Tag Archives: Collaboration

Millennials

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Millennials are the big buzz word of 2014.  Just watch this bloomberg video if you don’t believe me. (youtube link)

First lets define Millennials (wikipedia).

  • They were born 1980-2000 (ish).
  • This means that they grew up with the internet (I can remember a time before it and dial up connections !)
  • They grew up with Wifi, youtube, facebook and myspace and with mobile technology.
  • During their formative years the number of television channels boomed to over 250,
  • They find information coming to them from every direction,
  • They don’t visit libraries or read magazines or newspapers as much as previous generations but instead get their information from wikipedia, their social channels and information aggregators.

So what is this all about and why should we care.

1) Well in 10yrs millennials will account for 50% of the workforce according to wikipedia, Forbes, etc.

2) Millennials have grown up with technologies such as social networks, smartphones and the flexibility to use whatever device or app they want.

3) Millennials are known for living in the moment and having huge dreams.  More millennials than any previous generation are starting up their own companies.

4) It is expected that Millennials will move continually and on average work for around 10-15 companies in their working lifetime.  Lets assume a 30yr career, 25-55yrs old, thats a move every 2-3yrs.  Blind loyalty to a company is gone and their driver is interesting, rewarding work.

So for a company to attract and retain millennials the current workplace and tools we impose on them won’t work.  Companies need millennials as they are the next gen workforce and of course they will become the buyers of products when the current generation retires/moves on.  Its essential to employee this generation, get them money to pump into the economy.

So what needs to change.  Well lots, 81% of millennials feel they should be able to set their own hours, and around 80% believe they should be able to wear jeans or whatever they want.  Thats a change from the traditional 9-5 worktime and the suit and tie brigade.  They also feel the way they progress and the way they are rewarded should be based on value and delivery and not time spent in the office, etc.

So lots of cultural stuff needs to change.  I am going to focus though on the technology side.

Millennials change apps on their smartphones very frequently.  They have no love of a particular app for long and its more about how the app gets the job done.

They also don’t care much for corporate rules restricting applications they can use and how they can use those applications with corporate data.

Social is key to them.  Getting a job completed is about working with others and not the traditional team where a project manager or general manager will construct the team.  Millennials will construct their own teams to get the work done and then disband and move on to the next task.

So what do we have so far.

  1. Flexibility – use whatever app, whenever, wherever,
  2. Abstraction and Integration – they expect the data they need to work on to be available anywhere and to be accessible from any of the apps they use,
  3. They expect strong social tools to be available and not constrained by corporate redtape,

Yammer, Chatter, etc

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Today you have to choose as an enterprise if you are in the Yammer camp, the Chatter camp or one of the other similiar locked down tools.   What frustrates me is that a Chatter conversation cannot mix with a Yammer conversation and vice-versa.  We are expected that all the people we need to socialise for work will be on the same tool.  By the way this is the same in the consumer social space, Google+ and Facebook don’t mix and match either.

But imagine that you had a cellphone and you could only talk to people on the same carrier as you.  Frustrating hey.  You’d have to either convince everyone to join AT&T or whoever OR you would have to have a phone for each carrier !

Of course you can phone anybody on any carrier on any network on any device anywhere in the world.

We need the same open-standards for social especially in the corporate space.  B2B, B2C, etc.  means we do not have control on the tools each person and each company will have and we cannot be constrained in our ability to function, collaborate and progress by the tools.

When will we see open-standards for social.  I am not holding my breath.  The open standards movements of the 90’s that led to HTML and other advances seems to have given way to closed-walled gardens.  These closed-walled gardens are great for the powerful vendors as they lock you into their system.  Apple does it with their AppStore ecosystem, Microsoft with their SharePoint/Yammer space, Salesforce with theirs.

I hope for change but suspect it won’t come from these big companies but instead from some small startup that works out the magic sauce to get these to interact.  Of course we will then have to watch out for the lawyers and patent trolls.  Hopefully the start up will survive.

Using my iPad in the enterprise

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Bit of History

I purchased an iPad 1 in late 2010 as my organization tried to understand how it could help collaboration.   We had to make sure our core intranet portal worked well on it for our Senior Leadership and Board who were all getting these devices due to the ease of use and instant on functionality.

That was fine and our intranet design needed little tweaking to work on the iPad.

Its all about the experience

Over the next couple of years we tried to expand use of the iPad for leadership and management and look for other uses such as in the manufacturing and sales space.

It really took off in the sales space with our sales-force preferring the light and unobtrusive product when looking to show vendors/potential customers material about our products.  The instant on means no ‘dead-time’ waiting with the customer for the machine to boot up for you to show designs or videos of the product.   Additionally its lower cost over laptops means damage in the field is not so much an issue.

