Business Communication Process Learnings for 2014

Business

Throughout 2013, we were immersed into interactions and our own experimentation within the business communication / collaboration space. Our key learnings are assimilated below, as the world awaits the dawn of 2014.

Opportunity

There is a huge opportunity to the businesses to benefit from the improvement in their communication process. Different areas of business communication become hot at different points of time. (Presently the Enterprise Social Networks are in the limelight.) Studies made in Q4 of 2013 showed that several companies were rewarded with splendid ROI in terms of their operational efficiency and also external sales (Read more).

The huge benefits are not at all surprising. Communication is the very core of a business and any improvement in the communication system can mean a great leap ahead for the organization (Read more). As a result of the potential, research organizations like Gartner, Forrestor and the big 5 consulting organizations are bullish about this space.

Challenges

While some businesses have succeeded, many others have failed. A few common patterns have emerged out of the failures:

  1. The boss outsources the decision and implementation to someone in the team. The team sees it as additional work and no one’s KRA is aligned with the success of the initiative. They choose the easy path of not doing anything about it.
  2. In absence of clear consensus of how a tool will be used, many enthusiastic people start pushing the implementation with their ideas. These ideas start conflicting and the collaboration becomes ineffective. After some debate the initiative is shelved.
  3. Everyone starts using a tool zealously. After a while, a realization slowly emerges that team is spending way too much time in the tool and the productivity plummets. In some cases, by the time this is found, the tool is so ingrained into the organization’s way of working that it becomes difficult to pull out as well.

Today, many organizations find themselves sitting on the fence, not able to figure out how such an initiative will work for them. (McKinsey acknowledged that the rate of adoption is not as high as anticipated Read more.) Many of them incorrectly see communication tools as a commodity, and keep comparing the features of different tools endlessly. Further, their vision is oftentimes blinded by clever marketing campaigns on the part of some tool vendors.

What is Needed

Acquiring a good tool is just a part of the solution. The other important part is to make it work for the organization. This needs a good planning and an even better execution. Most organizations need help in these aspects.

What We are Going to Do About It

To address the need, starting 2014, the Kommbox team plans to offer result-driven consultancy services augmenting our product. The idea is to assist the organization to become successful and to take responsibility for the planning and execution, beyond just selling the product. We hope that the industry welcomes this initiative. To know more details, kindly contact us on sales@kommbox.com.

What we presented above are our learnings, analysis and plan of action. Do you agree? Want to add more observations? We would love to hear from you. Please write a comment below.