HyperOffice: One-Stop Collaboration: Online Collaboration«

Most remote teams rely on several solutions to fulfill all of their collaborations needs: email and communication, project management, database management and group meetings, just to name a few.HyperOfficeoffers distributed teams the benefit of all essential business tools in a single collaboration suite, as well as mobile capabilities for today’s remote workforce.

Communication

• Business email.Companies can set up their own branded emails (users@company.com) using theHyperOffice webmail modulethat includes a variety of features, such as folders, email rules, tabs, search, flags, and spam- and virus-filtering.
• Outlook synchronization. For those users who prefer to use Outlook, HyperOffice offers the abilities to access and manage an Outlook account on any PC, Mac, or mobile device, and all changes are automatically synched, updated, and mirrored.
• Push email.Thepush email and mobile synccapabilities of HyperOffice allow users to push and sync email, contacts, calendars and tasks with almost every major mobile device, including iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile, and Nokia, and since HyperOffice is a team platform, users can use their mobiles phones to sync with a shared group calendar that updates all other team members of updates and changes.

Collaboration

• Document management.Users canstore and organize documents onlineand are able to apply multiple levels of permissions. HyperOffice also includes collaboration features like versioning, comments, audit trails and change notifications. Users can also conduct full-text searches and allow other users to access, manage, and upload documents from their own desktops with easy drag-and-drop functionality.
• Project management.Project management is an important aspect of managing distributed teams, and withHyperoffice’s project management module, managers and business owners are able to control multiple projects across multiple teams. Users can create projects and tasks, set timelines, and track progress, and every user gets a to-do list of assigned tasks. For more sophisticated projects, task dependencies are available, as well as interactive Gantt charts to allow users to manage tasks visually.
• Intranet/Extranet workspaces.HyperOffice includes a drag-and-drop intranet publisher that allows users to create customized workspaces for their groups and teams.
• Calendars and contacts.Shared group calendars let teams manage their schedules with such features as color coding and meeting invites, and with shared address books, users can manage and share contacts across the team.

In addition to these features, HyperOffice also offers wikis, surveys, forums, notes, and reminders to help teams collaborate and share information in real time.

Workflows

• HyperBase.HyperOffice includesHyperBase, a simple web form and online database tool that lets users create simple database applications to automate common workflows, such as lead tracking and order processing.

Online Meetings

• HyperMeeting.Users also have the option of using HyperOffice’s web conferencing platform, HyperMeeting, which includes features such as shared presentations, audio conferencing, instant messaging, and file sharing.

Integration

• Interlinked data.Every piece of data within the HyperOffice system can be“interlinked” with any other piece of data, which allows users to create context around particular transactions or people. For example, relevant documents and email records can be attached to a calendar event for an important meeting, or documents, projects, calendar events, forum discussions, and surveys can be attached to a particular contact. Another example is the email-to-tasks feature, where users can create a task out of an email with a single click.

The best thing aboutHyperOfficeis that it combines all collaboration tools into one solution, helping to avoid theweb app patchwork quilt problem(GigaOM Pro link, sub. req.) and keeping remote teams organized and working effectively.

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Back to the (Office of the) Future: Online Collaboration«

Over the years, there have been numerous articles musing on what the office of the future would look like, but how have those past predictions matched up to reality today?

Back in 1975,BusinessWeekpublished“an in-depth analysis of how word processing will reshape the corporate office.”In the article, industry experts were divided over whether they would be able“to call up documents” from their files on-screen and connect electronic terminals to each other or if this vision of the future was, in fact, “scare talk.” One of the biggest concerns raised was how word processing would change the traditional secretary-executive relationship.

I think it’s safe to say that the predictions in the article put forward by George E. Pake , then head of Xerox Corp.’s Palo Alto Research Center, were largely correct. According to Pake, in 1995, there would be a TV-display terminal with a keyboard sitting at his desk and he’d be “able to call updocuments from my files on the screen, or by pressing a button… I can get my mail or any messages. I don’t know how much hard copy {printed paper} I’ll want in this world.”

