Collaborating In 24 Hours

“What a great idea!  Now we just need to get one of the finance guys involved, and maybe Terri from marketing.  Finance just moved to Fargo, right?  And Terri’s good on the phone.  I think this is going to work well!  Let’s start projecting some revenue numbers.”

Now all you need are some collaboration tools.  You have an opportunity to impact the bottom line.  Big time.  Maybe $10M in revenue this fiscal year, especially if you can beat the competition to market.  You start with email, which soon becomes unwieldy with your fifth spreadsheet revision that needs to be in 10 people’s hands.  You know your organization supports a portal – or something like that – that you’ve heard makes this kind of thing easy.  So you talk about going that route and start asking questions.

“Yep, we have an enterprise architecture team that is in the planning process for rolling out our enterprise portal implementation”

Uh-oh.

“We’ll get you lined up to get on board.  We’ve ordered the hardware and should have the infrastructure setup in no time.  Once we have the governance model sorted out we’ll get you guys started.”

Blank stare.  What?  Did he just say I could collaborate on my project with some others?  Or not? After a moment of awkward silence – for you, not him as he didn’t understand that anything was wrong – you tentatively agree, not so sure what you agreed to, and walk back to your cube wondering if this was all a dream.

What you were just told is that you’re going to need a block of hardwood, say oak, and then some steel.  If you have the budget perhaps you need fibreglass instead of wood.  Then you need to get the cold forging equipment working in order to harden the steel and align the molecules, a lathe or molds to shape the wood and fibreglass, and then some epoxy to fix the steel in place.  In, say, six to nine months you’ll have your hammer. Oh, and even though you just want one hammer, someone has to pay for the equipment and the bodies to keep the process running, 24×7, for everyone.  So your hammer will cost you $2,384.88.  This quarter.

Sheesh.  Is it worth it?  Collaboration?  Yes.  Procuring, building, and supporting the infrastructure with all the hardware and bodies necessary knowing that you’re somewhere in line to get attention behind the other ideas six to nine months from now? Uh…no.

So don’t wait.  You have ideas that need to be addressed and supported now.  We’ve developed a solution that allows us to get the collaboration tools you need into your hands in short order.  Imagine having an idea and actually getting to work on it later that day.  A process that used to take weeks to support your idea has been reduced to two or three days, and we’re quickly making progress to make this a matter of hours.  We deal with all the hassles, and the environment exists today.  Just bring your ideas.

So if you’re a marketing department, or if you’re in finance, or legal, or heck, even in IT, and you need to support your next great idea in order to get everyone one the same page – and keep them there – immediately, you can have your collaboration tools now.  Just ask.

You won’t need to know how to build the hammer.  You’ll just need to use it.

- Andy