In my last two blogs, I introduced readers to a new way of thinking about communications, with the advent of cloud collaboration[1]. I spoke about how telephony has become a part of a wider communication strategy -- one that also incorporates collaboration tools, as well as voice in the cloud.
The changes in the way we collaborate and communicate are being driven by a need to work across regions and borders in a seamless manner. We no longer just work with colleagues in our own department but extend that collaboration to staff and teams in various departments, and across regions and countries.
For example, in the 1990s the vast majority of office work was done by people sitting by themselves in a cubicle. Take that forward, office walls are being removed and there is a significant shift towards team work that crosses multiple boundaries - location, time zone, function, business, age, nationality, and culture.
What we are seeing is organisations having the ability to replicate the way they work in a virtual world. Let me explain by using a typical 'meeting' as an example.
In the real world, we walk into the meeting room and people bring out different insights and data points. Someone brings out an Excel spreadsheet; someone else may bring in a business intelligent dashboard or even a customer relationship management system to show different data points to debate and solve the problem.
However, during that meeting, you may stop mid-way. One person may need to have a side conversation with someone else in the room, to accelerate the meeting and solve the situation a lot quicker than what is happening in the meeting. They take that side conversation out of the room and then bring their findings