I have it on good authority from Jonathan Howell, Huddle’s CTO, that in the 1990s, everything was networked, all internal communication was done via email on a mainframe and desktop printers (with“desktop” referring to ubiquity rather than size) were commonplace. However, Jonathan was working for IBM in the 90s; what was it like for the rest of the workforce? You could indeed access your files with a click of a button on your computer. Networked desktop PCs were becoming increasingly widespread in offices worldwide, and in August 1995, Microsoft launched its much-anticipated Windows 95. The World Wide Web started to take shape, and Yahoo became one of the largest directories for web content. In short, advances in technology during the 1990s resulted in the“revolution in the office” that Pake predicted.Laptop computers were also becoming hot sellers, so the idea of a mobile workforce, while still a long way off, was starting to develop.

However, Paks’s vision of a world without“hard copy” remains a fantasy. In spite of the increasing popularity of email and the web, the rise of devices such as the iPad and enterprise content management tools, such asHuddleand SharePoint, the paperless office is still out of reach. The desktop printers that became a familiar sight in the office in the’90s continue to be the worker’s trusty companion. According to theWWF, the average U.S. officeworker goes through 10,000 sheets of copy paper per year. People still want to have physical documentation. Whether it’s business records, receipts or utility bills, people continue to feel they need to store paperwork in a safe, physical place for future reference. To drive widespread adoption of new technologies, a cultural shift and change in habits needs to take place. Just as the introduction of word processing and automation to the 1990s office changed the traditional secretary-executive relationship (or“office wife” bond), enterprise content management and collaboration technologies aredisrupting the way people work today. Transforming working practices takes time.

In 1987, little more than 10 years afterBusinessWeek’s predictions article was published,Apple Computer created a videoenvisioning how people would use technology to work in the 21st century:

The touchscreen“Knowledge Navigator” tablet device shown in the video could easily pass for an early prototype of Apple’s iPad, while the University Research Network accessed for information on deforestation in the Amazon rainforest looks suspiciously like the web. We are now accustomed to seeing touchscreen devices— according to market research firm iSuppli, worldwide production of touchscreen modules for use in computers is set to hit117.9 million units in 2014— but in 1987, mainstream adoption of such devices was still years away.

Another application shown is video conferencing: The professor is seen happily conversing with his colleague on-screen. Now, of course, video conferencing is part of most workers’ everyday lives, whether they are based at home or in an office: another hit for Apple’s vision of the future. While I doubt avatars with bow ties fielding calls and managing diaries will take off (unlessClippy2.0 is overdue?), but virtual customer service assistants are now a familiar sight:Jenn at Alaska AirlinesandLucy at O2, for example. It may be a while beforespeech recognition is as seamlessas that shown in the video; it is still a familiar (albeit often frustrating) technology.

The paperless office and a diary-managing avatar may not be a reality just yet, but many of the predictions made decades ago aren’t too far off the mark. However, there were some visions of the office of the future that just didn’t come to fruition, such as the short-livedMicrosoft at Work(MAW). On June 9, 1993, Bill Gates launched MAW, which was supposed to connect common business machinery, like fax machines and photocopiers, with a communications protocol allowing control and status information to be shared with computers running Windows. It never got off the ground, and by 1995, it had disappeared from view.

Andy McLoughlin, co-founder and EVP Strategy atHuddle, can be reached on Twitter@Bandrew.

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Can Bookkeeping Be Handled Remotely?: Online Collaboration«

There are many job roles that simply don’t seem to work outside of the office, at least at first glance. For example, consider the role of your bookkeeper or accountant. It seems like, at the very least, they would need to come in on a regular basis to take care of paperwork, whether you’re talking about cutting checks to vendors or handling payroll. However, with some planning and the use of the right tools, bookkeeping is a task that can be done remotely.

