Enterprise Collaboration Going Mainstream

There is an excellent article in Information Week about Proctor & Gamble and how they are making a push to move beyond using Email only as a medium for collaboration in the office setting. CEO Joe Shueller described Email as "the biggest barrier to employee use of more interactive and effective tools". Although email has been very effective as a first step to enabling people in a office setting to work with each other, it is not surprising that the evolution of the online workplace is surpassing the functionality of email. Just as chat and other modes of communication are working their way into the office space, so are new alternative products that will change the way work is done, relying less and less on email.

The reasons that emails are an insufficient medium for managing documents and work processes are fairly obvious. While effective in messaging, email is disjointed and unorganized and lacks centralization. It is nice to have all the document and communication resources in one interface, and focusing on the document rather than on message strings with documents attached makes much more sense. Centralizing documents and messages about documents makes tracking progress much easier. In addition, time saved searching for documents or keeping updated and "on the same page" adds up quickly.

It seems that the move from email communications to sharing files to working on files together will have a monumental impact on how people work. With massive companies like P&G moving towards using collaborative tools to make business more efficient, it seems to me that the idea of a collaborative office could finally become a reality.