Breaking free of email dependence to collaborate more effectively

Challenge

With headquarters in two cities 500 km apart and many other locations, NAVIO Computer regularly used email to communicate internally and with its outside partners. However, the company that helps its customers optimize efficiency found its own communications method to be ineffective.

As volumes of emails piled up, team members had difficulty culling important information and often couldn’t grasp the immediacy of requests. Frequently, recipients had to extract information and enter it into a separate spreadsheet. As a result, the unintended lack of responsiveness affected joint projects, such as seminars, because tasks went unfinished or status updates became confusing. The company also sensed it was losing intellectual capital, with no formal repository to capture and share lessons learned and generate new ideas.

Solution
To help solve the problem, NAVIO Computer deployed the IBM SmartCloud™ Engage (formerly LotusLive™ Engage) services. The solution features the IBM SmartCloud Connections collaboration service, which incorporates file sharing, activity management and instant messaging, and the IBM SmartCloud Meetings service, which enables meetings over the web while sharing presentations. The Activity function in the solution quickly became the management tool of choice, allowing teams to focus on the critical items that need immediate resolution.

For a recent seminar project with two partners, NAVIO Computer used the shared activity space to first coordinate content and then create to-do items to which the various participants would attach comments. Completed tasks were deleted simply by checking them off. For detailed discussions, teams made space for an electronic board within the SmartCloud Engage services.

Because all participants could see and share the most up-to-date information, the client reports that it was “able to arrive at the day of the seminar with everybody on the same page.”

In addition, files from the seminar are readily available for future projects, enabling the next team to find contacts and see how long certain tasks took to complete and in what sequence they were completed. This captured data helps NAVIO Computer consistently improve processes and boost productivity.

Another bonus is greater participation when discussion areas are used for brainstorming, enabling NAVIO Computer to benefit from ideas offered by staffers reticent to speak up in face-to-face meetings. In this “no idea is rejected” forum, employees tend to collaborate more freely, adding comments and suggestions to one another’s ideas, much like texting or posting online.

In the future, NAVIO Computer plans to capitalize on web meetings with screen sharing to replace its existing television network, which does not allow for the kind of interaction the SmartCloud Meetings service provides. In this way, the client hopes to drive higher-quality software development in real time and draw its diverse teams closer together.

Benefits
· Helps ensure everyone is focused on the right tasks with the ability to reliably share information both inside and outside the company
· Aggregates collective wisdom, enabling teams to build on lessons learned and launch new projects more efficiently
· Keeps projects on track by managing activity in a shared forum to help participants understand immediate needs and deadlines

For more information
To learn more about IBM SmartCloud for Social Business service offerings, contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit: ibmcloud.com/social