www.binfo.co.uk
magazine
06
www.binfo.co.uk
agenda
Only one in fve knowledge workers in the UK
and Ireland believes they have the technology
they need to do their job properly.
A survey by Alcatel-Lucent found that
inadequate IT provision means that 43%
of knowledge workers in medium-to-large
organisations waste more than 30 minutes a day
trying to access the information they need;
53% experience network delays or poor
application performance.
Nine out of 10 workers believe that
collaboration is an increasingly important part
of their working life, with 85% saying that
integrated communication technologies would
increase productivity and engagement.
Of those that use unifed communications
technologies, 79% say that it has improved their
levels of engagement and productivity.
www.alcatel-lucent.com
Wasted investment
Collaboration technology is failing to bring the cost savings that many
businesses hoped for, with just 40% of IT managers who responded to a Fujitsu
survey stating that collaboration applications deliver costs savings. SharePoint
is the most popular collaboration tool, deployed in 92% of enterprise
organisations. However, only 60% of SharePoint sites are active and only one in
four respondents said that their organisation had the skills required to deliver
collaboration to the satisfaction of users.
www.uk.fujitsu.com
Best of the best
This year’s red dot design
awards include a number
of products compatible
with the modern
workplace. Best of the best award winners
in the product design category include
Younicos AG for its Yill mobile power supply
and Just Mobile Ltd for its Slide iPad stand.
The Yill Mobile Energy Storage Unit provides
mobile workers with an independent energy
supply that frees them from the restrictions
of a building’s power grid. Suitable for use
anywhere in an offce or its grounds, Yill’s
rechargeable batteries provide enough
energy to power a workstation for two to
three days. Just Mobile Ltd’s Slide iPad stand
designed in Denmark by Tools Design allows
tablet users to position their device at any
angle for viewing or typing. An essential
accessory for over-crowded desktops.
Beware the smartphone,
warns ttMobiles
In light of new research showing that
more than three out of four large
organisations (78%) are considering a
‘Bring Your Own Device’ policy, mobile
communications management specialist
ttMobiles is advising businesses to draw
the line at smartphones.
Its warning follows the publication of
a ttMobiles-sponsored paper by Quocirca,
which suggests that such a policy could
result in a 27% rise in phone costs. For a
company with 2,000 phones, this represents
£156,000 of additional expenditure.
Peter Readman, a director at ttMobiles,
said: “Our customers average 50% smart
phones and 50% traditional ‘dumb phones’.
If all of the dumb phones become personal
smart phones overnight, the fnance
department has to deal with an incredible
amount of extra data costs, whilst the
security of that data is in jeopardy. There
may be initial savings on handsets, but for
organisations with a majority of voice-only
users, there is no beneft.”
The critical issue, according to ttMobiles,
is who pays for the airtime. If employees
use their own airtime package, costs will rise
because individual consumer contracts are
worse value than a corporate deal, especially
for data, which can be four times more
expensive. The cost of colleagues calling
each other will also increase as they will be
on different networks.
Another major issue is security. Loading
a security application on the phones
looks straightforward, but is expensive in
comparison to a voice-only phone.
Finally, ttMobiles warns that the cost of
employees reclaiming business use through
the expenses system will far exceed any
savings made on handset costs and make
meaningful analysis of call costs impossible.
www.quocirca.com
Against a background of unsuccessful
collaboration implementations (see
story below), Gartner has identifed fve
collaboration myths:
1. The right tools will make us collaborative.
Technology can make it easier to collaborate
when applications mirror a more intuitive
work style, but selecting a tool without
addressing roles, processes and metrics risks
putting the cart before the horse.
2. Collaboration is inherently a good thing
.
Many organisations can’t articulate what
beneft they hope to achieve by employing
social media to become more collaborative.
The most successful social media initiatives
solve real business processes.
3. Collaborating takes extra time.
Avoid the common mistake of simply
layering collaboration tools on top of
existing applications, by carrying out a
thorough workfow analysis to identify key
integration points between applications.
If collaboration tools are not integrated
with other applications, workers must
shift context, which slows them down, or
duplicate effort (e.g. cut/paste from one
application to another).
4. People naturally will/will not collaborate.
Many believe that humans are naturally
collaborative or non-collaborative.While
there are individuals at each end of the
spectrum, most are in the middle and can
be encouraged to collaborate under the
right conditions. IT leaders should work on
motivating the majority.
5. People instinctively know how to
collaborate.
Without a set of expectations about what
it means to work collaboratively, individuals
will adopt their own interpretation of
collaboration. Clarify what attitude a
collaborative individual needs to bring to
their work, what skills they need to master
and what personal style works in a team
setting.
www.gartner.com
Offce workers lack tools for the job
The secrets of successful collaboration
Alcatel-Lucent’s Visual Collaboration Suite
extends enterprise video to any endpoint,
including PCs, smartphones, laptops, tablets,
displays and interactive whiteboards from
Smart Technologies.
Ideal for impromptu meetings, KI’s BreakOut
seating system incorporates a display that can
be shared by multiple laptop users.
www.kieurope.com