How much time do you spend on e-mail, information searches
and other collaborations each week?
According to a
new report from McKinsey on the social economy, the average knowledge
worker spends 28 hours a week on those tasks. That is an astounding number, and
if we could reduce it by only a few percentage points, it would mean a massive
rise in productivity for any enterprise, from the smallest to the largest.
As it turns out, these gains are possible today. McKinsey
estimates up-to-date existing collaboration and communication tools could cut this
time by as much as 20 percent.
But it’s not happening.
Why is that?
The IT industry has spent the last 30 years developing
highly structured information repositories, designed for process workers in
areas like invoicing, shipping, and HR forms processing. Meanwhile, the knowledge workers in the
middle of the organization – who rarely follow repeatable processes – have been
essentially left with e-mail as their sole IT support system.
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Yet to be able to communicate, coordinate and collaborate
effectively between members in workgroups, as well as within and across the
borders of companies, is now a fundamental piece of core enterprise processes.
Megatrends such as outsourcing and globalization are creating ever more
specialized enterprises that are ever more dependent on these same underserved
knowledge workers.
Researchers claim that over 80 percent of corporate information
today is locked away in the minds of employees. Knowledge workers produce and
consume a great deal of unstructured content such as newsletters, research
reports, e-mails, and PowerPoint presentations. This information gets scattered
between hard drives on their computers, shared network drives, e-mail inboxes,
and on miscellaneous Web servers, and the only way to unlock it is through
communication, coordination and collaboration.
For communication service providers, this is a greenfield
opportunity of almost epic proportions: to provide enterprises of all sizes,
around the globe, with integrated communication, coordination and collaboration
systems. It’s a brand new market, currently with no clear market leaders.
This is going to be the quintessential battlefield in what
some refer to as the convergence of telecom and IT. And the telecom industry already
possesses vital components – infrastructure and the access network – that could
completely change the dynamics of the Unified Communication & Collaboration
(UCC) market. Furthermore, telcos have little to lose and everything to win,
while most IT players are in more defensive positions, with much to lose.
Yet nothing is for certain, and the situation of knowledge
workers is only getting worse, not better. Now is the time for action, for
standing still means getting left
behind.