Handling Hard Copy

The biggest difficulty with either outsourcing your accounting department entirely or letting them telecommute is that there are more pieces of physical paperwork in the accounting department than in any other part of the office. Checks, receipts, tax forms and other paperwork build up and someone will have to deal with all of it.

But if you’re willing to make a commitment to reducing all that hard copy, it’s possible. Services such asShoeboxedcan automate the process of scanning in your organization’s receipts and putting them in a form that a virtual bookkeeper can handle easily. It may just be a matter of adjusting how your mailroom operates: Invoices, receipts and other such paperwork needs to be scanned and then filed. It’s a simple transition, although it may take a little work to set up.

There is a question of security— you don’t want your employees’ tax forms floating around the Internet— so you’ll need to ensure you use a secure system.

Outsourcing Accounting Functions

Moving your bookkeeper and other accounting staff out of your office isn’t necessarily that difficult proposition, but a question of location will come up if you want to outsource. Increasingly, firms are offering extremely inexpensive accounting and tax preparation services using staff based in countries such as India and the Philippines. Such outsourcing may be less effective for financial work than for other parts of your business, however. When it comes to your company’s finances, it’s important to make sure that you’re working with a staff deeply familiar with the regulations in the U.S. (or wherever you’re based). It’s even better if you can find someone up to speed on your state’s requirements. Otherwise, come tax time, you can find yourself facing a lot of trouble. There are enough ways for a problem to creep into your taxes that it just doesn’t make sense to add the potential problems of working with someone who isn’t local.

It comes down to striking a balance, if you want your accounting staff to be able to telecommute or if you want to let someone outside your company entirely handle the function. Payroll firms and other specialist companies make it easy to outsource the process, but you’ll still want to make sure that you’re working with a local team, even if you never see them face-to-face.

PhotocourtesyFlickr userLe Petite Poulailler

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How Better Tweeting Builds Staff Engagement: Online Collaboration«

Yahoo’s release of Twitter usage statistics,reported earlier this week by Mathew Ingram, presents some interesting pointers for organizations striving to build strong social media presences.

The research focused on the ways influence is established through Twitter, hinting at which user categories are the most popular, as well as which provide value, and how.

While businesses can apply this information to tweak their interactions with clients, customers and the public via Twitter, the research points to much more than that: It implies that greater benefits are available to companies that use Twitter to actively engage with their own team members: companies that stop seeing Twitter as an outward-focused medium, and customers as a separate audience from staff.

A Culture of Public Collaboration

How many of your staff members actively follow— that is, engage with— your company’s Twitter feed? How many staff members’ Twitter accounts are actively followed (or engaged with)byyour company’s Twitter feed?

According to the Yahoo study,“Organizations… devote a surprisingly small fraction of their attention to business-related news.” Other user categories didn’t behave like this, though. It reported that, for example, bloggers:

• retweet valuable URLs from a range of relevant categories, noting that“{In-Tweet URLs} originated by bloggers tend to be overrepresented among long-lived URLs.”
• act“as recyclers and filters of information.”
• consume large amounts of information, acting as intermediaries between the media and other users.

Do those who run your company’s Twitter account see staff as peer sources of valuable information that can be recycled for the company’s broader following?

This approach has the potential to benefit the company among internal audiences, as well as those in the public space. At its most basic, actively engaging with staff members within the public space provided by Twitter reflects the value of the staff to the company.

It reinforces to team members themselves— as well as customers and clients— that the company regards its staff as thought leaders, and while this approach can’t create a culture on its own, it can support a culture in which team members are actively recognized.

The“intermediary layer” alluded to above comprises about 500,000 Twitter users, according to Yahoo’s research, and only 4 percent of them are among the“elite” 0.05 percent of users who attract half the attention of the Twittersphere. Your company doesn’t need to be Lady Gaga to lead opinions on Twitter. But to take advantage of the intermediary layer, it does need to actively engage with peers (including staff members), filter information and retweet the good stuff.

