So Microsoft Corp. and Nortel Networks announced some slightly more specific offerings and plans regarding their Innovative Communications Alliance, a shared vision of unified enterprise communications. Of course, it will be at least 2008 before we see any actual products that matter to most of us. On the positive side, this gives both companies some time to try to make reality match their vision – or, perhaps, the real collaboration and communications needs of enterprise customers. Meanwhile…
Anyone else out there old enough to remember the term "last mile problem?" In telecommunications, the tricky bit isn't delivering fancy, powerful services to the local telephone switching centers, with their powerful computers and high-capacity data and voice networks. No, the hard bit is cramming any of those services down the single pair of twisted copper wires that still connect most people to that fancy, powerful networked world. In other words, the last mile problem. Hold onto the concept; a quasi-relevant analogy approaches…
Almost everyone at most enterprises uses e-mail. Almost everyone at most enterprises also uses some form of IT-enabled collaboration tools beyond e-mail. Examples range for voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephony to instant messaging (IM) to portals and online "workspaces."
Frankly, IT-enabled collaboration represents a significant "first mile problem" for those attempting to bring effective BPM to their organizations. That's because the collaborations among colleagues are the beginnings of the definitions of the processes that drive the business. Those collaborations also provide clues and signposts about how people actually do work, which means they can be essential to any efforts at business knowledge management (BKM) or human interaction management.
So how best to link collaboration to BPM and its follow-ons? Well, anything that helps to capture and analyze information about how people use collaboration tools and enterprise intellectual property (IP) can help a lot. (Of course, the privacy-minded among us should take care to ensure that only information about collaborations is captured and analyzed, and not the communications themselves. That's a separate, far sticker set of issues and challenges.)
Information about how documents are shared and routed, and to whom, can also speak volumes about incumbent workflows and processes. When combined with user input, solicited and collected via interviews and surveys, such information can speed a department or company toward better, smarter BPM, BKM, and human interaction management. (I'm resisting the obvious acronym "HIM," because the temptation is too great to make up a companion concept that has an acronym of "HER.")
Anyway, some things for you think about while I'm in transit. I'm on my way to IBM Corp.'s Lotusphere confab/revival meeting. I'll probably have more to say about BPM/BKM-aware, IT-powered collaboration after poking around at that event. Stay tuned, and drop a line with any relevant thoughts or suggestions.
Michael Dortch has been an analyst, 'information entrepreneur,' speaker, and writer about IT and 'the real world" for the past 30 years. After almost 10 years at the Robert Frances Group (RFG), Michael begins a new position with Aberdeen Group in September.
Dennis Byron is an analyst with ebizQ, focusing on Open Source Software as well as Business Process Management technologies.