Inside the enterprise we saw teams trying to make their apps work in the browser on the iPad but many enterprise solutions use flash or silverlight and that will never work on an iPad.  So in those cases Citrix was the answer.  But it isn’t.  It just presents a Windows desktop on an iPad, small buttons that do not work well with fingers and touch just make it horrible.  Lagging also kills the experience dead.

New Shiny iPad

Anyway in 4Q13 I got my new iPad, I had been waiting for the retina Mini and got it as soon as it was released.  Specifically I have the iPad Mini Retina with Cellular.

So a few things.  This new form factor works even better for me.  It is the perfect place between my laptop and my phone.  The screen quality is great and of course cellular means I am always connected so thats excellent, yes I can tether a laptop but its a pain.  I am using it more and more and leaving my laptop docked more and more.

I did grab a Zagg keyboard for it so that I can do long posts like this and author content properly.  The majority of my time though is spent reviewing and providing short feedback/comments on content/design, approving expenses and reviewing budget !  So I often use it without the keyboard.

Many enterprise software solutions have been updated over the last few years and the experience has got a lot better.  New versions of Concur (travel and expenses) are great – I actually prefer using Concur on my iPad over my laptop; WebEx has got a lot, lot better for Video Conferencing and Lync from Microsoft is also massively improved; DropBox/Box.Net/OneDrive allow me to sync my content beautifully across devices and QuickOffice or Office4iPad allows me to author.

I still miss a good version of OneNote for the iPad and in its absence over the last few years (a cut down version is now available on iPad) I changed to using EverNote for both my personal and professional content.

One thing though with all this is still security, not of content on the device as Mobile Device Management software has evolved massively so devices can be remotely wiped and Apple has improved its encryption massively.  But those cloud based storage options still worry organizations and legal departments.   Once that gets resolved and tied in to on premise solutions for Search, etc. it will be truly powerful.

SharePoint and the iPad

So I am a big user of SharePoint for better or worse.  Actually I drive the strategy for collaboration so I am to blame (for now) for SharePoint being in my organisation.

How does it work on the iPad.  Well its mixed.  SP2007 was horrible, SP2010 is better, the UI through the browser generally works, SP2013 through the browser is great, especially with the Service Pack.

File access though, well you are just opening from the browser and no access to local storage so its a little complex and getting stuff uploaded to SP is best done using email enabled libraries.

OneDrive is a good glue for those on O365 but for on premise installations its not a pleasant experience.

To be honest I use the browser UI to review websites, perform searches, read our intranet, etc.  We have enhanced our search tool so I can tag content I find for editing on a main device, etc.

For file access I use Acronis Access (was MobileEcho) this lets me sync content bidirectionaly (or not) for offline usage.  It also lets me access the entire doc libraries within any sharepoint site for browse use (ie. I dont have to sync for offline use).

I would also recommend looking at SharePlus, Mobile Entree and Filamente.

In conclusion…

So for now I love my iPad, don’t like Citrx, love Concur, I continue to use it more and more, just need the apps and the content to catch up.

e2.0 blog – 2013 Predictions

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Apologies that I had no posts in 2012 beyond the predictions.  Unfortunately a death in the family resulted in my focus having to be elsewhere.
So here is a restart and my 2013 Predictions

Networked Organizations
CMSWire uses this term and its the best description for something I have talked about for quite some time, its also been called Org2.0, etc.    In essence it is where organizations mature and realize that not all the expertise they need is inside the company.  They don’t have to employ every skill set.   Small companies do this as they have no choice ie. they won’t necessary have an accountant or legal department but instead reach out when they need it.  Large companies do this already with IT, outsourcing large elements so they don’t have to have a workforce of thousands !

This year it will become more and more prevalent as companies try to reduce their internal costs.  Of course they often pay a premium for these services outside but they don’t pay 24x7x365 so companies that plan properly and understand their business can lower their costs.

In essence this is an evolution of the outsourcing model.  The question of course is where it ends, what is core.

Why am I commenting on this ?  Well as you move more elements outside and connect with different external entities to provide services you need to be able to collaborate with them.  External collaboration will become more important than internal collaboration in the next few years.  If you look at the Pharma industry or the aerospace industry this is the case today.  Boeing works with many, many different companies and external institutes to develop its aircraft and its essential they can act and collaborate as one.

Personalization & Recommendation engines
Call it the Facebook/Amazon/Google Search effect or the nature of the RSS generation but people want content that is relevant to them and not all the other ‘fluff’.  I like the fact that Amazon knows me from my past purchases and recommends stuff to me.  I like that Google Search knows my previous searches and what I click on to `tweak’ the relevancy of results.

Millenials expect that in the work place as do more and more general colleagues.  When I do a expertise search I want the system to know more about me, my location, content I like, previous searches to recommend people to me.  I want solutions that know what I am working on and recommend content to me.  When I go into any solution I should be able to tailor it to my needs and it learn about me.

