Collaboration is huge. This means collaboration tools are huge. The rising popularity of Microsoft Teams and Slack has all bolstered the hype, but collaboration is not a new concept.
We spoke to Peter Law, Channel Manager at VanillaIP, to discuss the collaboration conundrum. As a leader in cloud communications solutions, VanillaIP is having more and more collaboration discussions.
What is Collaboration?
"The action of working with someone to produce something". Working with one another has been the foundation of human success for thousands of years. In the modern workplace, effective collaboration, has been enabled by face to face meetings, and subsequently, meetings and interactions that took place in the central meeting place, or office.
What about when you can't meet face to face? That is the conundrum that modern collaboration tools aim to resolve. Effective collaboration without going into the office.
Peter explains modern collaboration is proliferating from the top down. Enterprise organisations have a more pressing need to enable remote collaboration. They have more offices, and more employees, so enabling effective remote working is a real concern.
"Hosted telephony was going to take the world by storm. Only now are we seeing Cloud Telephony in the ascendancy versus on-premises.
The install base is still 80% PBX and Cloud 20%. Our industry is renowned for hyping upcoming technologies, which take a number of years to be widely adopted".
Do SMBs need to collaborate?
Of course. The question 'do they need modern collaboration tools?' is a more pertinent one. SMBs collaborate constantly. Due to their size, is remote collaboration less important?
"Many companies still work on the basis of coming into the office. They rarely need collaboration tools as they collaborate face to face. Business owners can manage and monitor staff easily".
There is also a certain reluctance from smaller businesses to gamble on tech. Peter cites the example of SIP. It took many years before uptake reached high levels. Smaller businesses are more inclined to sweat legacy investments, due to concerns over new technologies and the cost of business disruption.
Management
Management is another factor which hinders flexible working and collaboration. The traditional view of the manager overseeing everything is lost if everyone works remotely. How can you be sure staff are working if you can't see them? The trust barrier must be subdued to enable modern collaboration. "They are worried that staff working from home will be distracted. The working environment may not be professional enough."
Numerous studies show remote workers are more productive. Productivity must eventually outweigh the fear of loss of control.
Steps to Collaboration
Peter explains that technology evangelists, like VanillaIP, need to help the SMB market to embrace collaboration.
