How Can I Tell if I Need an Enterprise Collaboration Platform?
Written by Courtney Steen, Brad Warren, and David Lee

As enchanting as using enterprise collaboration software is, it is a fact that these platforms support some types of companies and missions better and more effectively than others. The very nature of enterprise collaboration is that it supports a few activities very well:
• managing and archiving vast quantities of information,
• progressive collaboration, and
• progressive dialog and communication.

If your company engages in such activities as SOP, enterprise collaboration is worth investigating. Below are some specific company and industry types we’ve identified for which these platforms have demonstrated benefits.

1. Companies with a large customer base. If you sell or produce anything, or provide a service directly to clients, chances are you employ people to handle customer service. Happily, enterprise collaboration has proven extremely effective in reducing the strain on call-in customer service. Enabling people to sign in to a community and get answers to their questions and resolutions for their issues mitigates the need for them to call and get answers to the same questions the last 40 callers had, too. Less wasted time for both the customer and your employees—everybody wins!
2. Large companies that employ a lot of personnel. EC 2.0 makes communication, knowledge management, training, supporting company culture, and achieving the organization’s mission easier and more efficient.
3. Companies with different locales. Companies that operate on different coasts—or different countries, even—can find collaborating and communicating not just a hassle, but expensive and terribly time consuming. Enterprise collaboration software helps close the gaps in the workforce no matter where they live and work.
4. Mobile work forces. The same argument holds true for mobile work forces made up of personnel who do not park themselves at a desk 40 hours a week.
5. Marketing- and sales-driven organizations. One of the most critical relationships to maintain contact, and one that sometimes goes unhappily awry, is that between marketing and sales. Coordinating those efforts is far easier when the information exists in a place where everyone sees the same thing and can communicate either one-on-one or broadcast messages and collaborate on goals and campaigns.
6. Companies that produce a great deal of creative work / assets. The key to exceptional creativity is progressive collaboration practices. Enterprise communities provide a place to load and catalog and archive creative work, collaborate on designs and campaigns, and plan and execute common creative goals and campaigns.
7. Education. Institutions of higher learning have been exploring EC 2.0 and similar e-learning technologies with programs like Blackboard and Desire2Learn for some time, and know the benefits these applications offer students who have grown up using the internet as a learning tool. There are applications for collaboration in elementary and secondary schools as well, though, especially on district-wide levels. Teachers can collaborate on methods, curriculum, dealing with students, special needs, all manner of subjects. There can even be a student area for homework assignments, turning in papers, collaborating on projects, and school events. Parents can get in on the action, too, staying informed about schedules, having more hands-on interaction with teachers and lessons, and knowing all about the schedules and events taking place in the school communities.
8. News and reporting. Some news organizations are already playing with ideas for communities: for example, CNN’s iReport.com. This is a community where users load viewer-generated content that CNN has the option of picking up (in cases of breaking news) or leaving on the community forum. As a hub for collecting and disseminating information, news and reporting seem like industries that would naturally rely on enterprise collaboration. Reporters and copywriters can collaborate on stories, research, and sources; different markets can coordinate news efforts; and smaller communities without a dedicated local news station (think bedroom communities and suburbs) can load and share information about local matters without having to rely on local weekly newspapers or visit local bulletin boards.

The possibilities for government and community services are nearly endless, but we’re getting away from the idea of “enterprise” collaboration a little too much with those ideas. Nevertheless, enterprise collaboration technology is certainly an important and beneficial tool to help connect specific groups of people.

There are bound to be general company types and industries that we missed in this list. Leave a comment and let us know about your company and how enterprise collaboration has made life easier for you.