3D Printing will bring a whole new level of collaboration
3D printing might be an odd one here, what does it have to do with collaboration ?   Well as teams get more and more widely dispersed its more and more difficult to physically look and understand products in the design stage.  When folk used to be in the same physicality they could all look around a product, pick it up, discuss it, look at it from different angles, etc.

I believe 3D printing will bring that back.  Imagine a design meeting where each site can print out the product and review it.  Then update it in the meeting, reprint it out, etc.  Refinement.  Everyone wherever they are gets to hold, touch and contribute.

Collaboration again is key here, how do we share those 3D designs, tie in to our normal collaboration tools, etc.   3D printing makes it physical.

Video Conferencing anywhere
Large organisations will struggle to take hold of this because of expensive investment in hardware.
But in essence the hardware becomes irrelevant and video conferencing using the cloud as the converter/interpreter means you can BYO video conf device and VC with anyone.   Today its horrible, everyone has to be just about on the same tech.  This kills Video conferencing across org boundaries (see networked organizations) and very often inside (e.g. one country office goes with one tech over another).   Plug and Play / Bring Your Own video conferencing is the nirvana.  It will start to happen in 2013 and it will be pushed by the consumer space.

Big Data (yawn)
Ok, first my little gripe, We have always had big data, it is nothing new ! – ok rant over.
This will be big for the next few years as its a big money earner for software companies, consultancies, enables companies to sell storage and sell cloud compute units !

But as said we have always had big data and we have always had people looking for patterns and analyzing it.
Take a look at Formula 1.  I had the chance to visit McLaren in 2001, at that point in testing they had over 100 sensors on the car returning data every millisecond.  On top of that they had external data they captured from weather to track temperature and condition.  They used all this data from each test and data from races themselves to predict by looking for patterns.   That is big data.  Its nothing new.

The key here will be how people collaborate and share big data.  You can’t email it around !  Uploading and downloading from storage locations isn’t practical either.  It will be about ubiquitous access to big data always residing in the cloud but visualized through rich collaborative tools.

Cloud
Cloud will continue to be pushed and many still won’t understand what it is !   But security concerns and resilience will continue to be barriers for large organizations with existing on premise investment.

Just look at the great XBox Live outage over Christmas 2012 or the NetFlix outage or the Google outage, shall I go on !

I have heard many large organizations state that Security is also a concern.  Shared data centers, content residing on the same box as a competitors, etc.  Legal and InfoProtection departments will worry obviously.  Their worry is not really warranted as many of these large companies have moved into data centers run by external companies like HP and guess what those data centers also have competitors data in them !   I believe we will finish 2013 with more companies considering IaaS rather than full cloud offerings like O365.

Windows 8
Windows 8 will get little traction in the enterprise.  Many waiting for a point release and waiting to see if the BYOD element can really take off yet and whether Google Chromebooks can be a reality in the enterprise.  Why is this important well many organisations tie their version of Office and other collaborative tools to their OS release, ie. when they upgrade Windows they upgrade the rest of the stuff.  Additionally Microsoft and other vendors are only releasing their products for newer OS’s  ie. many products will not run on WinXP and older non-HTML5 compliant browsers.  Until all collaboration vendors make their software fully device/browser agnostic what is on the desktop will impact your ability to collaborate.

Mobile
Companies will attempt to make everything mobile ready but not actually fully realize it is not just about making enterprise solutions accessible on mobile devices.  It is about different mobile experiences.  Lots of consulting dollars will be wasted exploring and on POC’s !  CIO’s will look good for attempting and saying ‘It works on the iPhone/iPad’ in board meetings !

It will take a few more years before Mobile experience coming first or is designed in parallel rather than a bolt on to existing solutions.  Take online training courses that many enterprises have.  The experience on an iPad or iPhone will be completely different than on a PC/Mac due to the real-estate, the integration of touch, etc.

What is this all about

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I work for a large Fortune 100 Blue Chip company and have done for nearly 20yrs.  I joined straight from University and have had a great career (so far!).  I have worked in the IT/BT/Informatics, whatever you want to call it group, all that time.  My function has always worked very closely with the business functions including R&D, Manufacturing, Marketing and of course our Corporate elements including HR, legal, etc.

I have worked in the Collaboration and Content space for most of my career with some sideways ventures into Resource Management across an enterprise, Laboratory automation and a great project looking at our end to end chain from Research to Market.

I personally see technology as a catalyst in business and appropriately placed it can accelerate process, open up new business and create new opportunities that were previously not seen or possible.

From this experience and vantage point I thought I would share some of my thoughts on the wave that was called enterprise 2.0 and is in reality just the next phase of collaboration and organisational connectedness.  Looking at what works, what hasn’t worked, what the next 5yrs could look like and how technology and consumer technology is affecting organisations unlike ever before.