It also needs to do that consistently. More than 270 URLs were initiated by bloggers per capita, according to the research. (By comparison, the average organization generated an average of 104 URLs per capita.)  To approach a significant level of value, your corporate Twitter team needs to consume a lot of relevant media; either direct from the source, or from other opinion leaders, including your staff.

Twitter and the Corporate Blog

If your organization has a blog, you’ll likely be tying your Twitter strategy into that, so if you’re planning to improve the value of your Twitter interactions, using them to engage with staff as well as clients, you might need to apply that same approach to the corporate blog, too. Do your staff members actively engage with the corporate blog, not just as contributors, but as audience members?

While many company blogs like to take the company line, apply the company style guide, and adopt a semi-corporate tone, some of the tried-and-tested blogging advice— writing“on the level,” telling stories, using anecdotes, and revealing a human side— may help companies tobuild credibility amongalltheir audiences.

It’s one thing to have a team member draft a blog post; it’s another to see your staff daily accessing the company blog—perhaps via their Twitter feeds—then making comments, retweeting links to posts, and so on.

The company blog can be a particularly appropriate way to keep staff informed of the work of other parts of the business, and aware of the relationships the company has with its followers—provided the blog, like the company Twitter feed, is authentic, and successfully treats all its followers as collaborators, rather than“staff” and“customers”.

Does your company treat staff and clients as separate audiences? How well does it engage and collaborate with both groups through the company Twitter feed and blog?

Photocourtesy stock.xchng usera_kartha.

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The Gamification of Work: Online Collaboration«

Irecently interviewedDaniel Debow, the co-CEO of enterprise social software companyRypple. During our conversation, we discussed the game-like constructs built into the Rypple software, like the concept of rewarding people with“badges”  for giving recognition and building reputation within a company.

Game design can be applied to much more than just games.“Gamification,” or the use of gaming mechanics in non-game applications, can be applied to business software, too. Any task based on a process could incorporate aspects of gaming to make it more engaging and better align it with the way most people are“hard-wired;” we respond well to games.

While Rypple does incorporate organic badge-making, distributing and displaying mechanism in its software, the gamification of work goes beyond simply thinking“let’s give out badges.” Instead it involves a thoughtful, strategic process to enhance the ways we recognize one another in the workplace and how we showcase that recognition.

Rypple recently published an slideshow explaining Debow’s thoughts on enterprise gamification:

Work Better. Play Together? On Enterprise Gamification.

While the slideshow points out the potential benefits to bringing game-like processes into the workplace, such as increasing team member motivation and performance, it also notes there are risks and the potential for misuse.

Some key takeaways from the presentation are:

• Gamification isn’t about making work fun. It’s more about understanding human nature and strategy, not frivolity.
• Gaming already exists in work settings. The acts of competition and cooperation are inherent in most work environments. Harnessing those interactions strategically can be a part of“gamification.”
• Gamification is not just about badges and points. That is too simplistic a way of thinking about it.

Job Titles Versus Badges?

Debow also pointed me to an interesting gamification-related related question on Quora:What if you earned badges at work instead of job titles?

The ensuing conversation includes these points:

• There is a place for titles within a company, particularly to delineate hierarchy for decision-making purposes. (as noted by Ben Horowitz)
• Badges are not meant to replace titles but can be used as a supplement to one’s profile or reputation (as noted by Daniel Debow, Ben Horowitz and others)

Ultimately, people seek meaningful work: work with a purpose. They want to master something, improve their skills, and get recognition for their efforts. They want to be a part of something— contribute to the greater whole. Wouldn’t you want a worker like that? Properly implemented gamification systems can enhance these positive aspects of human nature in the workplace.

Photocourtesystock.xchng user johnnyberg

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Contingent Workers: Creative Solution or Harmful Crutch? : Online Collaboration«

Business may seem like an objective arena where rationality rules, but the truth is, agreeing on facts doesn’t always lead to agreement on conclusions. Case in point: the rise of contingent workers.

