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October 05, 2015

Internal Collaboration Challenges, Opportunities and Best Practices at ITEXPO West 2015

By Allison Boccamazzo, Director of Brand Strategy

ITEXPO West 2015, taking place now throughout October 8 in Anaheim, California, ended on an engaging note its first day with a special breakout session titled, “Driving Corporate Growth Through Internal Collaboration and Engagement.” The session, moderated by Content Boost’s Diana Bishop and featuring expert panelists Stefan Karapetkov, Enterprise Architect, Oracle (News - Alert); Charles Studt, VP Marketing, Redbooth; and Adnan Lawai, Chief Executive Office, Foilio3, dug deep into the ins and outs of collaboration and just what that means for accelerating and streamlining internal operations, communications and processes.



As businesses work to integrate a myriad of external communications technologies—for example, embedded UC&C solutions or various enterprise collaboration applications like Skype (News - Alert) for Business or Office 365—into their existing enterprise communications environment, they can often forget how crucial collaboration and engagement are for opening up the doors of opportunity to growth and, subsequently, revenue generation.

So, why is internal communication so critical in today’s rapidly evolving business landscape? And perhaps most importantly, how does greater internal engagement drive business results? Let’s explore further what insights today’s discussion yielded ...

In Lawai’s opinion, internal collaboration must first and foremost be grounded on the user experience. “The focus needs to be on experience,” he says. “Employees’ collaboration experiences should consist of having information where, when and how you need it; it involves work being done on the backend in order to supply that information intuitively to you. I think we are just starting to see this momentum coming to the forefront with collaboration applications such as Slack, but there is still ample room for opportunity and growth.”

Meanwhile, Studt sounded off on the ROI and tangible business benefits associated with streamlining internal processes with next-generation collaboration techniques and technologies. “When you consider the lengthy and complex nature of certain communication-intensive processes, streamlining those cycles with specific tools and technologies can significantly increase internal productivity and, thus, ROI.”

For example, consider email and the advantages of simplifying and streamlining email-driven processes. Research continually shows that the time employees spend managing their email inboxes, searching for information on end in their inboxes and navigating through lengthy or convoluted email chains consumes a significant portion of their daily schedules. Aggregated findings from Atlassian, for example, shows that the average employee receives 304 emails every week; checks his or her email an average 36 times per hour; and spends 16 minutes trying to refocus after handling a large batch of incoming email.

The benefits of advancing internal collaboration are plenty, and today’s discussion only scratched the surface of a deeply engaging topic. Be sure to stay tuned for more updates and coverage on ITEXPO (News - Alert) West 2015!



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