology includes Internet Protocol (IP-based) applications that provide presence information, share documents and presentations, allow immersive video conferencing, and, ultimately, enhance unified communications.
“Today more than ever before, organizations are putting a sharp focus on their abilities to maintain performance, while getting the highest yield possible out of their people and collaboration technology investments,” according to a recent Frost & Sullivan report.
That report also said that among companies that deployed collaboration tools, 72 percent reported better business performance.
Collaboration: A Daily Requirement
More efficient collaboration and more productive meetings will be critical points to monitor as companies decide how to connect their thinkers. Already, workers report spending 19 percent of their business days – eight hours of a 40-hour business week – in meetings, according to research by The Futures Company.
At our company, part of our charge is how to understand if the return on collaboration concept is real and attainable. A recent implementation at a large software company was able to show real benefits from looking at collaboration as a whole system vs. separate pieces—and putting the user experience front and center.
This company’s employees around the world were adopting the technologies in a siloed fashion and were finding them increasingly cumbersome to use. Set-up took forever—registering to get an account, waiting for a booking confirmation, scheduling the conference and then copying and pasting to get everything in one place so the invitation could be e-mailed – all for a 15-minute meeting.
Not a good scenario for a company that was relying more and more on online conferences to meet customer implementation timeframes and other key demands. In addition, the company had growing concerns about the security of its patchwork conferencing system.
So they set a goal to standardize the way its employees, customers and partners collaborate—ensuring everyone would meet the same way in a branded, secure environment. And they smartly understood that they needed an easy-to-use solution that its people would readily embrace so that various departments wouldn’t seek their own vendors for online conferencing purposes.
This company decided to create one system, manage it and support it. A greater ROC—Return on Collaboration—is precisely what the company gained. Some top level metrics include:
>>Increased productivity by reduced average meeting time from 46 to 37 minutes
>>Faster start-up time for meetings—what used to take 7-10 minutes now takes a minute
>>Increased collaboration—from 80,000 meetings a month to 300,000
>>Across-the-board travel costs reduced by more than one third
As excerpted from the PGi whitepaper of the same name. MORE TOMORROW.