No one is arguing with the reality thatpart-timers and contractors  are making up a larger slice of the total employment pie. There’s not even much disagreement that they save companies money in the short-term, but when it comes to the longer-term effects of greater numbers of contingent workers, consensus is harder to find.

Is the rise of the freelancer also a boon for workers who get flexibility and ownership of their careers? Or is the trend just a way for companies to wriggle out of obligations to their workforce and a practice that will erode morale over time?

The Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) recently stirred this debate with a“he-said, she-said” style newsletter, laying out both sides of the argument. Defending contingent workers as a vital and healthy part of the new economy was John Gibbons, i4cp’s VP of research and development:

If you think that high-performing companies use employees simply as disposable commodities, you’d be wrong. High-performing leaders actually keep contingent employees in their jobs longer than low performers. Why? It’s because they don’t use contingent workers as simply a short-term way of saving some cash. Smart managers know that building a workforce composed of a critical mass of contingent workers is not just a short-term fix to financial tight spots or budget cuts. Instead, contingent workers represent a way of building a smart, up-to-date, yet nimble base of vital talent.

And contingency is not just great for businesses— it’s terrific for employees too… Contingent work arrangements allow skilled employees to not only choose who they work for, but also give them the latitude to actually negotiate their specific work assignments, their work settings… and even their bosses.

Oh please, responded Lorrie Lykins, i4cp’s managing editor, who argues that many companies are using contingent workers as a crutch that allows their full-time employee base to atrophy:

You say that contingent workers are not viewed by companies as disposable commodities, but in using temporary workers or contractors to come in and perform certain functions aren’t we making some fulltime employees feel disposable? Some firms I interviewed… admitted that themorale of their employees has been affected by the presence of contractorswho are brought in to work on challenging or creative projects while the FTEs keep the engine of the organization chugging along. So while your super-creative contractors may come in and produce something really cool, does it balance the sometimes detrimental impact on your core workforce?

And it’s not just ic4p who is debating the issue. TheNew York Timesalso recently ran an article focusing onthe human reality behind the trend, concluding, ambivalently, that contractors must weigh uncertainty and lack of benefits against freedom andthe security of multiple income streams. Meanwhile, lawyers note the U.S. government’s crackdown on the misclassification of contractorsneeds to be factored into the equation when assessing the pros and cons of contingent workers as well.

Do you find the optimists’ or the pessimists’ take on contingency workers more convincing?

Image courtesy Flickr userLeonid Mamchenkov,CC 2.0

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Accellion Offers Secure File Sharing For the Enterprise: Online Collaboration«

DropboxandBox.nethave long been favorites of the team here at WebWorkerDaily, they make sharing large files with others a snap, and also work on a number of mobile devices. Thanks to their ease of use compared with clunky traditional file-sharing systems or FTP, these apps are also growing in popularity within the enterprise, too. But their use can give corporate IT departments headaches, particularly with regards to data security and regulatory compliance. Accellion, a provider of secure file transfer solutions, has announcedAccellion Secure Collaboration, a new product that aims to bring easy Dropbox-style file sharing and collaboration to the enterprise, while also providing IT with the tracking and control to ensure data security and demonstrate compliance withHIPAA,Sarbanes-Oxleyand FDA requirements.

The Accellion Secure Collaboration product should seem very familiar to anyone who has used Box.net or Dropbox. It provides secure workspaces where users can share files with both internal and external parties, complete with the ability to assign access privileges, share comments and track document versions. Files and folders of up to 100Gb can be transferred, and can also optionally be encrypted for added security. Mobile access is catered for, with an iPhone/iPad app (available late April), and BlackBerry and Android apps also in the works. Plug-ins are also available for SharePoint and Outlook.

A range of deployment options is offered, including virtual server, cloud (via EC2), hybrid cloud and on-premise appliance. Cost varies, but for smaller customers is likely to be in the region of $100 per user per year (dropping substantially for larger volumes). The Secure Collaboration product is available as an upgrade for existing Accellion customers. You canrequest a trial or run a demo here.

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